@phdthesis{Kluth2011, author = {Kluth, Stephan}, title = {Quantitative modeling and analysis with FMC-QE}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-52987}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2011}, abstract = {The modeling and evaluation calculus FMC-QE, the Fundamental Modeling Concepts for Quanti-tative Evaluation [1], extends the Fundamental Modeling Concepts (FMC) for performance modeling and prediction. In this new methodology, the hierarchical service requests are in the main focus, because they are the origin of every service provisioning process. Similar to physics, these service requests are a tuple of value and unit, which enables hierarchical service request transformations at the hierarchical borders and therefore the hierarchical modeling. Through reducing the model complexity of the models by decomposing the system in different hierarchical views, the distinction between operational and control states and the calculation of the performance values on the assumption of the steady state, FMC-QE has a scalable applica-bility on complex systems. According to FMC, the system is modeled in a 3-dimensional hierarchical representation space, where system performance parameters are described in three arbitrarily fine-grained hierarchi-cal bipartite diagrams. The hierarchical service request structures are modeled in Entity Relationship Diagrams. The static server structures, divided into logical and real servers, are de-scribed as Block Diagrams. The dynamic behavior and the control structures are specified as Petri Nets, more precisely Colored Time Augmented Petri Nets. From the structures and pa-rameters of the performance model, a hierarchical set of equations is derived. The calculation of the performance values is done on the assumption of stationary processes and is based on fundamental laws of the performance analysis: Little's Law and the Forced Traffic Flow Law. Little's Law is used within the different hierarchical levels (horizontal) and the Forced Traffic Flow Law is the key to the dependencies among the hierarchical levels (vertical). This calculation is suitable for complex models and allows a fast (re-)calculation of different performance scenarios in order to support development and configuration decisions. Within the Research Group Zorn at the Hasso Plattner Institute, the work is embedded in a broader research in the development of FMC-QE. While this work is concentrated on the theoretical background, description and definition of the methodology as well as the extension and validation of the applicability, other topics are in the development of an FMC-QE modeling and evaluation tool and the usage of FMC-QE in the design of an adaptive transport layer in order to fulfill Quality of Service and Service Level Agreements in volatile service based environments. This thesis contains a state-of-the-art, the description of FMC-QE as well as extensions of FMC-QE in representative general models and case studies. In the state-of-the-art part of the thesis in chapter 2, an overview on existing Queueing Theory and Time Augmented Petri Net models and other quantitative modeling and evaluation languages and methodologies is given. Also other hierarchical quantitative modeling frameworks will be considered. The description of FMC-QE in chapter 3 consists of a summary of the foundations of FMC-QE, basic definitions, the graphical notations, the FMC-QE Calculus and the modeling of open queueing networks as an introductory example. The extensions of FMC-QE in chapter 4 consist of the integration of the summation method in order to support the handling of closed networks and the modeling of multiclass and semaphore scenarios. Furthermore, FMC-QE is compared to other performance modeling and evaluation approaches. In the case study part in chapter 5, proof-of-concept examples, like the modeling of a service based search portal, a service based SAP NetWeaver application and the Axis2 Web service framework will be provided. Finally, conclusions are given by a summary of contributions and an outlook on future work in chapter 6. [1] Werner Zorn. FMC-QE - A New Approach in Quantitative Modeling. In Hamid R. Arabnia, editor, Procee-dings of the International Conference on Modeling, Simulation and Visualization Methods (MSV 2007) within WorldComp '07, pages 280 - 287, Las Vegas, NV, USA, June 2007. CSREA Press. ISBN 1-60132-029-9.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Perscheid2013, author = {Perscheid, Michael}, title = {Test-driven fault navigation for debugging reproducible failures}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-68155}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2013}, abstract = {The correction of software failures tends to be very cost-intensive because their debugging is an often time-consuming development activity. During this activity, developers largely attempt to understand what causes failures: Starting with a test case that reproduces the observable failure they have to follow failure causes on the infection chain back to the root cause (defect). This idealized procedure requires deep knowledge of the system and its behavior because failures and defects can be far apart from each other. Unfortunately, common debugging tools are inadequate for systematically investigating such infection chains in detail. Thus, developers have to rely primarily on their intuition and the localization of failure causes is not time-efficient. To prevent debugging by disorganized trial and error, experienced developers apply the scientific method and its systematic hypothesis-testing. However, even when using the scientific method, the search for failure causes can still be a laborious task. First, lacking expertise about the system makes it hard to understand incorrect behavior and to create reasonable hypotheses. Second, contemporary debugging approaches provide no or only partial support for the scientific method. In this dissertation, we present test-driven fault navigation as a debugging guide for localizing reproducible failures with the scientific method. Based on the analysis of passing and failing test cases, we reveal anomalies and integrate them into a breadth-first search that leads developers to defects. This systematic search consists of four specific navigation techniques that together support the creation, evaluation, and refinement of failure cause hypotheses for the scientific method. First, structure navigation localizes suspicious system parts and restricts the initial search space. Second, team navigation recommends experienced developers for helping with failures. Third, behavior navigation allows developers to follow emphasized infection chains back to root causes. Fourth, state navigation identifies corrupted state and reveals parts of the infection chain automatically. We implement test-driven fault navigation in our Path Tools framework for the Squeak/Smalltalk development environment and limit its computation cost with the help of our incremental dynamic analysis. This lightweight dynamic analysis ensures an immediate debugging experience with our tools by splitting the run-time overhead over multiple test runs depending on developers' needs. Hence, our test-driven fault navigation in combination with our incremental dynamic analysis answers important questions in a short time: where to start debugging, who understands failure causes best, what happened before failures, and which state properties are infected.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Berg2013, author = {Berg, Gregor}, title = {Virtual prototypes for the model-based elicitation and validation of collaborative scenarios}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-69729}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2013}, abstract = {Requirements engineers have to elicit, document, and validate how stakeholders act and interact to achieve their common goals in collaborative scenarios. Only after gathering all information concerning who interacts with whom to do what and why, can a software system be designed and realized which supports the stakeholders to do their work. To capture and structure requirements of different (groups of) stakeholders, scenario-based approaches have been widely used and investigated. Still, the elicitation and validation of requirements covering collaborative scenarios remains complicated, since the required information is highly intertwined, fragmented, and distributed over several stakeholders. Hence, it can only be elicited and validated collaboratively. In times of globally distributed companies, scheduling and conducting workshops with groups of stakeholders is usually not feasible due to budget and time constraints. Talking to individual stakeholders, on the other hand, is feasible but leads to fragmented and incomplete stakeholder scenarios. Going back and forth between different individual stakeholders to resolve this fragmentation and explore uncovered alternatives is an error-prone, time-consuming, and expensive task for the requirements engineers. While formal modeling methods can be employed to automatically check and ensure consistency of stakeholder scenarios, such methods introduce additional overhead since their formal notations have to be explained in each interaction between stakeholders and requirements engineers. Tangible prototypes as they are used in other disciplines such as design, on the other hand, allow designers to feasibly validate and iterate concepts and requirements with stakeholders. This thesis proposes a model-based approach for prototyping formal behavioral specifications of stakeholders who are involved in collaborative scenarios. By simulating and animating such specifications in a remote domain-specific visualization, stakeholders can experience and validate the scenarios captured so far, i.e., how other stakeholders act and react. This interactive scenario simulation is referred to as a model-based virtual prototype. Moreover, through observing how stakeholders interact with a virtual prototype of their collaborative scenarios, formal behavioral specifications can be automatically derived which complete the otherwise fragmented scenarios. This, in turn, enables requirements engineers to elicit and validate collaborative scenarios in individual stakeholder sessions - decoupled, since stakeholders can participate remotely and are not forced to be available for a joint session at the same time. This thesis discusses and evaluates the feasibility, understandability, and modifiability of model-based virtual prototypes. Similarly to how physical prototypes are perceived, the presented approach brings behavioral models closer to being tangible for stakeholders and, moreover, combines the advantages of joint stakeholder sessions and decoupled sessions.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{RoggeSolti2014, author = {Rogge-Solti, Andreas}, title = {Probabilistic Estimation of Unobserved Process Events}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-70426}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2014}, abstract = {Organizations try to gain competitive advantages, and to increase customer satisfaction. To ensure the quality and efficiency of their business processes, they perform business process management. An important part of process management that happens on the daily operational level is process controlling. A prerequisite of controlling is process monitoring, i.e., keeping track of the performed activities in running process instances. Only by process monitoring can business analysts detect delays and react to deviations from the expected or guaranteed performance of a process instance. To enable monitoring, process events need to be collected from the process environment. When a business process is orchestrated by a process execution engine, monitoring is available for all orchestrated process activities. Many business processes, however, do not lend themselves to automatic orchestration, e.g., because of required freedom of action. This situation is often encountered in hospitals, where most business processes are manually enacted. Hence, in practice it is often inefficient or infeasible to document and monitor every process activity. Additionally, manual process execution and documentation is prone to errors, e.g., documentation of activities can be forgotten. Thus, organizations face the challenge of process events that occur, but are not observed by the monitoring environment. These unobserved process events can serve as basis for operational process decisions, even without exact knowledge of when they happened or when they will happen. An exemplary decision is whether to invest more resources to manage timely completion of a case, anticipating that the process end event will occur too late. This thesis offers means to reason about unobserved process events in a probabilistic way. We address decisive questions of process managers (e.g., "when will the case be finished?", or "when did we perform the activity that we forgot to document?") in this thesis. As main contribution, we introduce an advanced probabilistic model to business process management that is based on a stochastic variant of Petri nets. We present a holistic approach to use the model effectively along the business process lifecycle. Therefore, we provide techniques to discover such models from historical observations, to predict the termination time of processes, and to ensure quality by missing data management. We propose mechanisms to optimize configuration for monitoring and prediction, i.e., to offer guidance in selecting important activities to monitor. An implementation is provided as a proof of concept. For evaluation, we compare the accuracy of the approach with that of state-of-the-art approaches using real process data of a hospital. Additionally, we show its more general applicability in other domains by applying the approach on process data from logistics and finance.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Waetzoldt2016, author = {W{\"a}tzoldt, Sebastian}, title = {Modeling collaborations in adaptive systems of systems}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-97494}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {XII, 380}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Recently, due to an increasing demand on functionality and flexibility, beforehand isolated systems have become interconnected to gain powerful adaptive Systems of Systems (SoS) solutions with an overall robust, flexible and emergent behavior. The adaptive SoS comprises a variety of different system types ranging from small embedded to adaptive cyber-physical systems. On the one hand, each system is independent, follows a local strategy and optimizes its behavior to reach its goals. On the other hand, systems must cooperate with each other to enrich the overall functionality to jointly perform on the SoS level reaching global goals, which cannot be satisfied by one system alone. Due to difficulties of local and global behavior optimizations conflicts may arise between systems that have to be solved by the adaptive SoS. This thesis proposes a modeling language that facilitates the description of an adaptive SoS by considering the adaptation capabilities in form of feedback loops as first class entities. Moreover, this thesis adopts the Models@runtime approach to integrate the available knowledge in the systems as runtime models into the modeled adaptation logic. Furthermore, the modeling language focuses on the description of system interactions within the adaptive SoS to reason about individual system functionality and how it emerges via collaborations to an overall joint SoS behavior. Therefore, the modeling language approach enables the specification of local adaptive system behavior, the integration of knowledge in form of runtime models and the joint interactions via collaboration to place the available adaptive behavior in an overall layered, adaptive SoS architecture. Beside the modeling language, this thesis proposes analysis rules to investigate the modeled adaptive SoS, which enables the detection of architectural patterns as well as design flaws and pinpoints to possible system threats. Moreover, a simulation framework is presented, which allows the direct execution of the modeled SoS architecture. Therefore, the analysis rules and the simulation framework can be used to verify the interplay between systems as well as the modeled adaptation effects within the SoS. This thesis realizes the proposed concepts of the modeling language by mapping them to a state of the art standard from the automotive domain and thus, showing their applicability to actual systems. Finally, the modeling language approach is evaluated by remodeling up to date research scenarios from different domains, which demonstrates that the modeling language concepts are powerful enough to cope with a broad range of existing research problems.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Heise2014, author = {Heise, Arvid}, title = {Data cleansing and integration operators for a parallel data analytics platform}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-77100}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {ii, 179}, year = {2014}, abstract = {The data quality of real-world datasets need to be constantly monitored and maintained to allow organizations and individuals to reliably use their data. Especially, data integration projects suffer from poor initial data quality and as a consequence consume more effort and money. Commercial products and research prototypes for data cleansing and integration help users to improve the quality of individual and combined datasets. They can be divided into either standalone systems or database management system (DBMS) extensions. On the one hand, standalone systems do not interact well with DBMS and require time-consuming data imports and exports. On the other hand, DBMS extensions are often limited by the underlying system and do not cover the full set of data cleansing and integration tasks. We overcome both limitations by implementing a concise set of five data cleansing and integration operators on the parallel data analytics platform Stratosphere. We define the semantics of the operators, present their parallel implementation, and devise optimization techniques for individual operators and combinations thereof. Users specify declarative queries in our query language METEOR with our new operators to improve the data quality of individual datasets or integrate them to larger datasets. By integrating the data cleansing operators into the higher level language layer of Stratosphere, users can easily combine cleansing operators with operators from other domains, such as information extraction, to complex data flows. Through a generic description of the operators, the Stratosphere optimizer reorders operators even from different domains to find better query plans. As a case study, we reimplemented a part of the large Open Government Data integration project GovWILD with our new operators and show that our queries run significantly faster than the original GovWILD queries, which rely on relational operators. Evaluation reveals that our operators exhibit good scalability on up to 100 cores, so that even larger inputs can be efficiently processed by scaling out to more machines. Finally, our scripts are considerably shorter than the original GovWILD scripts, which results in better maintainability of the scripts.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Neuhaus2017, author = {Neuhaus, Christian}, title = {Sicherheitsmechanismen f{\"u}r dienstbasierte Softwaresysteme}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {183}, year = {2017}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{Brauer2010, author = {Brauer, Falk}, title = {Extraktion und Identifikation von Entit{\"a}ten in Textdaten im Umfeld der Enterprise Search}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-51409}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2010}, abstract = {Die automatische Informationsextraktion (IE) aus unstrukturierten Texten erm{\"o}glicht v{\"o}llig neue Wege, auf relevante Informationen zuzugreifen und deren Inhalte zu analysieren, die weit {\"u}ber bisherige Verfahren zur Stichwort-basierten Dokumentsuche hinausgehen. Die Entwicklung von Programmen zur Extraktion von maschinenlesbaren Daten aus Texten erfordert jedoch nach wie vor die Entwicklung von dom{\"a}nenspezifischen Extraktionsprogrammen. Insbesondere im Bereich der Enterprise Search (der Informationssuche im Unternehmensumfeld), in dem eine große Menge von heterogenen Dokumenttypen existiert, ist es oft notwendig ad-hoc Programm-module zur Extraktion von gesch{\"a}ftsrelevanten Entit{\"a}ten zu entwickeln, die mit generischen Modulen in monolithischen IE-Systemen kombiniert werden. Dieser Umstand ist insbesondere kritisch, da potentiell f{\"u}r jeden einzelnen Anwendungsfall ein von Grund auf neues IE-System entwickelt werden muss. Die vorliegende Dissertation untersucht die effiziente Entwicklung und Ausf{\"u}hrung von IE-Systemen im Kontext der Enterprise Search und effektive Methoden zur Ausnutzung bekannter strukturierter Daten im Unternehmenskontext f{\"u}r die Extraktion und Identifikation von gesch{\"a}ftsrelevanten Entit{\"a}ten in Doku-menten. Grundlage der Arbeit ist eine neuartige Plattform zur Komposition von IE-Systemen auf Basis der Beschreibung des Datenflusses zwischen generischen und anwendungsspezifischen IE-Modulen. Die Plattform unterst{\"u}tzt insbesondere die Entwicklung und Wiederverwendung von generischen IE-Modulen und zeichnet sich durch eine h{\"o}here Flexibilit{\"a}t und Ausdrucksm{\"a}chtigkeit im Vergleich zu vorherigen Methoden aus. Ein in der Dissertation entwickeltes Verfahren zur Dokumentverarbeitung interpretiert den Daten-austausch zwischen IE-Modulen als Datenstr{\"o}me und erm{\"o}glicht damit eine weitgehende Parallelisierung von einzelnen Modulen. Die autonome Ausf{\"u}hrung der Module f{\"u}hrt zu einer wesentlichen Beschleu-nigung der Verarbeitung von Einzeldokumenten und verbesserten Antwortzeiten, z. B. f{\"u}r Extraktions-dienste. Bisherige Ans{\"a}tze untersuchen lediglich die Steigerung des durchschnittlichen Dokumenten-durchsatzes durch verteilte Ausf{\"u}hrung von Instanzen eines IE-Systems. Die Informationsextraktion im Kontext der Enterprise Search unterscheidet sich z. B. von der Extraktion aus dem World Wide Web dadurch, dass in der Regel strukturierte Referenzdaten z. B. in Form von Unternehmensdatenbanken oder Terminologien zur Verf{\"u}gung stehen, die oft auch die Beziehungen von Entit{\"a}ten beschreiben. Entit{\"a}ten im Unternehmensumfeld haben weiterhin bestimmte Charakteristiken: Eine Klasse von relevanten Entit{\"a}ten folgt bestimmten Bildungsvorschriften, die nicht immer bekannt sind, auf die aber mit Hilfe von bekannten Beispielentit{\"a}ten geschlossen werden kann, so dass unbekannte Entit{\"a}ten extrahiert werden k{\"o}nnen. Die Bezeichner der anderen Klasse von Entit{\"a}ten haben eher umschreibenden Charakter. Die korrespondierenden Umschreibungen in Texten k{\"o}nnen variieren, wodurch eine Identifikation derartiger Entit{\"a}ten oft erschwert wird. Zur effizienteren Entwicklung von IE-Systemen wird in der Dissertation ein Verfahren untersucht, das alleine anhand von Beispielentit{\"a}ten effektive Regul{\"a}re Ausdr{\"u}cke zur Extraktion von unbekannten Entit{\"a}ten erlernt und damit den manuellen Aufwand in derartigen Anwendungsf{\"a}llen minimiert. Verschiedene Generalisierungs- und Spezialisierungsheuristiken erkennen Muster auf verschiedenen Abstraktionsebenen und schaffen dadurch einen Ausgleich zwischen Genauigkeit und Vollst{\"a}ndigkeit bei der Extraktion. Bekannte Regellernverfahren im Bereich der Informationsextraktion unterst{\"u}tzen die beschriebenen Problemstellungen nicht, sondern ben{\"o}tigen einen (annotierten) Dokumentenkorpus. Eine Methode zur Identifikation von Entit{\"a}ten, die durch Graph-strukturierte Referenzdaten vordefiniert sind, wird als dritter Schwerpunkt untersucht. Es werden Verfahren konzipiert, welche {\"u}ber einen exakten Zeichenkettenvergleich zwischen Text und Referenzdatensatz hinausgehen und Teil{\"u}bereinstimmungen und Beziehungen zwischen Entit{\"a}ten zur Identifikation und Disambiguierung heranziehen. Das in der Arbeit vorgestellte Verfahren ist bisherigen Ans{\"a}tzen hinsichtlich der Genauigkeit und Vollst{\"a}ndigkeit bei der Identifikation {\"u}berlegen.}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{Lorey2014, author = {Lorey, Johannes}, title = {What's in a query : analyzing, predicting, and managing linked data access}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-72312}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2014}, abstract = {The term Linked Data refers to connected information sources comprising structured data about a wide range of topics and for a multitude of applications. In recent years, the conceptional and technical foundations of Linked Data have been formalized and refined. To this end, well-known technologies have been established, such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF) as a Linked Data model or the SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) for retrieving this information. Whereas most research has been conducted in the area of generating and publishing Linked Data, this thesis presents novel approaches for improved management. In particular, we illustrate new methods for analyzing and processing SPARQL queries. Here, we present two algorithms suitable for identifying structural relationships between these queries. Both algorithms are applied to a large number of real-world requests to evaluate the performance of the approaches and the quality of their results. Based on this, we introduce different strategies enabling optimized access of Linked Data sources. We demonstrate how the presented approach facilitates effective utilization of SPARQL endpoints by prefetching results relevant for multiple subsequent requests. Furthermore, we contribute a set of metrics for determining technical characteristics of such knowledge bases. To this end, we devise practical heuristics and validate them through thorough analysis of real-world data sources. We discuss the findings and evaluate their impact on utilizing the endpoints. Moreover, we detail the adoption of a scalable infrastructure for improving Linked Data discovery and consumption. As we outline in an exemplary use case, this platform is eligible both for processing and provisioning the corresponding information.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Steinert2014, author = {Steinert, Bastian}, title = {Built-in recovery support for explorative programming}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-71305}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2014}, abstract = {This work introduces concepts and corresponding tool support to enable a complementary approach in dealing with recovery. Programmers need to recover a development state, or a part thereof, when previously made changes reveal undesired implications. However, when the need arises suddenly and unexpectedly, recovery often involves expensive and tedious work. To avoid tedious work, literature recommends keeping away from unexpected recovery demands by following a structured and disciplined approach, which consists of the application of various best practices including working only on one thing at a time, performing small steps, as well as making proper use of versioning and testing tools. However, the attempt to avoid unexpected recovery is both time-consuming and error-prone. On the one hand, it requires disproportionate effort to minimize the risk of unexpected situations. On the other hand, applying recommended practices selectively, which saves time, can hardly avoid recovery. In addition, the constant need for foresight and self-control has unfavorable implications. It is exhaustive and impedes creative problem solving. This work proposes to make recovery fast and easy and introduces corresponding support called CoExist. Such dedicated support turns situations of unanticipated recovery from tedious experiences into pleasant ones. It makes recovery fast and easy to accomplish, even if explicit commits are unavailable or tests have been ignored for some time. When mistakes and unexpected insights are no longer associated with tedious corrective actions, programmers are encouraged to change source code as a means to reason about it, as opposed to making changes only after structuring and evaluating them mentally. This work further reports on an implementation of the proposed tool support in the Squeak/Smalltalk development environment. The development of the tools has been accompanied by regular performance and usability tests. In addition, this work investigates whether the proposed tools affect programmers' performance. In a controlled lab study, 22 participants improved the design of two different applications. Using a repeated measurement setup, the study examined the effect of providing CoExist on programming performance. The result of analyzing 88 hours of programming suggests that built-in recovery support as provided with CoExist positively has a positive effect on programming performance in explorative programming tasks.}, language = {en} }