An Approach to Formalization of Formal Electronic Collaboration

This research intends to formalize the development techniques for Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) applications to support a variety of collaborative work. The formalization work can be divided into six categories. First is the formalization of collaboration rules. Second is the formalization of multimedia artifact-based collaboration actions. Third is the formalization of collaboration architecture. Fourth is the formalization of collaboration description language (CODL). Fifth is the formalization of development process of collaboration systems by introducing CODL-based fast prototyping methodology (COFAP). Sixth is the demonstration via rapid prototyping of collaboration systems as the proof of concepts by applying our own development methodology. Current projects include: approaches to formally verify the CSCW applications built from COFAP, such as correctness and deadlock detection, utilizing either Petri-net or process algebra; more case studies adopting COFAP; development of GUI-based development tool sets supporting COFAP; investigation of the possibility of integrating component engineering with CSCW systems; security issue of CSCW applications constructed from COFAP; integration of CODL with XML; construction of a distance-learning environment utilizing CODL.

Mockup-driven Fast-prototyping Methodology

To date a variety of research work has conducted a wealth of existing languages and tools when designing and implementing web applications; however, comprehensive and automated techniques and methodologies for producing web services oriented applications are still conspicuously lacking. Mockup-driven fast-prototyping methodology (MODFM), together with relative framework and supporting approaches, intend to facilitate web application development. Seamlessly integrated with latest advanced web technologies and well-tried techniques, MODFM and related tools can provide dramatic improvements in developer productivity, as well as enhancing the reliability of the resulting applications. Current projects include: the conduction of more case studies so as to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of MODFM on wide range of and different scaled web services centered applications; investigation of security issues of the web systems constructed from MODFM; examination of the effects that MODFM may cause on different stages of development life cycle of web applications such as requirements elicitation, software testing and maintenance, etc.; construction of an interactive development environment to support MODFM; exploration of JSP technology further so that MODFM can handle complex display widgets. This project will benefit both grduate and undergraduate students who are interested in top-notch web technologies and provide an experimental field for students to exercise on real-world projects utilizing technologies such as Java, J2EE (EJB, Servlets, JSP), application server, web services, etc.

Integration of Business Process with Web Services

Web services are broadly regarded as self-contained, self-describing, modular applications that can be published, located, and invoked across the Internet. This emerging paradigm opens a new way of web application design and development to quickly develop and deploy web application by integrating other independently published web services components to conduct new business transactions. Current projects include: thorough investigation of the composition issues on business process of web services; dynamic business process composition of distributed web services; formal language support to automate workflow generation and supervision on web services; business performance measurement and evaluation of composition of web services; an object-oriented framework for business systems based on web services; security issues related to web services.

Framework for Business Transaction Processing

This research intends to build a framework oriented to reflect business transaction processing applications complied with the traditional Resource-Event-Agent (REA) model. The ultimate goal is to automatically generate business applications from models constructed. Current projects include the construction of an architectural extended-REA model using Java.

Rule-mitigated Collaboration Methodology

The design of an appropriate paradigm for collaboration ultimately stands or falls on the question of whether human users are able to cooperate effectively with it. In this work, we begin with a paradigm of interaction in which human collaborators have shown themselves facile. This paradigm is based on the formal meeting protocol commonly known as parliamentary procedure or Robert's Rules of Order (RRO). Current projects include: an extended parliamentary procedure rule set adapted for network and parallel operation; a scoping policy and set of application programming interfaces that facilitate multiple simultaneous access, multi-application, conflict resolution, and configuration control and update for collaboration-aware applications; an object-based client/server architecture that maintains a set of databases, supports member communications, maintains the state of the collaboration and discussions, and implements a replication scheme to keeps collaboration client data synchronized with the state of the collaboration; a collaboration environment that supports synchronous/asynchronous cooperative activies.