Agent-Oriented Concept Management. This project will develop innovative agent-oriented approaches to managing information. An understanding of the concepts used by a system will enhance its ability to share information. Knowledge and concept management are key components of an information economy, and it is widely accepted that the success of the next generation of information systems will be their agent-oriented capability and their ability to interact with each other. In response, internation ....Agent-Oriented Concept Management. This project will develop innovative agent-oriented approaches to managing information. An understanding of the concepts used by a system will enhance its ability to share information. Knowledge and concept management are key components of an information economy, and it is widely accepted that the success of the next generation of information systems will be their agent-oriented capability and their ability to interact with each other. In response, international funding agencies have targeted agent-oriented technologies as essential ingredients for prosperity in the 21st century. This project will help to ensure that Australia shares in that prosperity.Read moreRead less
Topological Approaches for Three Dimensional Graph Drawing. Human analysis of huge quantities of relational data in biotechnology, web engineering, social networks, and computer networks requires visualization. In recent years, three-dimensional visualisation has promised to give new insights into such abstract data. However the past ten years of visualization research has had very little impact on the industry; visualization software providers have not adopted visualization methods developed b ....Topological Approaches for Three Dimensional Graph Drawing. Human analysis of huge quantities of relational data in biotechnology, web engineering, social networks, and computer networks requires visualization. In recent years, three-dimensional visualisation has promised to give new insights into such abstract data. However the past ten years of visualization research has had very little impact on the industry; visualization software providers have not adopted visualization methods developed by academics. We hypothesise that current 3D relational visualization methods fail because they do not pay attention to the human perception of topology. In this project we will leverage mathematical topology to construct new methods for the 3D visualization of relational data.
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New Methods for Interactive Visualization of Large Microarray Data Sets. This project will investigate methods for visualising graphs produced by AI-based analysis of real-world biological data. These new visualisation methods will assist biologists to develop new DNA Microarray experiments, the source of raw data for visualisation. Data from new enhanced experiments, plus background knowledge from integrated public databases will produce richer data for visualisation, thus creating a positive f ....New Methods for Interactive Visualization of Large Microarray Data Sets. This project will investigate methods for visualising graphs produced by AI-based analysis of real-world biological data. These new visualisation methods will assist biologists to develop new DNA Microarray experiments, the source of raw data for visualisation. Data from new enhanced experiments, plus background knowledge from integrated public databases will produce richer data for visualisation, thus creating a positive feedback loop in the course of research into both topics.Read moreRead less
Data-driven Approach to Resilient Online Service Systems. This project aims to develop a data-driven approach to improving the resilience of online service systems. Many software systems are now provided as online services via the Internet on a 24/7 basis. Although a lot of effort has been devoted to service quality assurance, in reality, online service systems still encounter many incidents and fail to satisfy user requests. This project expects to develop innovative data-driven methods for eff ....Data-driven Approach to Resilient Online Service Systems. This project aims to develop a data-driven approach to improving the resilience of online service systems. Many software systems are now provided as online services via the Internet on a 24/7 basis. Although a lot of effort has been devoted to service quality assurance, in reality, online service systems still encounter many incidents and fail to satisfy user requests. This project expects to develop innovative data-driven methods for effective fault identification, fault localization, and failure prediction. Expected outcomes of this project include novel techniques and tools for maintaining online service systems. This project will provide significant benefits, such as improving the resilience and reliability of our cyber infrastructure.Read moreRead less
Virtual Environments for Improved Enterprise Software Deployment. This project aims to improve quality assurance for enterprise IT. Enterprise IT systems are highly interconnected and interdependent — a failure in one system can cause a cascade of failures across multiple systems, bringing business to a standstill. The project aims to create new technologies to automate the provisioning of virtual deployment environments to test the enterprise systems. In particular, it aims to develop new metho ....Virtual Environments for Improved Enterprise Software Deployment. This project aims to improve quality assurance for enterprise IT. Enterprise IT systems are highly interconnected and interdependent — a failure in one system can cause a cascade of failures across multiple systems, bringing business to a standstill. The project aims to create new technologies to automate the provisioning of virtual deployment environments to test the enterprise systems. In particular, it aims to develop new methods for the automatic analysis of service interaction traces and the generation of accurate executable service models, without requiring explicit knowledge of them. The automatic analysis and generation should reduce development cost for enterprise IT systems and increase system quality and reliability. The new software deployment technologies from this project aim to significantly reduce the time, effort and cost of system quality assurance activities in software development organisations, and yet produce higher-quality software leading to uninterrupted business operation in end-user organisations across all sectors.Read moreRead less
Achieving Tailored Industrial Software Process Improvement with Experience Repositories and Electronic Process Guides. There is a well-recognised need for organisations to improve their software development processes in order to achieve higher software quality and greater efficiencies in development. The use of electronic process guides and experience repositories have been two technologies independently proposed to achieve these aims. This research will develop a framework, methods and tools ....Achieving Tailored Industrial Software Process Improvement with Experience Repositories and Electronic Process Guides. There is a well-recognised need for organisations to improve their software development processes in order to achieve higher software quality and greater efficiencies in development. The use of electronic process guides and experience repositories have been two technologies independently proposed to achieve these aims. This research will develop a framework, methods and tools to allow integration of experience repositories and electronic process guides to facilitate process tailoring, process improvement, and project management. The result will be significant improvements in software development productivity and quality.Read moreRead less
Design-Driven Requirements for Internet-Enabled System Development. The nature of Web system development is significantly different from conventional, software and IT development. Amongst other factors, there is substantial uncertainty in both clients' understanding of their needs and developers' understanding of the systems domain. We will develop an uncertainty model relevant to the development model relevant to the development of internet-enabled systems, and then use this model to adapt th ....Design-Driven Requirements for Internet-Enabled System Development. The nature of Web system development is significantly different from conventional, software and IT development. Amongst other factors, there is substantial uncertainty in both clients' understanding of their needs and developers' understanding of the systems domain. We will develop an uncertainty model relevant to the development model relevant to the development of internet-enabled systems, and then use this model to adapt the design process to support elicitation of requirements, as well as developing support for this adapted process. This will facilitate the development of systems that more accurately reflect clients' needs, and result in an understanding of what would be involved in reducing development costs.Read moreRead less
Ontology-based agent-oriented development methodologies. Establishing an industry strength unified agent-oriented methodology which focuses on interoperability and reusability will create stronger commitment to the new technology and stability in the commercial sector in Australia. Our methodology will create significant potential for Australian software companies, due to the added productivity and long term customer satisfaction through reusability, interoperability and pay-off of the developed ....Ontology-based agent-oriented development methodologies. Establishing an industry strength unified agent-oriented methodology which focuses on interoperability and reusability will create stronger commitment to the new technology and stability in the commercial sector in Australia. Our methodology will create significant potential for Australian software companies, due to the added productivity and long term customer satisfaction through reusability, interoperability and pay-off of the developed systems. This not only brings profits to Australian companies through the exploitation of this frontier technology, but also enhances the standard of living through increased satisfaction of the Australian public in their increasing use of software as they interact with today's computer-controlled world.Read moreRead less
Supporting co-evolution of business processes and Web systems. This research will provide significant benefit to the Australian Internet and e-commerce industries (valued by the ABS as in excess of $11b/year). It will result in improved products that better satisfy specific business needs (and hence improved competitiveness in a global market). Development cycles will shorten (as the likelihood of redevelopment decreases) and costs of development will fall. Finally, the models and tools to be ....Supporting co-evolution of business processes and Web systems. This research will provide significant benefit to the Australian Internet and e-commerce industries (valued by the ABS as in excess of $11b/year). It will result in improved products that better satisfy specific business needs (and hence improved competitiveness in a global market). Development cycles will shorten (as the likelihood of redevelopment decreases) and costs of development will fall. Finally, the models and tools to be developed will facilitate the transition of traditional organisations into the new economy, as the outcomes of this research will provide a transparent cost-effective approach for identifying and clarifying the evolving business domain and the requirements of companies.Read moreRead less
Viewable Measures for Component-Based Software Engineering. Software costs over US$300 billion per year worldwide with around 70% of large projects failing to complete in time. Reliable estimation of development effort is a great challenge in Software Engineering. This project aims to develop a reliable multi-dimensional software size measure and an effort estimation model for a new method of development called component based software engineering. We will validate our results theoretically and ....Viewable Measures for Component-Based Software Engineering. Software costs over US$300 billion per year worldwide with around 70% of large projects failing to complete in time. Reliable estimation of development effort is a great challenge in Software Engineering. This project aims to develop a reliable multi-dimensional software size measure and an effort estimation model for a new method of development called component based software engineering. We will validate our results theoretically and test it against empirical data from software industry. We will provide novel visualization techniques to comprehend measurements of large systems. The outcomes will help software projects better estimate deadlines and budgets thus reducing costs significantly.Read moreRead less