In short, three different fellowships are available:

1. Research Fellowship: For individuals without a PhD who are considering pursuing research studies.
2. PhD Scholarship: For those who wish to pursue a PhD in Switzerland for a period of 3+ years.
3. Post-Doc Scholarship: For individuals with a PhD who are looking to spend one year in Switzerland conducting postdoctoral research.

Please note that all fellowships are intended for individuals who have not previously spent time in Switzerland. Consequently, if you are awarded one of these fellowships, you will be ineligible to apply for the others in the future as you technicaly already have a Phd or Postdoc in Switzerland.

Let’s see each one of them in dettail:

Research Fellowship

Research Fellowships are 12-month programs aimed at highly qualified postgraduate researchers from all academic disciplines. Applicants must have obtained a master’s degree or equivalent by July 31, 2024, except for ETH Zurich applicants, who must meet this requirement by June 30, 2024. Candidates should be born after December 31, 1988. The application requires a support letter from an academic host professor at a Swiss university, including a brief CV (maximum 2 pages), explaining their willingness to supervise and support the research. This letter differs from the confidential recommendation letter also required. Additionally, applicants must submit a research proposal with a defined time frame. Notably, this fellowship is not available to those who already hold a PhD degree

PhD Scholarship

PhD Scholarships are designed for highly qualified PhD students from all academic disciplines, offering funding for 12 to 36 months, extendable in three 12-month increments based on academic progress. Applicants must have obtained a master’s degree or equivalent by July 31, 2024, except for ETH Zurich applicants, who must meet this requirement by June 30, 2024. Eligible candidates should be born after December 31, 1988. The application requires a support letter from an academic host professor at a Swiss university, including a brief CV (maximum 2 pages), detailing their commitment to supervise and support the PhD throughout its duration. If an assistant professor supports the application, a full professor must co-sign the letter. This support letter is distinct from the confidential recommendation letter also required. For PhD studies at a University of Applied Sciences, an additional support letter from a faculty member of the host research university is mandatory. The doctoral degree must be awarded by a research university. A detailed research proposal with a defined time frame is the centerpiece of the application and requires thorough attention.

Post-Doc Scholarship

Postdoctoral Scholarships are 12-month programs aimed at highly qualified early career scientists from all scientific fields. Eligible candidates must have completed their PhD between December 31, 2020, and July 31, 2024 (June 30, 2024, for ETH Zurich), and primarily for those who have not previously studied in Switzerland. The program does not fund sabbaticals. Applicants need a support letter from an academic host professor at a Swiss university, including a brief CV (maximum 2 pages), explaining their willingness to supervise the research. Former PhD mentors and co-directors for co-tutelle PhDs cannot be supervisors. A detailed research proposal with a timeframe is the centerpiece of the application. This scholarship is exclusively for full-time postdoctoral research in Switzerland, prohibiting fieldwork outside the country, and recipients are expected to reside in Switzerland during the grant period. For double doctorates, the date of the first degree is considered. The scholarship is not valid for mixed research conducted partly in Switzerland and partly in another country.

Where to find more Information

The official link of the scholarship contains all the relevant information and is the “GO TO” resources:

• https://www.sbfi.admin.ch/sbfi/en/home/education/scholarships-and-grants/swiss-government-excellence-scholarships.html

Additionally, each country has specific information and details regarding the application procedure, which can be found at the following link.

• https://www.sbfi.admin.ch/dam/sbfi/en/dokumente/2022/07/all-countries.pdf.download.pdf/2023_ESKAS_all_country_contacts_A_to_Z_for_application_documents.pdf

I recommend relying on the official information provided at the link above. The program itself warns about potential scams, and while there are numerous YouTube videos on the topic, some are generated by ChatGPT and others are, for lack of a better word, “dubious.” Here, I share videos from two YouTubers who, in my opinion, offer a reliable overview of the program. From Jama, part 1:

And part 2:

As well as from Aatiya:

My personal suggestions:

If you are interested in applying for a Phd or Postdoc in Switzerland, here are my personal suggestions:

1. Start Early (Paperwork): The application process is deliberately complex to filter out unmotivated candidates. The responsibility for managing the paperwork falls entirely on you, so begin early to ensure you have ample time to complete everything accurately.
2. Start Early (Connections in Switzerland): A critical aspect of the application is obtaining a support letter from a professor in Switzerland who is willing to endorse your candidacy and confirm that your proposal aligns with their and their institution’s research. Building these connections early is essential.
3. Start Early (Your Research Proposal): Develop a meaningful and well-written research proposal as soon as possible. Without a solid proposal, it will be challenging to secure support from a professor. You are solely responsible for writing this proposal. Once you have a polished version formatted according to the required templates, use it as your business card when reaching out to potential professors in Switzerland. Without this document, your communication is likely to be ignored or flagged as spam.

In other words, your commitment and the importance of contacting your potential supervisor as early as possible, armed with all the relevant information, cannot be overstated. This official video from the program provides additional valuable suggestions:

In addition, please note that each professor will not/cam not endorse more then one (or two) candidates per year. Therefore many of the request may simply be not answered.

Can I help you further for your Phd or Postdoc in Switzerland?

It really depends. For this specific grant you (the applicant) are really responsible for doing the heavy lifting as well as for dealing with the dettails. As for the rest, (i) if you believe that you have what it takes for this fellowship, (ii) you fulfill all the requirements, (iii) you have a nice idea to pursue and (iv) it is related to one of the following areas:

1. Internet of Things (IoT): Refers to the network of interconnected devices and objects that can communicate and share data. IoT enables smart homes, industrial automation, and more.
2. Extended Reality (XR): Encompasses virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR). XR technologies blend digital content with the real world, enhancing user experiences.
3. Human Behavioral Informatics: The study of human behavior using data analytics and computational methods. It involves understanding patterns, preferences, and decision-making based on digital interactions.
4. Computer Vision: A field of artificial intelligence that focuses on enabling machines to interpret visual information from images or videos. Applications include facial recognition, object detection, and medical imaging.
5. Language Processing: Also known as natural language processing (NLP), it involves teaching computers to understand and generate human language. NLP powers chatbots, language translation, and sentiment analysis.
6. Security and Privacy: Addresses safeguarding data, systems, and networks from unauthorized access or breaches. It includes encryption, authentication, and privacy-preserving techniques.
7. Big Data Processing: Deals with managing and analyzing large volumes of data. Technologies like Hadoop and Spark enable efficient processing of massive datasets.
8. Distributed Systems: Involves designing and managing systems that run on multiple interconnected computers. Examples include cloud computing, peer-to-peer networks, and distributed databases.
9. Serverless Computing: A cloud computing model where developers focus on writing code without managing servers. Serverless platforms automatically scale resources based on demand.
10. Digital Decision Making: The process of using data-driven insights and algorithms to make informed choices in various domains, such as business, healthcare, and finance.

You can consider dropping me a line! Are you still finishing your thesis instead? These guides may help!

Good Luck!

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In both cases you have my respect and support for trying to understand how HPC, AI, Big Data and Industry 4.0 can be used in your business.

I am honored and humbled that you selected me as part of your portfolio of experts for understanding how to leverage AI based technologies in your company. I am also expressing my gratitude to the StarwAI for supporting candidature as expert.

Please consider the following, prior contacting me:

• StairwAI is using a matchmaking tool to propose to each SME the list of AI Experts that fit the pilot’s scope and needs. Obviously you make the final decision on the Expert or Experts that would like to cooperate with. In addition, you free to select any Experts from the list of validated Experts, not proposed by the matchmaking tool. However, you may want to give a shot to the matchmaking tool first.
• You may want to drop me a line informally before moving forward, I will be happy to answer to your questions and take a virtual (or physical) coffee and discuss your ideas. In this way I may be able to understand if we are a good fit for each other and if I can really provide value to you.
• StairwAI is planning a second support program in 2023. Therefore if we will not have the possibility to work together in this round, do not despair; we will be able to do it at the next iteration.

Where to know more:

• AI4Europe
• StarwAI Project

Finally, let me thanks AI4EU for bring together AI stakeholders and resources, overcoming fragmentation issues and encouraging the acceleration of AI-based innovations. In particular for supporting SMEs that may be left behind due to their limited capability to acquire competences in this current market.

Happy to support the StarwAI Project and AI4EU in their mission of supporting SMEs in their strategies for #DataScience #AI #industry40 and #hpc .
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• After the initial pain, and maybe a bit of a slow start, your thesis will advance ten times faster and you will be capable to achieve more than you can imagine.
• What you will be learning will not be lost. Many companies use a similar environment (if not the same).
• Many of these resources are free and you will be able to use them for other projects after the end of this academic endeavor.

In other words, you have nothing to lose. All you have to do is to endure a bit of the initial annoyance that is required for a proper warm up of your programming environment. However, the reward is much greater than the initial investment.

In this article, I list only a very few resources and only the ones that are free. In the internet you can find many more.

Programming skills: no matter how much you know, there is always room for knowing more. Most libraries, both public and university, have free subscriptions to courses. For example, the library in my university gives free access to DataCamp to all the students that request it.

If you are not familiar with the platform, it contains a set of courses at all levels and many of them have code examples. As they cover a large range of cases, some of them will be relevant for your thesis. All you have to do is to dig into the list and familiarize with the code that is most promising for the work that you plan to do with your supervisor.

Get a student account in GitHub, it is a free repository that you can use for storing your code. Calming student status will grant you a pro version for free as well as many discounts for products of other companies. In addition, you will also not loose these perks after the graduation – some of them could be useful for you in the future.

Get an account in Kaggle, again, it is a free service that has courses and datasets. They also offer a web based programming environment with the idea that if you will find yourself in need of additional computation, you will use their services. As a general rule, I would recommend to have a local working environment instead of a cloud based like the one of Kaggle. However, a cloud based environment may be useful under certain conditions.

Set up Anaconda (or Eclipse) in your laptop. An Integrated Development Environment is extremely useful when you have to do some professional programming. Anaconda is free, open source and perfect for Python. Eclipse is its counterpart for Java. In the article below you can read about some of the benefits of an IDE. Once you will start using one you will never go back:

This article is a mini-tutorial on how to set up the environment for Anaconda:

Finally, in the article below, you can familiarize with the debug functionality. It is one of the most useful features of an IDE and can really save you a tremendous amount of time:

I would strongly encourage you in enduring the pain of getting familiar with the tools and the resources that I shared with you in this article. In the long run your future self will be extremely thankful.

A working environment is a very personal thing and I can imagine that every supervisor has their own. Consequently, I would encourage you to discuss the details during your first meeting. At the same time, I can imagine that these tools will be, in a way or an other, useful for your future work. In addition, the fact that you will have your working environment ready will allow you to advance conversations that are more specific to your thesis and you will result in a better use of the (limited) time that you will share with your supervisor.

#free #Resources that will #SHARP your #programming #environnement. #Java #pythonprogramming #pythoncode #DataScience #DataAnalytics #data
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By the way, here you can fine my profiles in GitHub Kaggle and DataCamp:

• https://github.com/Nym77
• https://kaggle.com/francescolelli
• https://www.datacamp.com/profile/flelli
• https://www.freecodecamp.org/francesco-lelli

Are you really committed in improving your programming skills?

Free Code Camp is an open source free course that will guide you in a project based journey towards advanced programming skills. It contains also a session on how to pass a programming oriented job interview.

Introduction to Computer Science from Harvard This is a free edX course from Harvard. You can also get a certificate but this will cost you something. Nevertheless the entire course is free.

Something else:

This article (Free Resources That Will Warm Up Your Programming Environment) is part of the miniseries on how to do a good thesis, you can see the full list of post at the following link:

This article is also part of a miniseries on how to become a better programmer. You can see the full list of posts at the following link:

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Objectives of the Workshop:

Industry 4.0 is the integration of IoT, artificial intelligence (AI), cyber-physical systems, and Cloud that brought us smart factories, putting technology at the forefront of manufacturing. It heavily focusses on maximizing given set of mainly technology and economic KPIs: in other words, the systems efficiency. Industry 5.0 provides a vison of industry that aims beyond efficiency and productivity as the sole goals and reinforces the
role and the contribution of industry to society.
The workshop will discuss what are the drivers, the barriers and the implications of leveraging the technological solutions developed in Industry 4.0 (I4.0) to address relevant societal impacts, so aligning with the EC agenda.

With the final goal of further interconnecting Civil Society, Government & Policy Makers, Academia and Industry, the workshop will discuss how to shape the Industry 5.0 (I5.0) paradigm to enable a human-centric, resilient society, the green transition, and the related awareness, what is the role of interoperability, and how the SMEs can contribute to this process.
It will discuss methodological approaches and models to describe from both an ICT and Social Science perspective the ever-increasing complexity of socio-technical systems that are core of I4.0 and I5.0 and foresee an extensive use of AI-based solutions. This will include, but not limit to, how to identify, measure, monitor and feedback key features and attributes to keep all the stakeholders informed and satisfied.
The workshop will also touch upon the key concepts of Data Spaces and Testing and Experimentation Facilities as a way to answer current challenges in I4.0 and support the transition to I5.0 exploring interoperability challenges reaching solutions to industry.

Topics of interest:

• Interoperability in the transition to the human centric approach.
• Interoperable socio-technical systems.
• SME supporting interoperability in I5.0.
• AI as a support to Civil Society, Government & Policy Makers.
• Digital Education and impact of ICT and data sharing on the green agenda.
• Multi-Stakeholders monitoring models and tools.
• The role of AI in governing the transitioning I4.0 to I5.0.
• The workforce in I5.0.
• Methodologies, prototypes, and tools addressing the human-centric approach in socio-technical systems.
• SME vs large industry approach to provide tools in interoperable socio-technical systems.
• Addressing privacy and trust in interoperable human-centered systems.
• Best practices and guidelines to foster the collaboration among Social and ICT Scientists.
• Practical experiences of AI solution used beyond efficiency improvement.
• Experiences, insights, and vision on setting up and use of Data Spaces to support I5.0.
• Experiences on setting up and use of Testing and Experimentation Facilities to support I5.0

AI Beyond Efficiency: Paper Submission

Papers must be in English, describes original work and must follow the CEUR guidelines for authors. Paper length should be 6 pages for a full paper and 4 pages for a short paper.
Authors should submit their contributions by email to the Workshop Chairs: sdm2d11@soton.ac.uk, mjnunez@aidimme.es, F.Lelli@tilburguniversity.edu, davide.dallecarbonare@eng.it

Important Dates:

• January 31st, February the 7th, 2022 First draft paper submission
• February 15th, 2022 Notification of acceptance
• March 23rd, 24th, 2022 I-ESA 2022 Workshops
• April 18th, 2022 Camera-ready
• June 20th, 2022 Publication of Proceedings

Further Information about the co-location with I-ESA, venues and proceeding

Since several years, I-ESA is the major event regarding Enterprise Interoperability and the official conference of Virtual Laboratory for Enterprise Interoperability (INTEROP-VLab) with the sponsorship of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP).
Accepted and presented papers will be published by CEUR Workshops Proceedings

Please, consider that at least one author per paper must register to the Workshops. If none of the authors is registered, the paper will not be included in the workshop program and in the proceedings

Workshop Chairs:

• Stefano Modafferi (University of Southampton, UK),
• Maria José Nunez (AIDIMME, SP),
• Francesco Lelli (University of Tilburg, NL),
• Davide Dalle Carbonare (Engineering, IT)

Program Committee (alphabetical order):

• Emiel Caron (University of Tilburg, NL);
• Luca Caviglione (CNR-IMATI, IT);
• Francesco D’Andria (Atos ARI, SP);
• Angelo Di Iorio (Universita’ di Bologna, IT);
• Akpofure Enughwure (Nigeria Maritime University, NG);
• Nicholas Fair (University of Southampton, UK);
• Alessia Focareta (FIDIA SPA, IT);
• Simone Fratini (Solenix Enineering GmbH, DE);
• Javed Khan (Sappi Europe, BE);
• Florian Kunneman (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, NL);
• Manuel Mazzara (Innopolis University, RU);
• Rashid Mehmood (King Abdulaziz University, SA)
• Raffaele Montella (Universita’ di Napoli Partenope, IT);
• Alexandros Nizamis (CERTH/ITI, GR);
• Antonio Nocera (Universita’ di Pavia);
• Joao Sarraipa (Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, PT);  
• Usman Wajid (Information Catalyst, UK).

Help us spread the voice:

First #workshop on #AI Beyond Efficiency: Interoperability towards Industry 5.0.#Industry40 #BigData #MachineLearning #artificialintelligence #iot #DataScience #coding #pythoncode #Software #service
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The key outcome of this initiative is a federated smart factory ecosystem and a digital platform (called EFPF) that interlinks different stakeholders of the digital manufacturing domain. The EFPF platform supports European Industry 4.0 companies to utilize innovative solutions, experiment with disruptive approaches and develop custom solutions to address dynamic manufacturing needs for mass-customization and lot-size-one production.

The EFPF platform offers embedded intelligence and integrated tools and services to significantly reduce the burden of setting up collaborative networks, shorten the time to respond to new business opportunities and simplify the management and control of distributed processes.The main EFPF objectives are:

• To foster the growth of a pan-European platform ecosystem that enables the transition from “analogue-first” mass production, to “digital twins” and lot-size-one manufacturing
• To provide a unified Portal through which new and existing users can simply and seamlessly access the full range of services provided by the federated platforms (e.g. Single Sign On, Governance…etc)
• To support developers to create digital tools/services of direct added value to manufacturers, especially for lot-size-one production, through dynamic collaboration
• To demonstrate sustainable value networks and tangible benefits in three pilot industrial areas: Aerospace: B2B SME collaborations; Furniture: OEM Supply Chain; and Smart Waste Management: the Circular Economy
• To extend and align existing Marketplace functionalities
• To avoid the fragmentation of European digital manufacturing platforms and services
• To establish standardized, industry-relevant platform architectures

Why should you be involved?

Here you can find a few reasons:

• You will receive between €50-150K of non-equity funding and support to develop new services/products.
• You will own what you produce and will be able to exploit outcomes across your business
• You will have the opportunity to develop new, working relationships with innovative businesses in the Industry 4.0 domain
• You will have access to a new sales channel through the EFPF Marketplace

Important dates and key information:

• Total available funding: €2.5million
• Funding range per project: €50,000 – 150,000
• This budget will cover: 80% of your costs
• Call Launch: October 19th 2020
• Call Close: February 19th 2021
• Your Project Start: September 2021
• Your Project Duration: 6-12 months

Who can apply?

Please apply if you meet the following criteria.
You are:

1. an SME as defined in EU Law: EU Recommendation 2003/361/EC, (see https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/conferences/state-aid/sme/smedefinitionguide_en.pdf),
2. or a legal entity of any size operating in the manufacturing or supply chain domain,
3. or a technology provider / software developer,
4. or a research center / university

In addition:

• You are legally established in an EU Member State, the UK or an Associated Country (see EC Countries List)
• You are a stable, solvent, legal entity eligible for participation and funding in H2020 Initiatives
• You have no formal business partnerships with any EFPF consortium member (eg part- or wholly-owned subsidiary, or affiliate) – there are no restrictions on customers and/or suppliers of EFPF consortium members

Where to find more information for this EFPF call:

• Find out more on the official page of the funding call
• Or, register your interest using the subscription form

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Current cloud service description languages envision the ability to automatically combine cloud service offerings across multiple abstraction layers, i.e. software, platform, and infrastructure service offerings, to achieve a common shared business goal. However, only little effort has
been spent in this direction. This paper formalizes the issue of automatic combination of cloud services showing its computationally intensive nature. In order to overcome this issue we propose a Resource Description Framework (RDF)- based prototype implementation that leverages a batch process for automatically constructing possible combinations of cloud services. Using this approach we are able to analyze possible combinations of cloud services that may fit particular customer needs in a timely fashion

Some relevant Key words: Cloud, Cloud Services, Service, Composition, RDF for Cloud

Cloud resources offered as services can be described using a common schema model and hence can be composed in order to achieve a common business goal. We present in this paper the issue of composing cross-layered cloud services to build a Service-based Cloud Application (SBCA), and formalize it as a tree navigation algorithm involving external approaches for matching cloud service descriptions.
Given the fact that there could be a huge number of cloud service offerings in a real marketplace, this algorithm may grow exponentially and become a computationally intensive task. For our prototype implementation, RDF is used to create a sample model containing sample cloud service offerings, a batch process is implemented to continuously scan the model and discover possible compositions of cloud services, and SPARQL is used to retrieve cloud services and their possible compositions in a timely fashion. In the future, we intend to continue investigating the issue of cross-layered cloud service composition in order to discover and quantify the benefits and the limits of this approach by providing experimental results.

Full article available at the following link:

Issue in Automatic Combination of Cloud Services:
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISPA.2012.71

Your help in sharing the idea is very welcome!

Cite this paper as:

D. K. Nguyen and F. Lelli, Issue in Automatic Combination of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS, 10th International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing with Application ISPA 2012 track Clouds for Business and Business for Clouds, Spain, Madrid, July 2012

Related Article:

• The Many Faces of the Integration of Instruments and the Grid

#issues in #automatic Combination of #Cloud #services for #CloudComputing #RDF and understanding meta-information
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• Full list of Journal Publications
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In the past few years, the idea of extending the Grid to cover also the remote access, control, management of instrument devices has been explored in a few initiatives. Existing tools lack in generality and require advanced specialized computer science knowledge, thus making them difficult to be broadly adopted in the scientific community. In this paper we present a new open source initiative that is designed to overcome these problems. The Tiny Instrument Element project defines a high level architecture for plugging instruments into the Grid and provides the corresponding skeleton implementation. This lightweight approach, as opposed to existing middleware-based solutions, reduces the effort required to Gridify existing instruments. The paper evaluates the proposed abstraction with a case study from a pervasive computing scenario.

Some relevant Key words: IoT, Internet of things, smart devices, cloud computing, web service, ubiquitous computing, plugin.

In this paper we present the Tiny Instrument Element project showing our proposed novel approach to the integration between instruments and the Grid. Instead of building a new middleware we propose to use a semifinite artifact (i.e., a skeleton software) that can be tailored to meet the requirements of a specific instrument characteristics. This approach not only provides an uniform access to the Gridified instruments but also leaves the flexibility to customize and tune the Tiny Instrument Element for optimal monitoring and control of the instruments. From the case study we have seen that none of the code included in the Tiny Instrument Element release was redundant and that the time required in order to gain a good understanding of the API and the corresponding skeleton was quite small. This supports the idea of template-based software development. The Project has started full open source activities in September 2008. If we exclude our personal activity and the one performed by the case study participants, until the end of 2008, the project website attracted 304 unique visitors (7 Returning many times). The source code was downloaded 40 times and the authors were contacted with positive feedback by 2 users of the community. Whereas the project has been running for a relatively short time, these numbers are promising and show the benefit of a transparent development process to achieve wider dissemination of our research ideas

Full article available at the following link:

The Tiny Instrument Element:
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-01671-4_27

Read the paper at this link

Your help in sharing the idea is very welcome!

Cite this paper as:

F. Lelli and C. Pautasso The Tiny Instrument Element Project In proc of 4th International Conference on Grid and Pervasive Computing (GPC) , Geneva, Switzerland, May 2009

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• The Many Faces of the Integration of Instruments and the Grid

The #tiny Instrument Element for integrating #IoT and #Cloud . An early precursor of #EdgeComputing
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Web 2.0 communities emerge regularly with the growing need for domain-specific programming over Web APIs. Even though Web mashups provide access to Web APIs, they ignore domain-specific programming needs. On the other hand, developing domain-specific languages (DSLs) is costly and not feasible for such ad hoc communities. We propose User Language Domain (ULD): an intermediate Web based architecture using a domain-specific embedded languages approach that reduces the cost of DSL development to plugging the Web APIs into a host end user programming language. We have implemented the proposed architecture in the context of smart devices, where we plug the functionality of different Lego Mindstorms devices into a Web-based visual programming language. We expect that several domains, such as smart homes or wearable computers can use the ULD architecture to reduce development effort.

Some relevant Key words: domain specific languages, Web 2.0 communities, end user programming, plugin architecture, smart devices, ubiquitous computing.

Our case study of smart devices helps to show the promise of separating functionality from the end user programming language in end user programming. Currently, web based artifacts are released together with a set of open APIs that can be used by their customers for building extensions. Our solution allows an efficient way of embedding these APIs into a customizable wed based end user programming environment. Based on this case study we note that:

• The idea of adopting a plugin architecture introduces a tradeoff between (i) having a standardized and uniform access to different APIs and (ii) having a completely free set of methods. In the first case the realization of the Application Domains Library is simpler and portable. However, the introduction of domain dedicated features is more complex.
• In the realized prototype we have considered the possibility of separating the functionality from the visualization. However, we could also embed in the APIs a set of metadata for the visualization of the instructions and this will result in a more uniform adoption across possible domain languages.
• The end user programming language developed in this case study runs completely on the client side of the Web browser. By using JavaScript as the assembly language of the Web, the underlying compiler of the programming language compiles the visual language into the complete JavaScript application. Since JavaScript is an event-based programming language, the compiler is forced to map the visual programming language to an event-based language.
• In our case study, the provided visual language consists of methods that can be treated as events and be triggered upon calling them; hence it is straightforward to map this language to an event-based language. However, in case of need for other programming paradigms, such as functional programming or data-flow programming, the mapping to an event-based language is more complex.
• Server-side execution of end user developed applications creates a trade-off between flexibility and interactivity. Although server-side compilation and execution increases the flexibility on possible technologies and methods to be used for compilation and execution, it hampers interactivity during application execution, which is important in domains such as scientific simulations and games. A hybrid solution between client and server-side execution has to be chosen according to the domain.

In this paper we propose ULD, a Web-based architecture to separate the domain functionality from the programming language to support programming in the highly dynamic ecosystem of Web 2.0 communities. We devise a plugin architecture for an end user programming language to be used as a host language into which the functionality of multiple domains can be plugged. We apply our architecture in the context of smart devices. As a result, end users are provided with a visual programming environment to program different Lego Mindstorms devices. The visual programming interface is automatically generated from the device functionality and embedded into the programming environment. The adoption of the Web for end user programming opens new frontiers for collaborative developments. The developed case study will serve as a testbed where we will evaluate different collaborative end user programming tools and methods in order to assess the potential of end user programming in online social environments and understanding their challenges.

Full article available at the following link:

Supporting Domain-Specific Programming in Web 2.0: a Case Study of Smart Devices: https://doi.org/10.1109/ASWEC.2010.36

Read the paper at this link

Your help in sharing the idea is very welcome!

Cite this paper as:

N. Ahmadi, F. Lelli and M. Jazayeri Supporting Domain-Specific Programming in Web 2.0: a Case Study of Smart Devices, In proc of 21st Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC), Auckland, New Zealand, April 2010

Related Article:

• The Many Faces of the Integration of Instruments and the Grid

Supporting #domain Specific #programming in #Web 2.0: a #casestudy of #Smart Devices ( #IoT ).
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Abstract:
Current cloud service offerings, i.e., Software-as-a-service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings are often provided as monolithic, one-size-fits-all solutions and give little or no room for customization. This limits the ability of Service-based Application (SBA) developers to configure and syndicate offerings from multiple SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS providers to address their application requirements. Furthermore, combining different independent cloud services necessitates a uniform description format that facilitates the design, customization, and composition. Cloud Blueprinting is a novel approach that allows SBA developers to easily design, configure and deploy virtual SBA payloads on virtual machines and resource pools on the cloud. We propose the Blueprint concept as a uniform abstract description for cloud service offerings that may cross different cloud computing layers, i.e., SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. To support developers with the SBA design and development in the cloud, this paper introduces a formal Blueprint Template for unambiguously describing a blueprint, as well as a Blueprint Lifecycle that guides developers through the manipulation, composition and deployment of different blueprints for an SBA. Finally, the empirical evaluation of the blueprinting approach within an EC’s FP7 project is reported and an associated blueprint prototype implementation is presented.

Key words: Cloud Computing, Service-based Application (SBA), Service-oriented Architecture (SOA), Cloud Development Methodology

Cloud blueprinting is a novel approach for engineering Service-based Applications (SBAs). Following this approach, developers can create sophisticated SBAs from applications, platforms and infrastructures offered by different providers in the cloud to achieve end-to-end business requirements. This paper has proposed the Blueprintconcept as a uniform, abstract description of cross-layer cloud service offerings, a Blueprint Template for describing the blueprints, and a Blueprint Lifecycle that explains how blueprints are used during all the engineering phases of an SBA.Blueprint has been adopted as one of the main innovative concepts within the EC’s 4caaSt FP7 project. An industry cloud computing case study has been jointly defined by the 4caaSt community and has been used as a running example in this paper to demonstrate our blueprinting approach. The current blueprint XSD template and web-based blueprint prototype is integrated in a joint 4caaSt demonstration. In the future, our vision is to continuously improve the structure of our blueprint template to capture new requirements of SBA development in the cloud. In particular, we will look at other cross-cutting concerns in cloud computing such as security, reliability, pricing, licensing, etc., thanks to the extensible design of the blueprint template that allows adding more blueprint properties. More functionality will also be developed for our blueprint prototype towards a comprehensive blueprint tool that supports the entire SBA development lifecycle and targets the effect of changes in the blueprints and their composition.

Full article available at the following link:

Blueprinting Approach in Support of Cloud Computing https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/4/1/322

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Blueprinting Approach is a service oriented architecture best practice in Support of #CloudComputing . #Software #Engineering #service
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Nguyen, D.K.; Lelli, F.; Papazoglou, M.P.; Van den Heuvel, W.-J. Blueprinting Approach in Support of Cloud Computing. Future Internet 2012, 4, 322-346.

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Abstract (Engineering Cloud Applications): Recently, Cloud Computing has become an emerging research topic in response to the shift from product-oriented economy to service-oriented economy and the move from focusing on software/system development to addressing business-IT alignment. From the IT perspectives, there is a proliferation of methods for cloud application development. Such methods have clearly shown considerable shortcomings to provide an efficient solution to deal with major aspects related to cloud applications. One of these major aspects is the multi-tenancy of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) components used to compose Service-Based Applications (SBAs) on the cloud. Current SaaS offerings are often provided as monolithic one-size-fits-all solutions and give little or no opportunity for further customization. Monolithic SaaS offerings are more likely to show failure in meeting the business requirements of several consumers. In this paper, we analyze the state-of-the-art of the standardization, methodology, software and product support for SBA development on the cloud, identify some shortcomings, and point out the need of a novel approach for breaking down the monolithic stack of cloud service offerings and providing an effective and flexible solution for SBA designers to select, customize, and aggregate cloud service offerings coming from different providers.

Key words: Cloud Computing, Service-based Application (SBA), Service-oriented Architecture (SOA), Cloud Development Methodology

The paper provide a survey on existing support for Service-based Application (SBA) development on the cloud. As a summary, the survey has shown that the current cloud solutions are mainly fraught with shortcomings:

• They introduce a monolithic SaaS/PaaS/IaaS stack architecture where a one-size-fits-all mentality prevails. They do not allow SBA developers to mix and match functionalities and services from multiple application, platform and infrastructure providers and configure it dynamically to address their application needs.
• They introduce rigid service orchestration practices tied to a specific resource/infrastructure configuration for the cloud services at the application level.

The above points hamper the (re)-configuration and customization of cloud-based SBAs on demand to reflect evolving inter-organizational collaborations. There is clearly a need to mash up services from a variety of cloud providers to create what has been termed a cloud ecosystem. This type of integration supports the tailoring of SBAs to specific business needs using a mixture of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. To deal with the identified shortcomings, we pointed out the need of an abstract and uniform representation for cloud service offerings across cloud computing layers, i.e. SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. By using this uniform description for cloud service offerings, SBA developers can reuse, customize and combine distributed SaaSs for the SBAs in a seamless manner

Full article available at the following link:

http://www.scpe.org/index.php/scpe/article/view/794

PDF version at the following link:

On Engineering Cloud Applications – State of the Art, Shortcomings Analysis and Approach

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On #Engineering #CloudComputing Applications – State of the Art, Shortcomings Analysis and Approach
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Taher, Y., Nguyen, D. K., Lelli, F., van den Heuvel, W. J. A. M., & Papazoglou, M. (2012). On engineering cloud applications: State of the art, shortcomings analysis, and approach. Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience, 13(3), 215-231.

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