BPM (Business Process Management) is a set of methodologies used to discover, model, analyze, and improve business processes. These methodologies have produced long standing standards like BPMN, XPDL and BPMN-XML. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platforms deal specifically with process automation - software robots automatically executing business processes instead of human users. A central piece of RPA platforms is the representation (i.e. model and serialization) of an automated business process, so that it can be understood and executed by software machines. However, modern RPA platforms use custom, proprietary representations of processes. Standard representations of processes like XPDL and BPMN-XML could instead offer a wider flexibility and interoperability among RPA platforms. In this paper, we analyze two such standard representations (i.e. serializations) of business processes, XPDL and BPMN-XML, and try to determine which one is the most useful for representing a business process for an RPA platform.

We analyze in this paper the design architecture of a web-based personalized query suggestion system usable in information retrieval contexts. Our system comes in the form of a transparent proxy for the Google search engine (although it can work with other search engines too, with minimal code changes) that is able to personalize the list of query suggestions provided by Google, based on the recent user web browsing history. The most important design choices are presented with a special focus on the integration with the Google search engine. The integration analysis is directed by the well known application integration criteria. We have made our system transparent to the user when searching information on Google and we have shown through performance tests that our system has very small computational costs for the user experience.

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This Research to Practice Full Paper delineates the impact of using cyclic learning to obtain competences in software quality oriented design. Nowadays, the need for quality in the software systems has become more and more a concern for many researchers and industry practitioners. Developing students' appropriate competencies and skills in writing quality programs must be an important objective of any Software Engineering related course from the Computer Science Curricula. In order to attain this goal, the paper presents a new strategy for reflecting software quality models into Software Engineering related courses based on cyclic learning. The method is based on an educational strategy that integrates the cyclic learning approach and induces to the students the awareness regarding the importance of developing quality software. We focus on a set of software quality characteristics described by the ISO25010 quality model for which we analyze the level of knowledge attained by the students during the entire bachelor cycle of studies. The study is directed by a detailed analysis of three courses: Advanced Programming Methods, Parallel and Distributed Programming, and Software Systems Verification and Validation, which were chosen in order to master the analysis complexity, but at the same time to assure coverage of as many quality attributes as possible. The investigation includes qualitative and quantitative analysis, directed by the objective of establishing the efficiency and effectiveness of the approach. The results obtained confirm both students' awareness regarding the importance of learning software quality attributes, and the efficiency of using cyclic learning in teaching this subject. We also outline several insights and advantages, and we conclude by showing that the proposed strategy fulfilled the expected objectives.

We introduce in this paper a bandwidth aggregation routing solution for multihoming sites. Our routing solution interconnects two distinct multihomed network sites (i.e. network sites that have two or more uplinks to the Internet) and routes local flows between these two network sites. It routes local flows dynamically through several outgoing network paths/links depending on the load (i.e. congestion level) on each path. If a network path/uplink becomes more congested, fewer local flows are routed through it. We detail two path load estimation strategies: one based on RTT measurements and the other based on throughput measurements, both implying passive network measurements. Our multihoming solution outperforms the ECMP-based (i.e. Equal-Cost Multipath) solution in terms of total aggregated throughput and inter-flow fairness.

This Research to Practice Ful1 Paper presents a study regarding applying cyclic learning strategy with a special focus on object-oriented programming and states our findings, emphasizing both the advantages and disadvantages.The research considers as a use-case the teaching activity in the Faculty of Computer Science of Babeş-Bolyai University. The analysis takes into consideration several disciplines that compass a set of interconnected teaching objectives and aspects: (1) fundamental concepts and mechanisms (F) defined by object-orientated programming paradigm, (2) design principles, heuristics, and rules (D) that act as strategies implied in object-oriented design, and (3) functional and nonfunctional requirements related to software architecture (A).The study is directed by a statistical analysis of the grades obtained by the students at different courses that treat the (F, D, A) aspects, and also the results obtained at the Bachelor's final exam that evaluates the level of the acquired fundamental knowledge. Their evolution and correlation during a period of several years are analyzed, and together with an analysis of the degree of absorption of the students in the IT industry form the base of the study.

Powerlists are recursive data structures that together with their associated algebraic theories could offer both a methodology to design parallel algorithms and parallel programming abstractions to ease the development of parallel applications This has been also proved by a concrete development of such a framework that allows easy, efficient, and reliable implementation of Java parallel programs on shared memory systems. The paper presents a highly scalable version of this framework by extending it to distributed memory systems based on an MPI implementation. Through this extension we may use the framework to develop Java parallel programs also on distributed memory systems such as clusters. The design of the framework enables flexibility in defining the appropriate execution type depending on the execution system and its characteristics. Therefore, it is possible to choose MPI execution (that also could be combined with multithreading) if the available system includes an MPI platform, or simple multithreading execution. Examples are given and performance experiments are conducted. The performance analysis of these applications emphasises the utility and the efficiency of this framework extension.

Parallel programs based on the Divide&Conquer paradigm could be successfully defined in a simple way using powerlists. These parallel recursive data structures and their algebraic theories offer both a methodology to design parallel algorithms and parallel programming abstractions to ease the development of parallel applications. The paper presents how programs based on powerlists can be implemented in Java using the JPLF framework we developed. The design of this framework is based on powerlists theory, but in the same time follows the object-oriented design principles that provide flexibility and maintainability. Examples are given and performance experiments are conducted. The results emphasize the utility and the efficiency of the framework.

The paper presents a method that allows formal refinement of BSP programs. We may consider a BSP program as a set of parameterized processes that communicate via message-passing. A parameterized process is refined into a sequence of BSP super steps each containing an ordinary sequential process and a communication process. The method uses parameterized pre- and post-conditions, and takes into account the data-distribution, even at the beginning of the construction process. The chosen data-distribution determines the way in which the parameterized specifications are built. Different types of distribution could be considered: one-dimensional, Cartesian, or set-valued distributions. From the parameterized post conditions we can evaluate the number of communications and this allows us to make a cost evaluation even at the early stages of the design. Considering different variants for data-distribution we can evaluate the different costs and then choose the best option for a certain concrete architecture. Examples are given for parallel prefix and Lagrange interpolation.

BSP has shown that structured parallel programming is not only a performance win, but it is also a program construction win, especially if we add a formal method for designing. Maybe the most important advantage that BSP brings is the effective cost model that allows a good evaluation of the performance. The paper presents a technique for cost evaluation from specifications for BSP programs. We consider parameterized specifications and processes for BSP programs, and the parameters are the number of processes, the index of the local process, and the data distribution. The possibility of counting the number of communications from postconditions, allows us to make a cost evaluation even at the early stages of the design, and so it leads us to the right decisions