An Application Transaction, which is a method-call flow from an exported API to a data-source access, is important for application modernization for microservice-oriented architecture. The application transaction in legacy applications is based on a traditional unified architecture on which a single application and database structure under low latency is assumed, which means that a significant decrease in performance can occur on microservice-oriented architectures composed of distributed application and database structures under high latency. Therefore, transaction refactoring is essential for application modernization. However, it is time-consuming and labor-intensive to manually identify the transaction split point in an application transaction. In this paper, we propose an approach for automatically refactoring the recommendation for application transactions by identifying the split point on the basis of database operation and business contexts. Our approach involves using a framework we designed for discovering application transactions from binary Java code and two partitioning methods, “operation-based splitting“ and “business-context-based splitting“ for detecting the optimal split points for application transactions in applications with different implementation patterns. We applied our approach to actual enterprise applications, identified split points for transaction-refactoring recommendation, and showed that it can significantly reduce processing time compared with doing it manually.

Crowdsourcing for social goals (e.g., supporting public libraries or people with disabilities) is a promising area. However, little is known about how to develop active worker communities for such goals. First, we need reliable metrics for the workers' motivation. Second, the characteristics of senior crowd workers have rarely been studied, even though they often play a primary role in social-purpose work. This work introduces a four-quadrant worker motivation model for social-purpose crowdsourcing and describes a system based on that model. Then we investigate the outcomes from the system's operations for six months, which involved both young and senior workers, seeking better ways to build an active community of crowd workers. We analyzed the workers' activities based on the system logs, conducted a survey, assessed the correlations between the subjective values and actual behaviors, and then discuss the implications.

While there are tools that allow distributed teams to collaboratively edit in real time, little work examines this practice among real teams doing real work. Even less is known about how teams from different countries make use of real-time collaborative editing tools. The current work highlights results from a qualitative user study of real-world Japanese and U.S. distributed work teams who used LiveDeck, a real-time slide editing and whiteboarding tool. Through the implementation of various novel features used as probes, differences in behavior and attitudes between team members were uncovered. Differences in the use of slide navigation options, anonymity features, and pop-up 'emotes' representing nonverbal gestures are discussed.

Various accessibility activities are improving blind access to the increasingly indispensable WWW. These approaches use various metrics to measure the Web's accessibility. “Ease of navigation” (navigability) is one of the crucial factors for blind usability, especially for complicated webpages used in portals and online shopping sites. However, it is difficult for automatic checking tools to evaluate the navigation capabilities even for a single webpage. Navigability issues for complete Web applications are still far beyond their capabilities. This study aims at obtaining quantitative results about the current accessibility status of real world Web applications, and analyzes real users' behavior on such websites. In Study 1, an automatic analysis method for webpage navigability is introduced, and then a broad survey using this method for 30 international online shopping sites is described. The next study (Study 2) focuses on a fine-grained analysis of real users' behavior on some of these online shopping sites. We modified a voice browser to record each user's actions and the information presented to that user. We conducted user testing on existing sites with this tool. We also developed an analysis and visualization method for the recorded information. The results showed us that users strongly depend on scanning navigation instead of logical navigation. A landmark-oriented navigation model was proposed based on the results. Finally, we discuss future possibilities for improving navigability, including proposals for voice browsers.

Rich Internet content, such as Flash and DHTML, has been spreading all over the net, since it can provide rich and dynamic Web experiences for the sighted majority. It is obvious that this content is inaccessible for visually impaired people because of its visual richness. For Flash, many efforts have been made to address the issue, such as accessibility guidelines and best practices documents However, the amount of accessible content has not been increasing in spite of these efforts. One of the severe issues is the lack of tools to create accessible content. Current Web accessibility technologies are built on top of XMLbased technology infrastructures. In contrast, there is no foundation for investigating inside of Flash content, since it is distributed in a binary format. This characteristic has prevented vendors from developing Flash accessibility technologies. In order to address this issue, this paper proposes a method to transform existing Flash content into XML structures. It combines two approaches for accessing the internal structures. One approach is to obtain MSAA output through the Flash Player and the other is to acquire information by injecting ActionScript bridge code into the content. In this paper, we will first give an overview of the accessibility framework for Flash content, and then present our XML transformation and checking method. A prototype of the checker has been implemented, and some preliminary results of accessibility evaluations are discussed.

The wireless multi-hop scheme is well-known in wireless R&D (ad-hoc & sensor networking). However there are no realizations in the actual CE- market. In this time, we develop an original chip-set which enables the wireless multi-hop networking. The chipset includes ‘Ultra-Wide-Band’ technology as RF/PHY and novel MAC & Link Layer networking functionality. This chip-set itself realizes the wireless multi-hop networking without any host PC. By using this chip-set module card prototype, we have enabled transmission of HD quality video via wireless multi-hop.

Automated verification for client-side programs of DHTML applications has become necessary. This is because DHTML applications are increasingly complicated in order to enhance the functionality and usability of dynamic Web content. We are therefore motivated to create a tool for automatically verifying a JavaScript program of a DHTML application against a specification describing the page flows. The verification is based on a type inference technique focusing on DOM updates

Current standardization efforts on Web service interoperability provide ways to compose Web services distributed across heterogeneous network environments. Unfortunately, this has been attained at the expense of efficiency, that is, substantial SOAP communication overheads have negative impact on the performance of Web services. To resolve this and improve performance, we have developed a new mechanism for hiding communication latency by means of parallelization of service invocations within a composite Web service. Our mechanism exploits static analysis techniques to keep track of the behavioral states of Web service components through their execution steps and statically detects whether service invocations may have dependencies with each other at certain states. The analysis can thus guarantee the parallelization will not affect the result Of computation. Evaluation shows strong potential of our mechanism: it substantially improves the performance of composite Web services based on a real-world example of Portfolio optimization.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the characteristics of various kinds of VDT operations by using an analysis of eye movements and examining the distribution of gaze fixation points. Eye movements were detected by the “corneal reflection technique” and analyzed in terms of (a) tracing eye movements, (b) forming a matrix of fixation frequency, (c) describing the fixation area, and (d) adjusting the fixation vector. Five VDT operators involved in the development of computer software were selected as the subjects, with an average age of 24.8 years. Eye movements of the subjects were intermittently recorded throughout an 8‐hr working day. It was confirmed that an analysis of eye movements can be a meaningful way to characterize certain ergonomic aspects of VDT operations.