Category: CALIBRE project

Paper published in International Journal of Information Technology and Web Engineering

We have written last year a paper titled “Integration of Libre Software Applications to Create a Collaborative Work Platform for Researchers at GET“, which has just been published in a special issue of the International Journal of Information Technology and Web Engineering (IJITWE) focused on “Web-based Community Driven Open Source Systems” (Vol. 1, Issue 3, 2006).

Here’s the abstract :

Libre software provides powerful applications ready to be integrated for the build up of platforms for internal use in organisations. We describe the architecture of the collaborative work platform which we have integrated and designed for researchers at GET. We present the elements we have learned during this project in particular, with respect to contribution to external libre projects, in order to better ensure the maintainability of the internal applications, and to phpGroupware as a framework for specific applications development.

You may find more details at : http://www.idea-group.com/articles/details.asp?ID=6313 (and yes, the paper is only accessible for a fee 🙁 ) Meanwhile, you may find a copy of parts of the draft, here.

Dalian’s 2006 Sino-French International Cooperation Forum

During CISIS in Dalian (China), was recently held (June 23), the “2006 Sino-French International Cooperation Forum” subtitled : “Perspectives of international cooperation on open source software”. This forum was organized by the ObjectWeb and Orientware consortia, both devoted to developping middleware.
The forum was made possible by the Dalian IT industry international exchange association, the French Ministry of Industry, and MOST (Ministry of Science and Technology of China).

The fact that such a forum received some endorsement by both Chinese and French officials is a very positive sign. I hope that such cooperation will continue in years to come, maybe in other areas than middleware technology.

Anyway, for now, one perspective for such cooperation is through collaboration of OrientWare and ObjectWeb. Whereas ObjectWeb components are fully open source, it is not the case of most of OrientWare’s elements, as far as I can understand. But the Chinese seem to be interested in gaining worldwide audiance for their software, through publication as OpenSource. Also some components seem pretty complementary. Most of ObjectWeb technology is compliant to the JCP standards, whereas OrientWare seems to be much more of the OMG side, so adding all this in a cooperative space seems to provide a great coverage of middleware technologies. Please correct me if I’m wrong 😉

The presentations made at the forum are now online on ObjectWeb’s website (including my presentation of the Calibre project’s results, also available here).

Presentation of CALIBRE project at objectweb+orientware worlshop at CISIS in Dalian (China)

I’m back from Dalian (China), where I’ve presented the Calibre project during a joint one day workshop organised by collegues in France and China, namely mainly by people from ObjectWeb and OrientWare (two consortium developping middleware), during the CISIS IT fair. Here’s a link to the program.

Here is a link to my slides : “Some results on the Calibre project”

Back from Madrid’s Calibre workshop

I’m back from the (last) meeting and workshop of the Calibre project which was just held in Madrid (Spain).

Once again, some very interesting talks and speeches by Calibre participants and other spanish guests. You will find the slides of the various presentations on Calibre’s website.

One very good piece of news : the Calibration forum which is the place for big European industrials to talk about libre software is going to survive after Calibre’s termination, since it will be hosted by the ITEA COSI project. For more details on Calibration, see the presentation made by its chairman.

It was also nice to have discovered Madrid although the weather was not so good… anyway, we got some happy time in the tapas cafs and in a Museo del Jamon 😉

Proceedings from International track of WFS 2006 Porto Alegre

Here are elements of proceedings of the papers presented in the International track of the 7th Workshop on Free Software held during the FISL 7 in Porto Alegre (Brazil) on 21st of April 2006.

I will try and add pointers to the papers and slides as soon as the authors have made it available.

News from the EDOS Project: Improving the Maintenance of Free Software Distributions
Roberto Di Cosmo (Universite Paris 7),
Paulo Trezentos (Caixa Magica),
Berke Durak (INRIA) et al.
The EDOS project is a research effort whose goeal is to contribute to ensure the quality of a free software distribution. This is a major technical and engineering challenge, owing to the size and complexity of these distributions (tens of thousands of software packages). We present here some of the challenges that we have already tackled, and some of the advanced tools that are already available to the community as an outcome of the first year of work.

Paper : PDF – Slides : PDF – Note : see also the following post I’ve made concerning EDOS (links to the video).

Case Studies in Linux Ports to Embedded Platforms
Claudio Matsuoka (Mandriva),
Gustavo Boiko (Mandriva),
Thiago Galesi (Mandriva).

This paper details the technical issues found in late 2005 when porting Linux to two different embedded platforms, namely an XScale-based rugged handheld device for industrial and military applications (previously running Windows CE) and a PowerQUICC-based board used in a private branch exchange (PBX) system. Both ports are based on kernel 2.6, and the latter makes use of real-time capabilities provided by RTAI.

Paper : PDF – Slides : PDF

Evaluation of Data Conversion of Vectorial Geographic Features in Topographic Maps using Free Software Tools
Helton Uchoa (OpenGEO Consultoria),
Maurcio de Paulo (IME),
Luiz Coelho (UERJ),
Paulo Roberto Ferreira (UFRJ).
This paper is related to a common problem found when trying to convert huge geodatabases that were extracted according to old or proprietary techniques still employed in Geographic Institutes and Services around the World. The libraries used for this task pertain to the Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL), a free library kit for performing geographic operations. An application was developed in order to import traditional maps delivered in a proprietary vectorial format, and convert them trying to preserve their original features. The results of this approach are commented throughout the text.

Paper : PDF – Slides : PDF
The Open 3D GIS Project A Free Tool to Enable 3D Geographic Systems on the Web
Helton Uchoa (OpenGEO Consultoria),
Maurcio de Paulo (IME),
Luiz Coelho (UERJ),
Paulo Roberto Ferreira (UFRJ).
This paper describes the first steps taken in order to create an Open Source project that enables MapServer to display 3D objects (and in the near future, perform analysis on them) on the web. 3D objects are exported to a viewer (integrated to the browser) in the X3D format, which is the preferred format for displaying 3D objects, according to the World Wide Web Consortium. In this paper, the first results related to the development of this solution are shown, as well as the basic procedures in order to prepare a 3D database to be fit within Open3DGIS’ specifications.

Paper : PDF – Slides : PDF

Integrating Open Source Tools for Developing Embedded Linux Applications
Raul Fernandes Herbster (UFCG),
Hyggo Oliveira de Almeida (UFCG),
Angelo Perkusich (UFCG),
Dalton Serey Guerrero (UFCG).
The development of embedded Linux applications have been supported by several open source tools. In order to make the programming activity less complex and more productive, such tools should be easy to install, configure and use. However, using the available open source tools, developers still have to understand and use different kinds of user interfaces and environments. Time and effort are spent on configuration issues rather than on programming. In this paper we present how to integrate open source development tools for programming embedded Linux applications. We introduce an Eclipse plug-in to support the development of embedded Linux applications using a single and integrated environment.
Deployment of a Wireless Hybrid and Mobile Network for VoIP Services Based on Open Source Software
Olympio Silva Filho (UFCG),
Danilo Santos (UFCG),
Jos Lus Nascimento (UFCG),
Angelo Perkusich (UFCG).
This article describes the M-VoIP (Mobile Voice over the Internet Protocol) project, which provides a hybrid wireless and mobile network infrastructure for the deploy a VoIP solution. The solution is entirely based on open source software and the Linux operating system. The characteristics of the architecture of the system, its main components, as well as the development process used is presented.

Paper : PDF – Slides : PDF

An Embedded Communication Platform Based on Linux for Automotive Systems
Fernando Ataide (UFRGS),
Alan Carvalho (UFRGS),
Carlos Eduardo (UFRGS),
Fabiano Carvalho (UFRGS).
In the last years, important research has presented different approaches in the real-time embedded communication domain aiming to cover the growing demands of performance, predictability and reliability of emerging applications. Such requirements involve low latency, reduced jitter, time composability, fault-tolerance and finally, support for future modifications. Mainly in the automotive domain which is considering the possibility of replacing the major part of mechanical and/or hydraulic systems for electronic systems, the importance of predictable behavior with some degree of flexibility plays a key role. This paper presents a prototype implementation of the FTT-CAN protocol over Freescale ColdFire platforms running RTAI as an embedded Linux a work in the scope of the Baja-by-Wire1 project which is being developed at Electrical Engineering Department of UFRGS. Some design issues together with latency and jitter results are provided and discussed. The project was developed entirely with open source tools.

In addition to these papers, and to conclude the session, I made a presentation of some findings of Software Engineering research in Libre Software, to give an overview of some findings of research projects like CALIBRE.