CSC7112: Topics in Software Systems
Spring 2009 (Last update: Mar 25, 2009.)

Announcements

• Confirmed Final Assessment Schedule:
  • April 17 - Paper Presentation
    • Each student 15 minutes
    • I will provide immediate feedback
    • Best if you send me your draft paper (and / or bring a printout)
  • May 2, 24:00 - Paper due
  • May 8, 7-10pm - Final Exam (Location: Esther Lee Building, Rm 205)
• Last lecture and course evaluation: March 25
  • Summary and Outlook (.ppt)
• Marks and comments for survey paper (htm)
• Blog for this course has been set up: http://csc7112.blogspot.com/
  Welcome to post your comments and follow up questions.
• Notes and comments for each lecture has been and will be posted on the blog.
• Paper guidelines are available (htm).
• *** Assignment - draft survey paper due Feb 15, survey paper submission due March 1, 24:00 (further extended)
  • More reference and citations are expected in your survey.
• Please discuss your topic and have my approval. If you have no idea on your topic yet. Please consider:
  • agent based workforce allocation
  • agent based urgency management
  • agent based supply chain management / logistics management / service composition
  • agent based security management
  • RFID, smart objects, and agents
• Tutorials for writing survey papers:
  • http://iaser.tek.bth.se/feldt/courses/pa2403/pa2403_lecture2_070906.pdf
  • http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~bli/grad/lectures/Episode%202.pdf
     

Course Topic -  Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems

This course covers the theory and practice of agent technologies in various aspects of business applications through practical case studies, with particular emphasis on the modeling, specifying, designing, and integrating of intelligent agents for intra-enterprise and business-to-business (B2B) processes. Novel agent information system architectures and design methodologies will also be highlighted. Different from traditional approaches, we approach multi-agent systems from a top-down, practical, and system-oriented engineering approach.

As the gap between research and practice is small in these areas, I shall select papers mainly from my recent publications for the case studies. In this way, students can obtain first-hand knowledge through in-depth discussions of the cases, and then develop their own novel practical ideas in their course paper.

Course Information

• Lecture Venue: Fridays, 7-10pm, LT3, Esther Lee Building, Chung Chi Campus (Label C1 in the map)
• Tentative Meeting Dates:
  • Jan 9, 16, 23
  • Feb 6, 13, 20, 27
  • Mar 6, 13, 20, 27
  • Apr 17 (Paper Presentation)
• Course Webpage: http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~kwchiu/csc7112/

University policy and regulations on honesty in academic work

Attention is drawn to University policy and regulations on honesty in academic work, and to the disciplinary guidelines and procedures applicable to breaches of such policy and regulations. Details may be found at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/.

With each assignment, students will be required to submit a signed declaration that they are aware of these policies, regulations, guidelines and procedures.

For assignments in the form of a computer-generated document that is principally text-based and submitted via the plagiarism detection engine CUPIDE, the statement, in the form of a receipt, will be issued by the system upon students’ uploading of the soft copy of the assignment. Assignments without the receipt will not be graded by teachers.

Lecturer

• Dr. Dickson K.W. CHIU (Ph.D., HKUST; SMIEEE; SMACM; Life MHKCS)
• Email: dicksonchiu@ieee.org Include "[CSC7112]" in the subject for easy indexing and prompt actions. In case you cannot get a reply within 48 hours, please resend as I might have missed that.
• Phone consultation: Leave your phone number and question by email, and I'll call back.

• Dr. Dickson K.W. Chiu received the B.Sc. (Hons.) degree in Computer Studies from the University of Hong Kong in 1987. He received the M.Sc. (1994) and the Ph.D. (2000) degrees in Computer Science from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where he worked as a Visiting Assistant Lecturer after graduation. He also started his own computer company while studying part-time. From 2001 to 2003, he was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor in 2006 at the Computing Department, Hong Kong Polytechnic University for teaching M.Sc. courses. With his solid industrial experience and cross-disciplinary research, he has taught a wide range of subjects at various levels. His research interests are in information systems, information technologies, service computing, and e-/m-business with a cross-disciplinary approach, involving Internet technologies, agents, workflows, software engineering, information system management, security, and databases. His research results have been published in over 100 papers in international journals and conference proceedings, including practical results of many master and undergraduate projects. He received a best paper award in the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) in 2004. He is the founding Editor-in-chief of the International Journal on Systems and Service-Oriented Engineering, and Associate Editor of the International Journal of Organizational and Collective Intelligence, Knowledge Management & E-Learning: An International Journal (KM&EL), and Engineering Letters. He participates in the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Web Service Research (SCI-E),  International Journal of Information Systems and Social Change (IJISSC), and International Journal of Software Architecture. He co-founded several international workshops and co-edited several special issues in journals. He also served as a mini-track co-chair in the Decision Technologies track of HICSS, a theme (Service Intelligence and Service Science) co-chair in the International Conference of Machine Learning and Cybernetics, and program committee member in many international conferences. Dr. Chiu is a Senior Member of the ACM, a Senior Member of the IEEE, and a life member of the Hong Kong Computer Society. 

Teaching Assistant

• TBA

Assessment

• Continuous Assessment (50%) - (guidelines)
  • Topic Discussion (Title and abstract): ASAP
  • Assignment - survey paper on autonomous agent / multi-agents systems (mid-Feb) (15%)
  • Mid-term Draft Submission - mid-March (for milestone and feedback purpose, not graded)
  • Final paper submission (individual paper and .ppt) - 1 week after the last presentation (April) (35%)
• Final Exam (50%) - Open book.

University Statement

Attention is drawn to University policy and regulations on honesty in academic work, and to the disciplinary guidelines and procedures applicable to breaches of such policy and regulations. Details may be found at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/. With each assignment, students will be required to submit a statement that they are aware of these policies, regulations, guidelines and procedures.

 References

• Michael Wooldridge. An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 2002.
  • Companion Site
• Gerhard Weiss (Editor). Multiagent Systems: A Modern Approach to Distributed Artificial Intelligence, The MIT Press. 1999.
  • [Online access from NetLibrary] through CUHK eContent Collection
• Grigoris Antoniou and Frank van Harmelen. A Semantic Web Primer, MIT Press. 2004.
  • Companion Site
  • [Online access from NetLibrary] through CUHK eContent Collection
• Writing IT Papers - my summary (.ppt)
• Tool for ontology: Protege - http://protege.stanford.edu/

Main Concepts and Cases (Advanced materials to be added / updated)

• Introduction - What are Agents and Multi-agent Systems? (.ppt)

• Agent Architectures and BDI Agents (.ppt)

• Main motivating case of Multi-Agent Systems
  • D.K.W. Chiu, S.C. Cheung, H.F. Leung, Jan 2006. Mobile Workforce Management in a Service-Oriented Enterprise: Capturing Concepts and Requirements in a Multi-Agent Infrastructure, In: Enterprise Service Computing: From Concept to Deployment. Enterprise Service Computing: From Concept to Deployment, edited by Robin Qiu, Idea Group Publishing, 2006. (paper)(ppt)
• Ontology and Semantic Web (.ppt)
  • D.K.W. Chiu, J.K.M. Poon, W.C. Lam, C.Y. Tse, W.H.T. Siu, W.S. Poon. How Ontologies Can Help in an E-marketplace, European Conference on Information Systems 2005 (ECIS 2005), May 2005 (paper)(ppt)
  • RDF (.ppt)
  • OWL (.ppt)
  • D.K.W. Chiu, Yves T.F. Yueh, Ho-fung Leung, Patrick C.K. Hung. Towards Ubiquitous Tourist Service Coordination and Process Integration: a Collaborative Travel Agent System with Semantic Web Services Information Systems Frontier, 2008. DOI:10.1007/s10796-008-9087-2 (paper)(ppt)
  • C.K. Lee and D.K.W. Chiu. Ontology Based Personalized Service in E-marketplaces: A Case Study in a Used Car Matching System. 4th International Conference on Innovations in Information Technology, Dubai, IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 631-635, Nov. 2007. (paper) [doi: 10.1109/IIT.2007.4430420]
• Agents and alert management (ppt)
  • Reference paper 1: E. Kafeza, D.K.W. Chiu, S.C. Cheung, and M. Kafeza. Alerts in Mobile Healthcare Applications: Requirements and Pilot Study, IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, 8(2):173-181, June 2004. (paper)
  • Reference paper 2: D.K.W. Chiu, Benny Kwok, Ray Wong, M. Kafeza, S.C. Cheung, E. Kafeza, P.C.K. Hung. Alerts in Healthcare Applications: Process and Data Integration. International Journal of Healthcare Information Systems and Informatics (IJHISI), 4(2):36-56, 2009. (paper)
• Trust and Security Issues
  • D.K.W. Chiu, C.J. Wang, I. Kafeza, H.F. Leung and E. Kafeza.  Supporting Agents' Legal Identity with a Secured Agent Platform, International Conference on E-Commerce 2005 (ICEC 2005), August 2005. (paper)(ppt) [doi: 1089551.1089681]
  • D.K.W. Chiu, H.F. Leung, and K.M. Lam. On the Making of Service Recommendations: an Action Theory based on Utility, Reputation, and Risk Attitude. Expert Systems with Applications, 36(2):3293-3301, 2009. (paper)(ppt)  [doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2008.01.055]
  • Hing-Sum Chan, D.K.W. Chiu, P.C.K. Hung and H.F. Leung. Credibility Relationship Management in a Web Service Integration Environment, 4th ICIS Workshop on e-Business, Las Vegas, Dec 10, 2005. (paper)(ppt)
• Recommendations and Decisions
  • Minhong Wang, Huaiqing Wang, Doug Vogel, Kuldeep Kumar, Dickson K.W. Chiu. Agent-Based Negotiation and Decision Making for Dynamic Supply Chain Formation, Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 4(2):36-56, 2009. (.doc)(.ppt) [doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2003.10.071]
  • Gilbert H. L. Luk, Dickson K.W. Chiu, and Ho-fung Leung. Web-service Based Human Resource Recruitment by Using Matchmaking Decision Support, 1st International Workshop on Service Intelligence and Service Science (SISS 2006), Hong Kong, Oct 2006. (paper)(ppt)[doi: 10.1109/EDOCW.2006.77]
  • Gordon K.T. Lau, D.K.W. Chiu and P.C.K. Hung. Web-service Based Information Integration for Decision Support: A Case Study on e-Mortgage Contract Matchmaking Service, HICSS39, Jan 2006. (paper)(ppt)
  • D.K.W. Chiu, Oliver Lee, and H.F. Leung. A Multi-Modal Agent Based Mobile Route Advisory System for Public Transport Network, HICSS38, Jan 2005. (+PTMSc student) (ppt)(doc) [doi: 10.1109/HICSS.2005.30]
  • Cherrie W.W. Ng and D.K.W. Chiu. e-Government Integration with Web Services and Alerts: A Case Study on an Emergency Route Advisory System in Hong Kong, 39th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS39), Jan 2006. (paper)(ppt)
• Auctions and Negotiation
  • D.K.W. Chiu, S.C. Cheung, P.C.K. Hung, and H.F. Leung. Constraint-based Negotiation in a Multi-Agent Information System with Multiple Platform Support, 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS37), Jan 2004. (ppt)(doc)
  • C.J. Wang, D.K.W. Chiu and H.F. Leung.  Anonymity and Security in Public Internet Forums, IEEE International Conference on E-commerce Technology (CEC 2005), pp. 448-451, Munich, Germany, 2005. (ppt)(doc)
  • S.C. Cheung, P.C.K. Hung and D.K.W. Chiu. A Meta-model for e-Contract Template Variable Dependencies Facilitating e-Negotiation. 21st International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER2002), Springer LNCS 2503:55-64, Tampere, Finland, Oct 2002. (ppt)(doc)
• Implementation Aspects
  • Agent Communications in MAS: speech-act theory, cooperation protocols (.ppt)
  • Agent-oriented Programming
    • See Shoham's notes (pdf)
  • Reasoning and planning (see other text in AI)
• Advanced Topics (skipped)
  • Distributed rational decision making (see other text in Game Theory)
  • Argumentation
• Summary and Outlook (.ppt)
• Student Paper Presentation

Previous Best Student Course Papers from other related IT course accepted for publication:
(You may consider to adapt and extend these papers into MAIS applications.)

1. Cherrie W.W. Ng and D.K.W. Chiu. e-Government Integration with Web Services and Alerts: A Case Study on an Emergency Route Advisory System in Hong Kong, 39th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS39), Jan 2006. (paper)(ppt)
2. Anthony C.Y. Lam and D.K.W. Chiu. Cooperative Brokerage Integration for Transaction Capacity Sharing: A Case Study in Hong Kong, HICSS39, Jan 2006. (paper)(ppt)
3. Gordon K.T. Lau, D.K.W. Chiu and P.C.K. Hung. Web-service Based Information Integration for Decision Support: A Case Study on e-Mortgage Contract Matchmaking Service, HICSS39, Jan 2006. (paper)(ppt)
4. Hing-Sum Chan, D.K.W. Chiu, P.C.K. Hung and H.F. Leung. Credibility Relationship Management in a Web Service Integration Environment, 4th ICIS Workshop on e-Business, Las Vegas, Dec 10, 2005. (paper)(ppt)
5. Allen K.L. Lam, D.K.W. Chiu, and P.C.K. Hung. Enhancing Availability of Information and Towards Freedom of News Distribution: Supporting Small-scale News Agencies with a Web-Service Infrastructure. (paper)
6. Edward W.Y. Ho, D.K.W. Chiu and P.C.K. Hung. Alert Based Monitoring of Stock Trading Systems, 30th IEEE Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC), Chicago, Sept 2006. (paper)
7. Gilbert H. L. Luk, Dickson K.W. Chiu, and Ho-fung Leung. Web-service Based Human Resource Recruitment by Using Matchmaking Decision Support, 1st International Workshop on Service Intelligence and Service Science (SISS 2006), Hong Kong, Oct 2006. (paper)(ppt)
8. Trewina P. Y. Leung and Dickson K.W. Chiu. Alert-driven E-Government Service Management: A Case Study on Road Maintenance Management System, 2006 IEEE Asia-Pacific Services Computing Conference (APSCC 2006), Guangzhou, China, Dec 2006. (paper)(ppt)
9. Brenda Y. Hon and Dickson K.W. Chiu. An Integration of Web Service and Workflow to a Wealth Management Order Placement System: A Case Study of International Brokerages, 2006 IEEE Asia-Pacific Services Computing Conference (APSCC 2006), Guangzhou, China, Dec 2006. (paper)(ppt)
10. Nick L.L. Ng, D.K.W. Chiu, and P.C.K. Hung. Tendering Process Model (TPM) Implementation for B2B Integration in a Web Services Environment, 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS40), Jan 2007. (paper)
11. Raymond C.M. Lee, K.P. Mak, and D.K.W. Chiu. Enhancing Workflow Automation in Insurance Underwriting Processes with Web Services and Alerts, HICSS40, Jan 2007. (paper)(ppt)
12. Jenny Y.Y. Wong, K.P. Mak, and D.K.W. Chiu. Effective e-Government Process Monitoring and Interoperation: A Case Study on the Removal of Unauthorized Building Works in Hong Kong, HICSS40, Jan 2007. (paper)(ppt)
13. Yves T.F. Yueh, D.K.W. Chiu, Ho-fung Leung, Patrick C.K. Hung. Towards Ubiquitous Tourist Service Coordination and Process Integration: a Collaborative Travel Agent System with Semantic Web Services Information Systems Frontier, 2008. DOI:10.1007/s10796-008-9087-2
14. D.K.W. Chiu, Yves T.F. Yueh, Ho-fung Leung, Patrick C.K. Hung. A Virtual Travel Agent System for M-Tourism with a Web Service Based Design and Implementation. IEEE 21st International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA-07), Niagara Falls, Canada, pp. 142-149, May 2007.
15. Alan Y. S. Chiangg, D.K.W. Chiu, and Patrick C. K. Hung. Providing More Customized Services for Online Games Using Service Oriented Architecture: A Case Study “Mankind,” Workshop on Network-based Virtual Reality and Tele-existence, with AINA 2007, pp 1007-1012, IEEE Press.
16. Mandy Y.S. Tong and D.K.W. Chiu. Alert Driven Process Integration and Exception Handing: A Case Study on Audit Confirmation with Web Services, IEEE Joint Conference on E-Commerce Technology (CEC'07) and Enterprise Computing, E-Commerce and E-Services (EEE '07), Tokyo, pp. 469-476, July 2007. (paper)(ppt)
17. LAI Sau Chan, D.K.W. Chiu, and Patrick C. K. Hung. e-Tendering with Web Services: A Case Study on the Tendering Process of Building Construction, 2007 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC 2007), Salt Lake City, Utah, pp. 582-588, July 2007.
18. Dickson K.W. Chiu, Nick L. L. Ng, LAI Sau Chan, and Patrick C. K. Hung. Automating Tendering Processes with Web Services: A Case Study on Building Construction Tendering in Hong Kong, Group Decision and Negotiation Meeting (GDN 2007), Mt. Tremblant (Montreal), May 14-17, 2007.
19. Frank K.W. Cheong, D.K.W. Chiu, S.C. Cheung, and Patrick C. K. Hung. Developing a Distributed e-Monitoring System for Enterprise Website and Web Services: An Experience Report with Free Libraries and Tools, IEEE 2007 International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2007), Salt Lake City, Utah, pp. 1008-1015, July 2007. (paper)(ppt) 
20. Winnie N.Y. Yan, and D.K.W. Chiu. Enhancing E-Commerce Processes with Alerts and Web Services: A case study on Online Credit Card Payment Notification. International Conference of Machine Learning and Cybernetics (ICMLC 2007), IEEE Press, Hong Kong, pp. 3831-3837, August 2007. (book chapter)(ppt)
21. Jason C.S. Chung, Dickson K.W. Chiu, and E. Kafeza. An Alert Management System for Concrete Batching Plant. 12th International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation, Patras, Greece, pp. 591-598, Sept. 2007. (paper)
22. Donald S.F. Wong and D.K.W. Chiu. Collaborative Workflow Management with Alerts: An Integrated Retailing System for Garments Brands, 2007 IEEE International Conference on e-Business Engineering (ICEBE), pp. 433-438, Hong Kong IEEE Press, Oct. 2007. (paper)(ppt)
23. Vincent C.T. Chan, D.K.W. Chiu, Stephanie Chow, and Patrick C. K. Hung. e-Monitoring of Outsourcing IS Project in Financial Institutions: A Case Study on Mandatory Provident Fund Projects in Hong Kong. 2007 IEEE International Conference on e-Business Engineering (ICEBE), Hong Kong, IEEE Press, pp. 460-465, Oct. 2007. (paper)(ppt)
24. C.K. Lee and D.K.W. Chiu. Ontology Based Personalized Service in E-marketplaces: A Case Study in a Used Car Matching System. 4th International Conference on Innovations in Information Technology, Dubai, pp. 631-635, Nov. 2007.
25. Drake T. T. Lin and D.K.W. Chiu. Alert Notification and Resource Allocation for Disease Outbreak using Web services. 4th International Conference on Innovations in Information Technology, Dubai, pp. 551-555, Nov. 2007.
     

*** Useful links ***

Java Web Services Programming Notes (for your reference) (.ppt)

Digital Libraries / Indices

• Google Scholars
• IEEExplore (full article accessible only in campus / VPN)
• ACM Digital Library (full article accessible only in campus / VPN)
• Lecture notes in Computer Science (LNCS) (full article accessible only in campus / VPN)
• Science Direct (only those subscribed by the Univeristy is fully accessible in campus / VPN)
• HICSS Conference Proceeding

HTML tutorials: (do a web search for "HTML tutorial" for more stuff...):

• http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/ (basic tutorial) 
• http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/   (with some advanced stuffs) 
• http://htmlprimer.com/ (with some advanced stuffs) 
• http://www.webspawner.com/cc/html/alpha.htm (HTML Cross Reference) 

SOAP and Web services:

• http://www.xmethods.net/
• http://www.soapclient.com/

Paper Writing

• A Plus Research and Writing 
• The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing
• The Elements of Writing Style (by William Strunk Jr.)
• How (and How Not) to Write a Good Systems Paper (by Roy Levin and David D. Redell)
• Writing Good Software Engineering Research Papers, by Mary Shaw 
• Prof S.C. Cheung's Collection

XML tutorials:

• http://www.zvon.org
• http://www.w3schools.com/

Many tutorials:

• http://webdevelopment.developersnetwork.com/
• http://www.wdvl.com/
• http://www.eborcom.com/webmaker/
• http://www.w3schools.com/
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/

Online Dictionary: www.webster.com, www.dictionary.com

UML fun: pdf

Distributed OO Programming: ppt

Technology Reference Slides

• BPEL (.ppt)
• eXtended Markup Language (XML) and enterprise data exchange (.ppt)
• Recommended Reading: "The XML Shockwave" (pdf)
• Web Services and Service-oriented architecture (.ppt)
  • Web Wrapper - WebXcript: D.K.W. Chiu, Danny Kok, Alex Lee, and S.C. Cheung. Modeling and Integrating Legacy Sites into Web Services with WebXcript, International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems (IJCIS),  (paper)(ppt)

Basic Internet Security: ppt