Paolo Bottoni | Università degli Studi "La Sapienza" di Roma (original) (raw)

Papers by Paolo Bottoni

Ai Communications, Jul 1, 1994

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2002

Bull. EATCS, 2018

The First International Workshop on Reaction Systems was held in Milan, within the facilities of ... more The First International Workshop on Reaction Systems was held in Milan, within the facilities of the Bicocca University, from 11 to 15 June. The workshop gathered researchers, mostly European, but also with participants from Japan and USA.

Lecture notes in computer science, 2024

Studies in big data, 2024

Software and systems modeling, May 28, 2024

Modelling languages are intensively used in paradigms like model-driven engineering to automate a... more Modelling languages are intensively used in paradigms like model-driven engineering to automate all tasks of the development process. These languages may have variants, in which case the need arises to deal with language families rather than with individual languages. However, specifying the syntax and semantics of each language variant separately in an enumerative way is costly, hinders reuse across variants, and may yield inconsistent semantics between variants. Hence, we propose a novel, modular and compositional approach to describing product lines of modelling languages. It enables the incremental definition of language families by means of modules comprising meta-model fragments, graph transformation rules, and rule extensions. Language variants are configured by selecting the desired modules, which entails the composition of a language meta-model and a set of rules defining its semantics. This paper describes: a theory for checking well-formedness, instantiability, and consistent semantics of all languages within the family; an implementation as an Eclipse plugin; and an evaluation reporting drastic specification size and analysis time reduction in comparison to an enumerative approach.

With technologies for massively parallel genome sequencing available, bioinformatics has entered ... more With technologies for massively parallel genome sequencing available, bioinformatics has entered the “big data” era. Developing applications in this field involves collaboration of domain experts with IT specialists to specify programs able to query several sources, obtain data in several formats, search them for significant patterns and present the obtained results according to several types of visualisation. Based on the experience gained in developing several Web portals for accessing and querying genomics and proteomics databases, we have derived a meta-model of such portals and implemented BioWebEngine, a generation environment where a user is assisted in specifying and deploying the intended portal according to the meta-model.

A technique for the recognition of structures in an ECG and its application to the case of P and ... more A technique for the recognition of structures in an ECG and its application to the case of P and T wave detection are presented. The technique combines a structural approach to the detection and description of structures, based on their shape properties, with a method based on multiple-valued logic for plausible evaluation of their medical meaning. The possibility of visualizing both the shapes of the structurec and the reasoning process allow a human user to understand and control the recognition process.

Journal of visual languages and sentient systems, 2017

While many Linked Data sources are available, the task of building structured queries on them is ... more While many Linked Data sources are available, the task of building structured queries on them is still a challenging one for users who are not conversant in the specialised query languages required for their effective use. A key hindering factor is the lack of intuitive user interfaces for these languages. The block programming paradigm is becoming popular for the development of visual interfaces that are easy to use and guaranteed to generate syntactically correct programs, promoting a gradual and modular approach to the task of programming. We exploit these features of the block paradigm to develop SparqlBlocks, a visual language and an integrated user interface in which both Linked Data queries and results are represented as blocks, supporting a modular and exploratory approach to query design. By integrating the presentation of queries and results, reuse of results in the refinement of queries is promoted, as well as the exploration of both the data and the structure of Linked Data sources. SparqlBlocks has been evaluated with 11 users literate in computer science but with small to no expertise in querying Linked Data. After a tutorial, all the users were able to build at least a simple query and all but two were able to build nontrivial queries.

We present SWift (SignWriting improved fast transcriber), an advanced editor for computer-aided w... more We present SWift (SignWriting improved fast transcriber), an advanced editor for computer-aided writing and transcribing using SignWriting (SW). SW is devised to allow deaf people and linguists alike to exploit an easy-to-grasp written form of (any) sign language. Similarly, SWift has been developed for everyone who masters SW, and is not exclusively deaf-oriented. Using SWift, it is possible to compose and save any sign, using elementary components called glyphs. A guided procedure facilitates the composition process. SWift is aimed at helping to break down the "electronic" barriers that keep the deaf community away from Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The editor has been developed modularly and can be integrated everywhere the use of SW, as an alternative to written vocal language, may be advisable.

SPARQL is a powerful query language for Semantic Web data sources but it is quite complex to mast... more SPARQL is a powerful query language for Semantic Web data sources but it is quite complex to master. The jigsaw puzzle methaphor has been succesfully used in Blockly to teach programming to kids. We discuss its applicability to the problem of building SPARQL queries, through the presentation of a dedicated Blockly-based visual user interface.

Springer eBooks, 2016

Current solutions for establishing federations of clouds require applications to be installed on ... more Current solutions for establishing federations of clouds require applications to be installed on the individual members of the federation, which have to devote a certain amount of resources to services for federation managing. Moreover, additional interoperability requirements may need to be satisfied by individual clouds in order to join a federation. This situation may negatively affect the decision whether to join a federation. In this paper we propose an alternative approach by viewing creation and management of a cloud federation as cloud services themselves, thus allowing a drastic simplification in the federation setup process and the decoupling of the federation management services from the technologies adopted by the individual clouds, minimising technological complexity and intrusiveness in the individual cloud infrastructures, while increasing the flexibility and scalability of resources. We also point out that existing technologies, in particular containers, microservices, configurators, clusters and orchestrators, can be the basis for implementing a platform for generation and management of federations of individual clouds, in a way which facilitates optimisation of workload and scaling of applications via resource aggregation, and makes deploying and joining federations fast, easy, and transparent.

The increased dependence on ICT services makes home users more vulnerable to online attacks, secu... more The increased dependence on ICT services makes home users more vulnerable to online attacks, security breaches, identity thefts, and unauthorized access to valuable information if specific measures and precautions are not properly instated. Nowadays, wired communications are giving way to wireless, and most of the computing devices and appliances that we use are always online, hence potentially vulnerable to attacks and unauthorized access. We address such security issues by an embedded solution targeting home users and small home networks that could be employed on a wide range of communication hardware (e.g. home routers) as a replacement of the standard manufactures firmware. The design, development and all practical aspects of the integration of such embedded system solutions into existing communication appliances are considered as essential components of the Embedded Systems academic course with hands-on experience and practice on networking that we build.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2015

The pipeline concept is widely used in computer science to represent non-sequential computations,... more The pipeline concept is widely used in computer science to represent non-sequential computations, from scientific workflows to streaming transformation languages. While pipelines stand out as a highly visual representation of computation, several pipeline languages lack visual editors of production quality. We propose a method by which a generic pipeline editor can be built, centralizing the features needed to maintain and edit different pipeline languages. To foster adoption, especially in less programming-savvy communities, the proposed visual editor will be web-based. An ontology-based approach is adopted for the description of both the general features of the pipelines and the specific languages to be supported. Concepts, properties and constraints are defined using the Web Ontology Language (OWL), providing grounding in existing standards and extensibility. The work also leverages existing ontologies defined for scientific worlkflows.

APL quote quad, Aug 1, 1994

The paper discusses the design and implementation of LiSEB, a class-based language built on top o... more The paper discusses the design and implementation of LiSEB, a class-based language built on top of APL2 to respond to challenges posed by modelling living systems from a medical point of view. LiSEB capitalises on several features of APL and on some lessons learned from its history. Living systems are modelled as open systems: environments in which concurrent mobile autonomous agents interact. Modelling of these properties required extensions of traditional object-oriented paradigms and of their previous translations under APL: a) every c~bject performs a sequence of actions dynamically modified to adapt to circumstances; b) a new policy of message management is introduced uniformly encompassing broadcast and directly addressed communication An example of a simulation using LiSEB illustrates these concepts. introduction This paper discusses the design and implementation of LiSEB (from the Italian equivalent for Language for Simulation of Biological Experiments), a class-based language designed to respond to the challenges posed by the modelling of living systems from a medical point of view, LiSEB is built on top of APL2 and capitalises on several features of APL and on some lessons learned from its history. LiSEB is conceived as a tool of thought aimed at helping physicians to focus on the solution of their medical problems and not on programming details while expressing their models as LiSEB programs. Moreover, physicians should be able to a) verify the consistency of LiSEB programs by "in machina" experimentation and b) use the accepted LiSEB programs for their previsional simulations [BBDS78, Ive80, MPB91].

While many Linked Data sources are available, there is a lack of effective non-expert user interf... more While many Linked Data sources are available, there is a lack of effective non-expert user interfaces to build structured queries on them. The block programming paradigm promotes a gradual and modular approach. If - in an integrated user interface - both queries and results are represented as blocks, modularity can be effectively used to support an exploratory way of designing Linked Data queries.

Blockchain: Research and Applications