INTEROPERABILITY IN PERVASIVE ENTERPRISE

INFORMATION SYSTEMS

A Double-Faced Coin between Security and Accessability

Dana Al Kukhun and Florence Sèdes

IRIT, Paul Sabatier University

Keywords: Pervasive Information Systems, Enterprise Information Systems, interoperability, accessibility, security.

Abstract: As transparency becomes a key requirement for assuring service quality and user satisfaction, Enterprise

Information Systems are seeking to become pervasive in order to deal with the heterogeneity problem of

their sub components. In this position paper, we expose the challenges that face Enterprise Information

Systems in achieving better data integration, representation and management, while ensuring homogeneous

interaction between different software sub components, improving the interaction between different

customers and business partners and providing services on different terminals with dynamic connectivity

constraints. Finally, we highlight the importance of applying adaptive, proactive and interoperable access

control policies that would differentiate between providing local system users with full data accessibility

and providing external users with multi-levelled security controls.

1 INTRODUCTION

The growing need of transparency in digital services

has promoted the notion of Pervasive Computing.

Pervasive or Ubiquitous Computing was first

introduced by Weiser as his vision for the computing

future in the 21st century, where computing

elements will disappear from user’s consciousness

while functioning homogeneously with his

environment (Weiser, 1999). In pervasive

computing, users can communicate and compute

with each others whenever, wherever and however

(Park et al., 2004).

Pervasive computing allows the coupling of the

physical world to the information world, and

provides a wealth of ubiquitous services and

applications that allow users, machines, data,

applications and physical spaces to interact

seamlessly with one another (Ranganathan et al.,

2005).

While analyzing pervasive computing and

studying it’s progression, it was found that for

hardware and computing elements to disappear,

software needs to disappear and the spatial temporal

relationships between people and objects has to be

well defined in the early design phase within

dynamic ubiquitous computing environments (Want,

2002).

In this section, we have presented a brief

introduction about pervasive computing. In the next

section, we’ll introduce our vision for Enterprise

Information Systems EIS as Pervasive Enterprise

Information Systems PEIS. In section 3, we present

the sub components of the proposed systems. Then,

in section 4, we will explore some important

requirements for PEISs. Finally, we present some

software technologies that help in implementing

interoperable PEISs and that would balance between

accessibility and security.

2 PERVASIVE ENTERPRISE

INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Due to the revolution of Information Technology, a

new computing era is taking place. Many challenges

need to be met, especially in a mobile and dynamic

environment where users are interacting with

different devices and constructing ad hoc networks,

while systems are supposed to provide them with

proactive and value-added services.

As new technologies prove to be more

productive and efficient, public and private sectors

tend to employ online services in order to

accomplish different missions.

237

Al Kukhun D. and Sèdes F. (2007).

INTEROPERABILITY IN PERVASIVE ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS - A Double-Faced Coin between Security and Accessability.

In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - ISAS, pages 237-242

DOI: 10.5220/0002396502370242

 SciTePress

Technological progression is following an

exponential curve and is including different axes

such as: data, software, hardware and connectivity

(Al Kukhun et al., 2006). In current EISs, data

content and structure are highly dynamic and

heterogeneous. Thus, data integration is becoming a

challenging mission.

Hardware is advancing exponentially in storage

capacities, shrinking size and weight but these

advancements are affecting negatively the usability

and the Human Computer Interaction.

With ad hoc networking, connectivity has

become an easy mission but at the other side, it has

become a risky, dangerous and unreliable channel.

Finally, software has evolved and will always

continue to evolve in order to improve the

adaptability and proactivity of system functionalities

and thus ensure user satisfaction.

While studying pervasive systems, we found that

these systems are interactive systems that facilitate

the interaction of users with unfamiliar systems so

facilitating this interaction is highly recommended.

Pervasive environments should adapt with the

dynamic, changing and distributed computing

systems that extend the boundaries of physical

spaces, the building infrastructures and even the

devices contained within these environments.

Pervasive environments should be aware of the

context (Zimmermann et al., 2005) and should be

able to capture situational information in order to

integrate them with users and devices. The

interaction between these components should be as

transparent as possible and this transparency can be

applied using quality metrics along with run-time,

automatic adaptation for both content and context

starting from the early stage of design till late testing

and execution of the system.

3 THE COMPONENTS OF

PERVASIVE ENTERPRISE

INFORMATION SYSTEMS

In this section, we’ll analyse the different actors of

an EISs and expose the challenges that stand in the

face of a homogeneous interaction between the

different components and the user especially in a

real time processing environment.

3.1 Users

Users of an EIS might have different levels of

familiarity with the system (novice or professional

clients, novice professional users). In a pervasive

environment, users are not interacting to one

machine anymore; they are interacting with multiple

technologies, moving around non familiar,

untrustworthy environments. Users try to stay

focused while manipulating and relocating data

across devices while their access rights might be

changing over time (Duan et al., 2004).

A pervasive computing environment should be as

mobile as its users and should be able to adapt

according to the availability of its resources.

With the growing complication of technology

and multimodality, novice experts are facing

difficulties in using systems. Mean while, even

professionals are facing problems in their interaction

with pervasive systems and are demanding for more

adaptive and powerful interaction that would

increase the reliability of the system and would

enable them to work efficiently.

Multimodal interaction aims to break the barriers

between users and technology and to enable smooth,

spontaneous adaptive interaction so that users would

forget the fact that they are using computers.

We find that users are a changing and dynamic

element that has multidimensional evolutionary

needs but still limited capabilities, so our mission is

to gain user satisfaction that is highly demanded in

pervasive applications by taking in mind some

quality metrics such as usability, security and

adaptability in order to optimize user interaction in

pervasive environments.

3.2 Data

Data in pervasive environments come in different

forms and formats. In the age of multimedia it can

be a text, an image, a video stream, etc. So data is

heterogeneous in kind and also in source where it

could be located in different locations within

decentralized systems or coming from different

sources. That’s why we think that the most

important aspect in pervasive environments is the

accessibility, integrity and disposal of redundant and

useless data in order to assure the system’s

efficiency and transparency.

Easier access to relevant and valuable data

(information) is the final objective of using these

pervasive computing environments. In pervasive

environments, data is often generated dynamically,

in different formats, is streaming at high rates over

heterogeneous networks or devices and is dealt in

real time. As multimedia and multimodal interaction

is advancing, data is becoming of central

importance.

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Aiming achieve a PEIS, we need to unify,

integrate and structure different sourced data content

that comes from various data formats in order to

handle information in an easier way and to cope with

the heterogeneity.

3.3 Hardware

Hardware devices are the physical components of

pervasive environments and they are often different

COTS “Commercial of The Shelf” products that

have advanced networking capabilities such as

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Invisible embedded devices

and sensors are turning physical spaces into active,

smart surroundings making the space interactive and

adaptable (Munoz et al., 2005), (Campel, 2002).

Nowadays, a huge evolution in the computing

machinery performance has been achieved; this

progression affected positively ubiquitous

computing and has realized successful resource

usage and sharing between multiple users.

Many improvements took place and helped to

adapt with the mobility and dynamicity of pervasive

environments, specially the shrinking size and

weight of hardware devices; where users are moving

freely while handling their small, light devices that

are provided with high connectivity and wireless

networking capabilities (Campel, 2002).

Processing capabilities are increasing over time to

offer higher efficiency levels especially with the

development of storage capacities and the quality of

displays that help the user in forgetting the barriers

and allow him to acquire the underlying information

unconsciously without effort.

Hardware devices have entered a huge development

lifecycle but still have many limiting factors such as

the growing interaction complexity caused by the

machine size shrinkage and the increasing cognitive

overload due to the inadaptable interface design,

especially that a user could be a novice user who

needs a user-friendly environment or a professional

who needs a highly developed environment.

Pervasive EISs require devices that can be used

and integrated easily while balancing between

providing users with high security levels, total

privacy protection and high interoperability.

3.4 Software

Software is the logical component in pervasive

environments and it’s of central importance; it

enables the connection of users with different

heterogeneous devices by performing suitable

mappings between each task and the desired services

that users require (Chen et al., 2004).

To deal with dynamic devices, situations, users

and environments, the software should be highly

adaptable and flexible. The software of a pervasive

system integrates many devices and external

software systems in order to provide services that

meet user needs and assure the homogeneity and

collaboration between its components.

The use of XML was proposed to enhance the

flexibility, interoperability and integrity of systems

PDM

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Internal data

Interoperable

Access to data

Full data accessibility

Secure data access

* Internal Enterprise structure : Homogeneous Components (data, software, hardware)

*** External Resources : Heterogeneous & dynamic components (data, software, hardware)

***

PDM

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Internal data

Interoperable

Access to data

Full data accessibility

Secure data access

* Internal Enterprise structure : Homogeneous Components (data, software, hardware)

*** External Resources : Heterogeneous & dynamic components (data, software, hardware)

***

Figure 1: How to ensure interoperability in Pervasive Enterprise Information Systems.

INTEROPERABILITY IN PERVASIVE ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS - A Double-Faced Coin Between

Security And Accessability

239

by enabling adaptable mappings between a task and

it’s provided services (Chen et al., 2004).

Aiming for better specification and

implementation of productive pervasive systems

with no complexity, a domain specific language

Perv-ML Pervasive Modeling Language was

proposed in (Graham, 1999) along with the

combination of two software engineering trends;

software factories and MDA model-driven

architecture. MDA deals with the low abstraction

level that is caused by the heterogeneity of used

technologies. Software factories were used to

enhance the programmability and reduce the amount

of programming code.

Being in a real time streaming environment, a

system requires multi channel streaming over

heterogeneous networks and devices and must

support multi channel protocols to ensure system

interoperability (Park et al., 2004).

The demanding need for security, privacy,

authentication and access control in order to prevent

unauthorized access attempts within open dynamic

pervasive environments has motivated the

emergence of a new standard XACML eXtensible

Access Control Markup Language that helps to

automate several managerial tasks and ensures

secure and interoperable interactions between

several applications(Almenárez et al., 2004).

XACML standard represents a policy language

and an access control decision request/response

language. Being an XML based standard language

has enabled XACML to interoperate easily with

other applications.

XACML is a generic language that can be

embedded and used in any environment. Its policies

can be distributed in arbitrary locations. It’s

considered as a highly powerful language because of

its ability to support a wide variety of data types,

functions and rules that enables combining the

results of different policies (OASIS, 2003).

In order to increase the productivity, quality and

interoperability, the implementation of a pervasive

computing environment can follow one of two

different programming models as follows:

1) Context Driven Model where several contexts

can be defined in advance using description logic.

On runtime, the system will explicitly know the

behaviour that it should follow according to its

current state; this model assures the interoperability,

extensibility and scalability of the system. It’s ideal

for discovering contradictory system behaviours,

conflicts and adapt with multimodal environments.

2) Service Oriented Model which is considered

as a more expressive, proactive and procedural

model that allows higher programming control

levels and concentrates on the services that should

be provided using several decision making

techniques that memorize past actions along with the

environment’s history during a service lifecycle

(Yang et al., 2006).

For business applications, a Universal Business

Language UBL was introduced by OASIS (OASIS,

2004) as a way to unify the different heterogeneous

formats that aim to accomplish similar business

missions. UBL proposes to solve heterogeneity by

defining a generic XML interchange format for

business documents that can be extended to meet the

requirements of particular industries.

UBL provides a domain specific library of XML

schemas for reusable data components, a set of XML

schemas for common business documents that are

constructed from the UBL library components and

can be used in a generic context. Finally, UBL can

be customized to adapt to trading relationships. UBL

introduces a standard for XML business schemas

which is highly advantageous in assuring lower

integration costs, among and within enterprises,

through the reuse of common data structures. As an

XML based standard, UBL provides easily

programmable with low cost commercial software.

UBL has an easier learning curve, lower cost of

entry and therefore quicker adoption by small and

medium-size enterprises (SMEs). UBL enables

standardized training, easier system integration and

standardized, inexpensive data input and output

tools. Finally, the use of UBL would enhance the

system interoperability and integrity.

4 INTEROPERABILITY:

BETWEEN SECURITY AND

ACCESSIBILITY

As we show in fig. 1, EISs need to ensure

homogeneous interaction between their different

heterogeneous sub components that have

dynamically changing configurations over time.

As service-based systems, PEISs should provide

their employees with maximum accessibility to data

sources in order to enable them to accomplish their

missions easily. At the same time, employees should

be granted different accessibility levels according to

their roles (Role Based Access Control). Using

RBAC policies will enable the system to adapt to the

user according to his role, where each role has

security policies that describe his access rights.

While EISs should provide their employees with

high accessibility, they should provide highly

secured access procedures for external users or

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intruders. Security is highly demanded in pervasive

information systems because the user might access

the system using an unreliable ad hoc connection or

could be displaying confidential data in public.

PEISs should balance between the accessibility

needs of internal users and external users’ security

constraints to ensure system interoperability.

We highlight the importance of employing XML

based standards that will ensure easier integrity and

data representation. Applying XACML will confirm

secured accessibility to heterogeneous and dynamic

data sources and employing UBL will ensure lower

integration coasts and high interoperability.

Finally, the interoperability is demanded not only

to assure data integration and representation but

should also be used to ensure homogeneous software

integrity and proactive interaction that would allow

users to access the system using different devices

and ad hoc networks and would provide users with

applications that adapt automatically to his situation

by following a service oriented architecture.

5 INTEROPERABLE SOFTWARE

TECHNOLOGIES

Pervasive information systems enable users to

employ different hardware devices and networking

technologies to access a particular dynamically

changing application online. Providing a system that

enables a homogeneous communication between

different applications with dynamic connectivity

constraints can be a cumbersome task.

5.1 Software Components

Software engineers have exploited the fact that

pervasive systems could be distributed in different

physical locations and thus introduced the usage of

software components. A component is an

independently deployable piece of software that

resides on a hardware element and provides a

service. Web services are components that reside on

the server side, pervasive systems aims to apply the

concept of components in a peer-to-peer design

architecture using a well defined protocol

(Gschwind et al., 2002).

In order to go beyond the limits and turn

computing applications into pervasive ones, the

adaptation process should be performed

automatically at run-time and should meet the

application and context needs just as the user needs.

Automatic adaptation can be done by employing

TBA Type-Based Adaptation which solves the

incompatibility problem between the different

interfaces by selecting a previously written adapter

from an adapter repository and automatically

determine the adapter to be combined in order to

translate between the different components.

The advantage of using software components is

that the application architecture is taken in mind in

the process of service composition (Davis et al.,

2005) and that components matching and the

adaptation process can be applied automatically.

5.2 Middleware

The adaptation process in pervasive systems has to

deal with the context volatility and unpredictability

so the adapter repository might be maintained at the

communication end parties. Adapting and matching

different software components is only efficient if

these components have similar architectures and if

the adaptation functions are available at the server or

the end parties. Therefore, software engineers

thought about constructing middle ware technologies

as a solution.

Pervasive computing connects many applications

together and as matching a lot of software

components is not a practical solution, the use of a

powerful and generic middleware would transform

these components and facilitate the integration of

this collection of components, their composition and

finally would ensure homogeneous communication.

A uniform and adaptive middleware technology

is not available yet, but if provided will assure the

interoperability between different services within ad

hoc networks.

Although standards, reference architectures and

generic software technologies provide the basis for

future ubiquitous software development, new micro

architectures, development methods and software

technologies are needed (Niemela et al., 2004).

5.3 Design Patterns

In order to facilitate the design, implementation and

development of pervasive systems, standard

solutions to common problems in software design

were generated and gathered. Design patterns take a

systematic approach that focuses on the patterns of

interaction instead of focusing on how individual

components work. Design patterns describe abstract

systems of interaction between classes, objects, and

communication flow (Chung et al., 2004).

Design patterns communicate insights into

design problems, capturing the essence of recurring

problems and their solutions in a compact form.

INTEROPERABILITY IN PERVASIVE ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS - A Double-Faced Coin Between

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Patterns capture design knowledge, such as

guidelines and heuristics, in three ways.

First, patterns offer low-level solutions to

specific problems rather than providing high-level

and abstract suggestions. Second, patterns are

generative, helping designers create new solutions

by showing many examples of actual designs. Third,

patterns are linked to one another hierarchically

(structured), helping designers address high-level

problems as well as low-level ones. Patterns are

intended to complement guidelines and heuristics.

Patterns are simply another tool for helping

designers create high-quality solutions.

6 CONCLUSIONS

In this article, we define clear boundaries for PEISs

and we highlight the importance of ensuring

accessibility, security and interoperability by

applying an adaptive service oriented security policy

such as: RBAC. We show the challenges that face

the integration of different system sub components

and we stress on the importance of providing a

system that satisfies the user needs, simplifies his

interaction with highly advanced devices in highly

dynamic environments.

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