I am alive!

After a long time I have decided to update this weblog! When you have a lot of things to say, it is better to say nothing rather than being verbose! I just want to review some of my important events occurred in past days, weeks or maybe months! No Comments…

 

Symfony and Semantic Web

After completing the theory of my master thesis, I was looking for a quick solution to implement it. Since I had some good experiences with Symfony framework, I finally decided to utilize it for implementing my master project.

SemCEM

 My project consists of three technologies: Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web 2.0 and Semantic Web. It aims to find a common point between these technologies to make creation of enterprise mashups semi-automatically. Web 2.0 has a wealth of data but poor semantics and difficult integration. On the other hand, While Semantic Web solves the integration problem issue but suffers from a dearth of users. Combining these two technologies will result in a rich Web of data that is usable by both humans and machines. In my research I found out that RESTful web services are the key to this solution. REST-based architecture puts a smiley on SOA, thereby makes it more practical to be used by non-professional users. I proposed an annotation mechanism for RESTful services. The next step was implementing a mashup editor that supports my proposed model. In this step I used Symfony 1.2 that has a good support of REST architecture in conjunction with pOWL. pOWL is a Web Based Platform for Collaborative Semantic Web Development. It consists of 6 stacked tiers:

• pOWL store – SQL compatible relational database backend
•  RDFAPI, RDFSAPI, OWLAPI – layered APIs for handling RDF, RDF-Schema (RDFS) and OWL
• pOWL API – containing classes and functions to build web applications on top of those APIs
• User interface – a set of PHP pages combining widgets provided by pOWL API for accessing (browsing, viewing, editing) model data in a pOWL store

Although I encountered some problems using PUT and DELETE methods of HTTP, but the final result was great. I could finish my project at three weeks thanks to good and useful Symfony plug-ins. The most time-consuming part was integrating pOWL into Symfony that was done approximately well. I called my mashup editor “SemCEM“. I have not released it yet, but I have some plans in near future to publish a demo version on semcem.com. ………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Diary:

+ Unfortunately thanks to assistant chair of our faculty plus some uninvited issues, my defense session for master degree was postpones to September!

+ My paper entitled “ Using an Enterprise Mashup Infrastructure for Just-in-Time Management of Situational Projects ” was accepted in IEEE International Conference on e-Business Engineering (ICEBE 2009). I am planning to have a trip to China to present it if possible.

 + In August I will have a trip to Amsterdam to make some important decisions for my future!

+ Besides many disappointing side effects of Iran Elections, I had this chance to be familiar with Parsatech Group, an active group with great ideas in IT.

Let’s go…

It is not always true to make right decisions! sometimes we need to select a wrong way while we know about it. Maybe the art of life is choosing something wrong consciously,then converting it to a valuable asset.
So, let’s go and test the taste of mistakes…

Again, Autumn…

Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right - Bob Dylan

+ These days, I have to cope with several jobs that will form my future! It includes taking TOEFL and GRE exam, completing an old research project, working on my MS Thesis,and making some important life-related decisions! I hope to breath a sigh of relief after 25 October!

+ Incremental Blogging Using Twitter: I think for those who are very busy and have no additional time for blogging, Twitter is a remedial solution! Just write a few sentences whenever you are free. After a month, start to glean them and create a post on your blog! As easy as drinking a glass of water!
This approach has many advantages in comparison with traditional blogging: You can get feedback about each part of your post from your friends, you can use Synergy principle, you can memorize diverse range of events and you can enjoy your time!

+ I have started working on my MS Thesis that will be about “Semantic Enterprise Mashups“. Acceptance of my paper in APSCC-08 was a good starting point. I aim to propose a mathematical model for semi-automatic creation of Enterprise Mashups using Semantic descriptions.

Memoirs of Sydney…

Travel to  Sydney was a unique experience for me. The first international conference that I was involved in,The longest journey that I have ever had, The first foreign country that I visited lonely and a lot of unique experiences like these sort of things! I had this chance to visit a beautiful multicultural country and view the world outside of my hometown.
It was really a novel experience (and tiresome!) for me to  fly about 16 hours above seas and oceans; Migrating from a hot summer to a cool winter! When I arrived to Sydney, I was confused !It was about 11 a.m locally but not for me!I felt that everything is turning around my head! Hardly I could adopt myslef with new situation after a deep sleep! I lost the introduction of the conference easily but never mind!Better late than never! After finding a convenient accommodation I was ready to get off to city! It was easy to find conference venue beacuse it was near the hotel and using my feet it took only 10 minutes to go there! According to my plan,I had 5 days for doing scientific works and 4 days for social and entertaining works! Conference was hold in University of Technology(UTS), the atmosphere of conference was very friendly,I found many good friends from different places of the world.Most of them were PhD students or associate professors or above!They helped me to adopt myself with new situation,learn about different cultures,and specially different foods! I tried to do my best at presentation and I think the result was very good At the end of the conference, with the information I had received from one of my new friends I planned to go to university of new south wales(UNSW) to meet professor Benatallah, one of the greatest researchers in the area of service computing.It was incredible for me to have an appointment with him;By chance,I found an iranian student under supervision of him.Hamidreza and his wife were studyng at UNSW,it was my pleasure to meet them and have a good time with them and use their experiences.I hope to see them again in Iran!

+ I want to write more about my short stay at Sydney (Specially World Youth Day 2008!) but at this moment I have no time! Future maybe help me

+ Related: “A Semantic Web Service-Oriented Model for Project Management“

Happy birthday to me…

Believe it or not , but I turn 25 today. (Getting lonely, getting old Can you feel me?)

+ Today was a memorial day for me! I think it was my best birthday day! I heard a lot of good and surprising news today. I estimated my success rate for today using data mining techniques! It was above 85% . I have many works to do in recent days! Saturday is my last exam, Data Mining!

+ I’m going to travel to Sydney a few days later, I aim to participate in CIT2008 and visit Australia! Also, my second paper was accepted in ICWS2008 after a hard review process. Its title is “A Framework for Distributed Market Place based on Intelligent Software Agents and Semantic Web Services“.

Google, Please Stop Your Jet Engine…

I’m one of the Google’s followers,I’m accustomed of Google Reader, it is wonderful,without wasting your time and in a relaxed environment(without annoying ads) with power of Ajax, you can read infinite articles,you can share and discover knowledge, you can enjoy your life.It makes life on the web easier…

- I can’t surf the web without gateway of Google home page,It is starting point of every web browser…

- I use Google Calendar to schedule my daily programs and check my free times with my friends to suggest a good time for making an appointment…
- I find my friends on Orkut and experience social web with it.
- I use Gmail to send emails faster, I forward my email accounts to Yahoo! because I can.There is no limitation,no obligation…

Google is an impotant part of my life,without its dynamic logo, life is too hard! I love Google because it hasn’t obligatory manner,It respects customers,It doesn’t behave like others,It likes innovation and allows greats ideas to born…
However these days I am worry about new strategies and new thoughts that i see at Google products,Google wants to work like a platform,It wants to capture the web. This approach seems good from viewpoint of easier life, but i smell a rat!

Today i saw AJAX Libraries API, a content distribution network and loading architecture for the most popular open source JavaScript libraries.It is in direction of Google’s new strategy (Google App Engine),I had seen this idea in YUI library to speed up invoking JS scripts, but Google wants to cover all the libraries!
Google shouldn’t get self conceited! It is true that Google is unique ,however it is a platform for allowing novel ideas to be happen not exclusive platform that prevents others from thinking and making ideas!Google should not be a new Microsoft! I hope that my imaginations aren’t real and Google will continue its lovely way in future…

Welcome to the real world…

Life isn’t like in the movies. Life… is much harder!?

SfCropper Plugin…

Today, I wrote a simple plugin for Symfony, my favorite PHP MVC framework. It uses  scriptaculous.js and Cropper.js (developed by David Spurr ) to crop images and create cropped images using PHP GD library.

You can download it by clicking here! Installation process is as simple as other Symfony plugins:

1.Unpack and Copy plugin files to your project plugin folder.

2. Enable module in your `settings.yml`:

  {{{

    all:

      .settings:

        enabled_modules:      [default, sfCropper]

  }}}

3. Put sfCropper web folder into your project web folder.

4. Clear you cache:

  {{{

    symfony cc

  }}}

5.Use it:

<?php

use_helper(‘cropper’);

//cropper_image($image_name,$image_id=’crop1′,$default_crop=1)

cropper_image(‘test.jpg’);

?>

A City on the Hill…

These days, we are in celebration of Nowruz, beginning of the Iranian year. During the Nowruz holidays people are expected to visit one another (mostly limited to families, friends and neighbors) in the form of short house visits, which are usually reciprocated. Most people in Iran believe that whatever a person does on Nowruz will affect the rest of the year. So, if a person is warm and kind to their relatives, friends and neighbors on Nowruz, then the New Year will be a good one.

Today, I had this opportunity to visit a historical place called Uzbak Hill. Before this, I had tried so much for visiting this place but I couldn’t get authorization to enter the place! It was wonderful but with very regret! Uzbak Hill is 3500 years old and was the center of power for first Aryan governments. It is located in a small village in Nazarabad city near Tehran (85KM west). The first brick (adobe) that was built by human being was found in this region. Mr. Khatami in his presidency donated a brick from this place to United Nation as a symbol for world cultural communications. When I saw the place I felt that it is a forgotten sign of our culture that is abandoned and damaged! It needs more attention! I took some photograph from Uzbak Hill: