Paper 1 submitted, Paper 2 in progress

Hi all,

the first paper of this quarters plan is submitted to the conference. Let's see if our work satisfies the reviewers. We truly hope so.
It is the conceptual basis of the tool we're working on at the moment. Parts of the implementation are already done.

Today, we prepared the rough sketch of the next paper which will describe in detail how RESI (Requirements Engineering Specification Improver) works. This one will be submitted to the ICSC at the end of the month.

Next thing I need to do is update the AutoModel homepage and my profile.
That's it for today.

Btw - where's the sun? I was promised sunshine and love from last nights forecast ... none of it here today. Damn.

Preparing Two More Papers

We are currently working on two more conference-articles (papers, that is).
One explains the conceptual work we had to overcome with the "ontology decider",
the 2nd will explain how the ontology-decider system itself works.

The first paper is due March, 16th whereas the other one needs to be presented by May, 1st.

So far, we're on time and the schedule seems doable. This means another 8 stressful weeks, but by then we'll know what we did it for.

It might be the last two papers before I start to compose parts of my PhD-thesis from what I learned in the last 3 years. Let's see if this plan turns out the way it feels right now.

Preparing annual report

I am about to file in my annual report for 2008. The reports are being published university-wide in February and also used for the university's monetary justification.

I will combine my report with Tom's and I will cover the following aspects:

• My article which I presented in San Francisco, June 2008
• The ideas of ontology-usage improving automatic model creation
• The research currently being undergone by me and my team (UML enriching with various ontologies)

So long ... 10-7, over and out.

EduSymp paper gone rogue - in a positive way

Our EduSymp-paper went wild on the paper-rating list.
Therefore it will (additionally to the publishing of the conference proceedings) be published in a LNCS-book.

According to experienced sources, this might take up to 1 year till the printed version will be in our hands. Well, too bad.

Still, we're proud and happy that this worked out so well for us. As a matter of fact, we also had to do another review-procedure for the paper before we sent it out to the print-shop. This puts another 20 hours of work on top of the 300 hours for the initial creation ;-)
Well, I guess we're all not here just for the fun of it.

Structured Plans for SaleMX Project

The SaleMX Project is up on the track to glory and fame. Or at least something like that.

If you go to the SaleMX web page,

you'll find all the information for our project/work.


The project includes all of Tom's and my work and bundles our forces to achieve our research goals.
We are currently 5 people cooperating on this project. These are:

• Mathias
• Bugra
• Torben
• Tom
• me, myself and I

The new plan/roadmap looks like the following:


The UML-Decider including the User-GUI for the changes in the graph model are my responsibilty whereas tom has to focus on the left-hand side part of the model.
The dotted lines are the parts of the project we still need to realize. So there is still some work to do as you can see. Never the less, the end is in sight.

Boiling down related work

The first step for my internal presentation for my PhD-thesis-advisor is to concentrate the related work into edible chunks. Focus on the main facts, try to find questions for the already related work and base your idea on that. Make sure know how to address the questions not solved by the other papers and point out the (extreme) difficulties which you deal with.
Also precisely define your context and what you are going to leave out and what not. What is essential to your work, what has already been addressed and is not part of your work, but only a side-dish (just to stick with the food analogy).

Well ... one week of work ahead of me. Let's start asap.

Back from Vacation: Working on thesis proposal

Hi Folks,

just wanted to let you know I am back from vacation and ready to do some research.
My colleagues spent the last couple of days setting up the nice "Trac" project admin guide-tool which should support us during the development phase of our ideas.
I am writing on the thesis structure and the proposal which will include the four big paragraphs

• Introduction
• Hypothesis
• Research Plan
• Evaluation/Evaluative Aspects

After writing this, my professor should be able to give me proper guidance how to proceed in the project and whether I should change some things or not. I guess I got quite far, so far.