Decision makers increasingly rely on decision support systems for optimal decision making. Recently, special attention has been paid to process-driven decision support systems (PD-DSS) in which a process model prescribes the invocation sequence of software-based decision support services and the data exchange between them. Thus, it is possible to quickly combine available decision support services as needed for optimally supporting the decision making process of an individual decision maker. However, process modelers may accidentally create a process model which is technically well-formed and executable, but contains functional and behavioral flaws such as redundant or missing services. These flaws may result in inefficient computations or invalid decision recommendations when the corresponding PD-DSS is utilized by a decision maker. In this paper, we therefore propose an approach to validate functionality and behavior of a process model representing a PD-DSS. Our approach is based on expressing flaws as anti-patterns for which the process model can be automatically checked via graph matching. We prototypically implemented our approach and demonstrate its applicability in the context of decision making for energy network planning.

Corporate decision makers have individual requirements for decision support influenced by business goals, regulatory restrictions or access to resources such as data. Ideally, decision makers could quickly create tailored decision support systems (DSS) themselves which optimally address their individual requirements for decision support. Although service-oriented architectures have been proposed for DSS customization, they are primarily targeting trained software developers and cannot immediately be adapted by decision makers or domain experts with little to no software development knowledge. In this paper, we therefore motivate an assisted process-based service composition approach which can be used by non-developers to create tailored DSS. For assistance during service composition, we contribute a meta-model for the formalization of both decision support requirements and functionality of decision support services. Models created according to the meta-model can be used to detect mismatches between a decision maker’s requirements for decision support and services selected in the service composition representing a DSS. Furthermore, the formalizations may even be used for automated service composition given a decision maker’s decision support requirements. We demonstrate the expressiveness of our meta-model in the domain of regional energy distribution network planning.

Requirements for energy distribution networks are changing fast due to the growing share of renewable energy, increasing electrification, and novel consumer and asset technologies. Since uncertainties about future developments increase planning difficulty, flexibility potentials such as synergies between the electricity, gas, heat, and transport sector often remain unused. In this paper, we therefore present a novel module-based concept for a decision support system that helps distribution network planners to identify cross-sectoral synergies and to select optimal network assets such as transformers, cables, pipes, energy storage systems or energy conversion technology. The concept enables long-term transformation plans and supports distribution network planners in designing reliable, sustainable and cost-efficient distribution networks for future demands.

Many websites offer links to social media sites for convenient content sharing. Unfortunately, those sharing capabilities are quite restricted and it is seldom possible to share content with other services, like those provided by a user's favorite applications or smart devices. In this paper, we present Semantic Data Mediator (SDM) --- a flexible middleware linking a vast number of services to millions of websites. Based on reusable repositories of service descriptions defined by the crowd, users can easily fill a personal registry with their favorite services, which can then be linked to websites by SDM. For this, SDM leverages semantic data, which is already available on millions of websites due to search engine optimization. Further support for our approach from website or service developers is not required. To enable the use of a broad range of services, data conversion services are automatically composed by SDM to transform data according to the needs of the different services. In addition to linking web services, various service adapters allow services of applications and smart devices to be linked as well. We have fully implemented our approach and present a real-world case study demonstrating its feasibility and usefulness.

Websites increasingly embed semantic data for search engine optimization. The most common ontology for semantic data, schema.org, is supported by all major search engines and describes over 500 data types, including calendar events, recipes, products, and TV shows. As of today, users wishing to pass this data to their favorite applications, e.g., their calendars, cookbooks, price comparison applications or even smart devices such as TV receivers, rely on cumbersome and error-prone workarounds such as reentering the data or a series of copy and paste operations. In this paper, we present Semantic Data Mediator (SDM), an approach that allows the easy transfer of semantic data to a multitude of services, ranging from web services to applications installed on different devices. SDM extracts semantic data from the currently displayed web page on the client-side, offers suitable services to the user, and by the press of a button, forwards this data to the desired service while doing all the necessary data conversion and service interface adaptation in between. To realize this, we built a reusable repository of service descriptions, data converters, and service adapters, which can be extended by the crowd. Our approach for linking services to websites relies solely on semantic data and does not require any additional support by either website or service developers. We have fully implemented our approach and present a real-world case study demonstrating its feasibility and usefulness.

A lot of people are managing multiple computing devices suited for different purposes, like private and work devices. Integrating applications running on different devices is often a problem, because the services provided by those applications are not meant to be integrated. In this demonstration, we present our XDAI-A framework which enables cross-device integration of services provided by Android apps. The framework uses adapters to convert Android-internal service interfaces of existing apps into external services with a platform-independent interface that can be accessed from applications on other devices and even other platforms. Our ready-to-use framework does not require to alter existing Android apps, since the adapters are installed separately. For the convenient specification of adapters, our framework comes with a domain-specific language (DSL). Additionally, we provide an infrastructure to find and integrate devices and their applications' services.

Integrating apps on mobile devices into applications running on other devices is usually difficult. For instance, using a messenger on a smartphone to share a text written on a desktop computer often ends up in a cumbersome solution to transfer the text, because many applications are not designed for such scenarios. In this paper, we present an approach enabling the integration of apps running on Android devices into applications running on other devices and even other platforms. This is achieved by specifying adapters for Android apps, which map their services to a platform-independent service interface. For this purpose, we have developed a domain-specific language to ease the specification of such mappings. Our approach is applicable without the need to modify the existing Android apps providing the service. We analyzed its feasibility by implementing our approach and by specifying mappings for several popular Android apps, e.g., phone book, camera, and file explorer.