introduction.tex

   1 \section{Introduction}
   2 The \gls{TOP} paradigm and the according \gls{iTasks} implementation offer a
   3 high abstraction level of real life workflow tasks. Through an \gls{EDSL} that
   4 programmers can model workflow tasks. The system will then generate a
   5 multi-user web service. This web service can be accessed through a browser and
   6 used to complete these \glspl{Task}. Familiar workflow patterns like sequence,
   7 parallel and conditional tasks can be modelled.
   8
   9 describes workflows as \glspl{Task}. From the \gls{Task} description the system genThe system is originally designed to generate applications for real
  10 life tasks that have to be \todo{cont.}
  11
  12 \gls{iTasks} has been shown to be useful in fields such as incident
  13 management~\cite{lijnse_top_2013}. However, there still lacks support for small
  14 devices to be added in the workflow. In principle such adapters can be written
  15 as \glspl{SDS}\footnote{Similar as to resources such as time are available in
  16 the current \gls{iTasks} implementation} but this requires a very specific
  17 adapter to be written for every device and functionality. Oortgiese et al.\
  18 lifted \gls{iTasks} from a single server model to a distributed server
  19 architecture~\cite{oortgiese_distributed_2017} that is also runnable on smaller
  20 devices like \acrshort{ARM}. However, this is limited to fairly high
  21 performance devices that are equipped with high speed communication lines.
  22 Devices in \gls{IoT} often only have \gls{LTN} communication with low bandwidth
  23 and a very limited amount of processing power. \glspl{mTask} will bridge this
  24 gap. It can run on devices as small as Arduino microcontrollers and operates
  25 via the same paradigms as regular \glspl{Task}. The \glspl{mTask} have access
  26 to \glspl{SDS} and can run small imperative programs.
  27
  28 \section{Document structure}
  29 The structure of the thesis is as follows.
  30 Chapter~\ref{chp:introduction} contains the problem statement, motivation and
  31 the structure of the document.
  32 Chapter~\ref{chp:methods} describes the foundations on which the implementation
  33 is built together with the new techniques introduced.
  34 Chapter~\ref{chp:results} shows the results in the form of an example
  35 application accompanied with implementation.
  36 Chapter~\ref{chp:conclusion} concludes by answering the research questions
  37 and discusses future research.
  38 Appendix~\ref{app:communication-protocol} shows the concrete protocol used for
  39 communicating between the server and client.