1 - Le Théorème de Perron Frobenius est-il vraiment nécessaire?
Jean-Louis Lassez Professor and Chair, Department of Computer Science, Coastal Carolina University

Abstract. De Kirchoff à Markov (en passant par Kolmogorof) on arrive a divers moteurs de recherche, en particulier Google,et on se pose des questions. Grâce a Tarski et Gauss, on trouve alors des réponses symboliques.

Short bio. Jean-Louis Lassez is currently a Professor in Computer Science and Chair of the CS Department at Coastal Carolina University, USA. Prior to that, he did hold several positions:

• Senior research scientist, Integrated Genomics (1999-2002)
• Chair, Department of Computer Science, New Mexico Institute of Technology, Visiting Professor, Brown University (Summers) (1996-1999)
• Researcher, Manager, Senior Manager, New Language Paradigms, Software Technology Department, I.B.M., T.J.Watson Research Center, (1985-1996)
• Adjunct Professor, New York University, (1991-1996)
• Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader, Department of Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (1976-1985)
• Professeur Adjoint, Département de Mathématique et Informatique, Université de Moncton, Canada (1974-1976)
• Research Fellow and Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, (1972-1974)
• Lecturer, Département de Mathématiques, Université de Sherbrooke, Canada (1970-1972)
• Lecturer, Académie Commerciale Internationale, Paris, (1968-1970)

2 - Service-based Process Spaces
Boualem Benatallah Associate Professor, University of New South Wales – UNSW (Sydney, Australia)

Abstract. With the advances in process modeling and services architectures, organisations continue to strive for better support for business process re-engineering, analysis and optimization. In most cases, analysis and optimization of business processes rely on ad hoc development or special purpose tools. In addition main stream techniques assume the existence of a workflow system, but in reality a small percentage of business processes is supported by such systems. In this talk, we discuss process spaces where analysis of business processes is not restricted to workflow logs but requires integration of various data sources (e.g., email servers, service interaction logs, customer interaction notes). The talk will focus on data analysis technques in processes spaces including noise analysis, items correlation in the different sources to understand which item, belongs to which process execution, models discovery and analysis.

Short bio. Boualem Benatallah is an associate professor at the school of computer science and engineering (CSE), University of New South Wales – UNSW (Sydney, Australia). He is also the research coordinator at the school of computer science research committee. In this role, he oversees research directions of the school. He is also member of the research committee at the teh faculty of Engineering and the leader for the aggregated services program at the newly funded CRC (Cooperative Research Center) Smart services. He is the founder and the leader of the service oriented computing research group at the school of CSE. He has acted as a key official for numerous international conferences in these areas. Recently, he was a visiting researcher at Purdue University (USA), Virginia Tech University (USA), INRIA-LORIA (Nancy, France), University Blaise Pascal (Clermont-Ferrand, France) and University Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (Lyon, France).

3 - Reality Check: a case study of an EII research prototype encountering customer needs
Eric Simon Senior Director, Business Objects, France

Abstract. Le Select is a research prototype of a mediation system, also known as an EII (Enterprise Information Integration) system, which was developed from 1998 to 2001 at INRIA (France). Le Select was then transferred to a start-up company called Medience, which was purchased in 2005 by Business Objects. Under its new brand, the EII system now called "Data Federator" is a master piece of Business Objects' Enterprise Information Management (EIM) offering. During this period of nearly ten years, the EII system has been rewritten almost three times, not only for industrializing the code, but mainly because the system was confronted to various customer needs, which required to modify parts of the system and add other parts to address functional needs that were not anticipated. The aim of this presentation is to review these main transformations of the system and relate them to real life application requirements. We will describe how design decisions needed to be revisited and how our research agenda inherited from our initial vision when we developed a research prototype at INRIA was considerably changed. We will emphasize a few problems such as the design of views and query optimization. The presentation will make extensive use of customer cases to illustrate our purpose.

Short bio. Eric Simon is currently a Senior Director at Business Objects in charge of product development for Data Access and Federation. He was a co-founder of Medience, a start-up company issued from INRIA, which was acquired by Business Objects in 2005. Previously, he was a director of research working at INRIA-Rocquencourt (France). There, he initiated the work on the design and implementation of Le Select. Eric received a PhD in Computer Sciences from University of Paris 6 in 1986.