Experiences of generating COTS components when automating medicinal product evaluations

This paper reports on experiences of generating COTS components when designing and deploying component based software architecture for automation and interoperation of medicinal product evaluations across different countries in the world. Our generic architectural model renders two sets of software components that are candidates for COTS components. We identify which role such COTS components may play and outline our approach of generating them. We advocate that such COTS components are developed with a specific component platform in mind and must adhere to constraints of our software architecture

Conjunctive Query Based Constraint Solving For Feature Model Configuration

Feature model configuration can be supported on the basis of various types of reasoning approaches. Examples thereof are SAT solving, constraint solving, and answer set programming (ASP). Using these approaches requires technical expertise of how to define and solve the underlying configuration problem. In this paper, we show how to apply conjunctive queries typically supported by today's relational database systems to solve constraint satisfaction problems (CSP) and -- more specifically -- feature model configuration tasks. This approach allows the application of a wide-spread database technology to solve configuration tasks and also allows for new algorithmic approaches when it comes to the identification and resolution of inconsistencies.Comment: to be presented at The 12th Conference on Information Technology and Its Application, CITA 2023, July 28-29, 2023, Da Nang, Vietnam, and to be published in the volume of the Lecture Notes in Network and Systems series (Springer

Aspect-Oriented Modeling: Applying Aspect-Oriented UML Use Cases and Extending Aspect-Z

Considering predominant aspect-oriented software development (asymmetric AOSD), this paper discusses the application of aspect-oriented UML use case diagrams and formal language AspectZ to part of a classic AOSD case study, the Health-Watcher software system. In addition, this article proposes an extension of AspectZ to reach a new property for asymmetric AOSD which reacts after a schema successfully finishes, or not, showing messages for that situation, with an implicit join point; and a way for generalizing similar operations in a system using AspectZ. Thus, the main goal of this article is to show the application of and differences between asymmetric aspect-oriented formal and non-formal modeling, and to highlight potential advantages of aspect-oriented formal modeling over aspect-oriented non-formal modeling. First, this article describes the main concepts of the classic AOSD paradigm focusing on problems unsolved by previous forms of software development and resolved by AOSD. Second, by applying aspect-oriented UML use case diagrams, this paper highlights the use of dominion classes and extend-relationships. Considering the Health-Watcher case study and an asymmetric AOSD approach, this study found that using extend-relationships in UML use cases does not completely follow the basic principles of the prevailing AOSD approach in which a base element does not know about aspects, whereas an extending use case must explicitly know its extension points. Third, this article shows a formal modeling of the case study using AspectZ. Moreover, extensions of this aspect-oriented formal language are proposed and applied to the same case study to show their practical properties for modeling. These extensions allow showing success or error messages, and inserting or not a new item in a set of elements to take care of invalid situations

Aspect-Oriented Modeling: Applying Aspect-Oriented UML Use Cases and Extending Aspect-Z

Considering predominant aspect-oriented software development (asymmetric AOSD), this paper discusses the application of aspect-oriented UML use case diagrams and formal language AspectZ to part of a classic AOSD case study, the Health-Watcher software system. In addition, this article proposes an extension of AspectZ to reach a new property for asymmetric AOSD which reacts after a schema successfully finishes, or not, showing messages for that situation, with an implicit join point; and a way for generalizing similar operations in a system using AspectZ. Thus, the main goal of this article is to show the application of and differences between asymmetric aspect-oriented formal and non-formal modeling, and to highlight potential advantages of aspect-oriented formal modeling over aspect-oriented non-formal modeling. First, this article describes the main concepts of the classic AOSD paradigm focusing on problems unsolved by previous forms of software development and resolved by AOSD. Second, by applying aspect-oriented UML use case diagrams, this paper highlights the use of dominion classes and extend-relationships. Considering the Health-Watcher case study and an asymmetric AOSD approach, this study found that using extend-relationships in UML use cases does not completely follow the basic principles of the prevailing AOSD approach in which a base element does not know about aspects, whereas an extending use case must explicitly know its extension points. Third, this article shows a formal modeling of the case study using AspectZ. Moreover, extensions of this aspect-oriented formal language are proposed and applied to the same case study to show their practical properties for modeling. These extensions allow showing success or error messages, and inserting or not a new item in a set of elements to take care of invalid situations

VORGEHENSMODELLE ZUR ENTWICKLUNG SERVICEORIENTIERTER SOFTWARESYSTEME

Bei der Entwicklung von Softwaresystemen auf Basis eines serviceorientierten Architekturparadigmas stellt sich die Frage, welches Vorgehensmodell zur Projektabwicklung herangezogen werden kann. In der Literatur werden unterschiedliche Vorgehensmodelle zur serviceorientierten Softwareentwicklung vorgeschlagen. Aus diesen werden 17 Modelle ausgewählt, charakterisiert sowie mit Hilfe eines allgemeinen Rahmens klassifiziert und verglichen. Dabei werden sowohl generelle Merkmale von Vorgehensmodellen als auch SOA-spezifische Vorgehensmerkmale herangezogen

TOWARDS A FINANCIALLY OPTIMAL DESIGN OF IT SERVICES

The current financial crisis forces companies to allocate IT budgets more effectively and thus increases the demand for suitable methods to evaluate the financial impact of IT investments. This especially applies to service-orientation, a design paradigm which facilitates the standardisation and flexibilisation of business processes and IT applications, topics that currently are very much in vogue in science and practice. This paper focuses on the realisation of a new functionality by IT services and presents a methodology to determine their financially optimal functional scope on the continuum between realising just one IT service providing the whole functionality and realising many IT services each providing only a small share of functionality. This approach allows for a multi-period financial valuation of an uncertain demand for the new functionality, as well as of an uncertain company-wide reuse of the corresponding IT services. Finally, the methodology is evaluated by an example from a financial services provider

Reasoning of Competitive Non-Functional Requirements in Agent-Based Models

During the decision-making process in real-time competitive environments, there is a need to perform concurrent optimisation of multiple competitive objectives to select an optimal design decision for interdependent stakeholders. To handle such issues, this thesis successfully assimilates the goal-oriented requirements-engineering knowledge with analytical decision-making approaches to facilitate reasoning and analysis by encouraging stakeholders’ involvement. This leads to optimal decisions with domain knowledge improvement in the agent-based i*-goal model by balancing multiple conflicting non-functional requirements reciprocally

The Invasion of the South

Between 1966 and 1980, the War History Office of the National Defense College of Japan (now the Center for Military History of the National Institute for Defense Studies) published the 102-volume Senshi Sōsho (War History Series). The present book completes the trilogy of English translations of the sections in the Senshi Sōsho series on the Japanese operations against the former Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). The first volume (The Invasion of the Dutch East Indies, 2015) details the army operations, the second volume (The Operations of the Navy in the Dutch East Indies and the Bay of Bengal, 2018) the navy operations, and this third volume the army air force operations. The three volumes provide an unparalleled insight into the Japanese campaign to capture Southeast Asia and the oil fields in the Indonesian archipelago in what was at that time the largest transoceanic landing operation in the military history of the world. It was also the first time in history that air power was employed with devastating effect over such enormous distances, posing complex technical and logistical problems

A Planning Approach to Migrating Domain-specific Legacy Systems into Service Oriented Architecture

The planning work prior to implementing an SOA migration project is very important for its success. Up to now, most of this kind of work has been manual work. An SOA migration planning approach based on intelligent information processing methods is addressed to semi-automate the manual work. This thesis will investigate the principle research question: “How can we obtain SOA migration planning schemas (semi-) automatically instead of by traditional manual work in order to determine if legacy software systems should be migrated to SOA computation environment?”. The controlled experiment research method has been adopted for directing research throughout the whole thesis. Data mining methods are used to analyse SOA migration source and migration targets. The mined information will be the supplementation of traditional analysis results. Text similarity measurement methods are used to measure the matching relationship between migration sources and migration targets. It implements the quantitative analysis of matching relationships instead of common qualitative analysis. Concretely, an association rule and sequence pattern mining algorithms are proposed to analyse legacy assets and domain logics for establishing a Service model and a Component model. These two algorithms can mine all motifs with any min-support number without assuming any ordering. It is better than the existing algorithms for establishing Service models and Component models in SOA migration situations. Two matching strategies based on keyword level and superficial semantic levels are described, which can calculate the degree of similarity between legacy components and domain services effectively. Two decision-making methods based on similarity matrix and hybrid information are investigated, which are for creating SOA migration planning schemas. Finally a simple evaluation method is depicted. Two case studies on migrating e-learning legacy systems to SOA have been explored. The results show the proposed approach is encouraging and applicable. Therefore, the SOA migration planning schemas can be created semi-automatically instead of by traditional manual work by using data mining and text similarity measurement methods