Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: NL

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: N

Quality Goal Oriented Architectural Design and Traceability for Evolvable Software Systems

Softwaresysteme werden heute z.B. aufgrund sich ändernder Geschäftsprozesse oder Technologien mit häufigen Veränderungen konfrontiert. Die Software und speziell ihre Architektur muss diese Änderungen zur dauerhaften Nutzbarkeit ermöglichen.Während der Software-Evolution können Änderungen zu einer Verschlechterung der Architektur führen, der Architekturerosion. Dies erschwert oder verhindert weitere Änderungen wegen Inkonsistenz oder fehlendem Programmverstehen. Zur Erosionsvermeidung müssen Qualitätsziele wie Weiterentwickelbarkeit, Performanz oder Usability sowie die Nachvollziehbarkeit von Architekturentwurfsentscheidungen berücksichtigt werden. Dies wird jedoch oft vernachlässigt.Existierende Entwurfsmethoden unterstützen den Übergang von Qualitätzielen zu geeigneten Architekturlösungen nur unzureichend aufgrund einer Lücke zwischen Methoden des Requirements Engineering und des Architekturentwurfs. Insbesondere gilt dies für Weiterentwickelbarkeit und die Nachvollziehbarkeit von Entwurfsentscheidungen durch explizite Modellabhängigkeiten.Diese Arbeit präsentiert ein neues Konzept, genannt Goal Solution Scheme, das Qualitätsziele über Architekturprinzipien auf Lösungsinstrumente durch explizite Abhängigkeiten abbildet. Es hilft somit, Architekturlösungen entsprechend ihrem Einfluss auf Qualitätsziele auszuwählen. Das Schema wird speziell hinsichtlich Weiterentwickelbarkeit diskutiert und ist in ein zielorientiertes Vorgehen eingebettet, das etablierte Methoden und Konzepte des Requirements Engineering und Architekturentwurfs verbessert und integriert. Dies wird ergänzt durch ein Traceability-Konzept, welches einen regelbasierten Ansatz mit Techniken des Information Retrieval verbindet. Dies ermöglicht eine (halb-) automatische Erstellung von Traceability Links mit spezifischen Linktypen und Attributen für eine reichhaltige Semantik sowie mit hoher Genauigkeit und Trefferquote.Die Realisierbarkeit des Ansatzes wird an einer Fallstudie einer Software für mobile Serviceroboter gezeigt. Das Werkzeug EMFTrace wurde als eine erweiterbare Plattform basierend auf Eclipse-Technologie implementiert, um die Anwendbarkeit der Konzepte zu zeigen. Es integriert Entwurfsmodelle von externen CASE-Tools mittels XML-Technologie in einem gemeinsamen Modell-Repository, wendet Regeln zur Linkerstellung an und bietet Validierungsfunktionen für Regeln und Links.Today software systems are frequently faced with demands for changes, for example, due to changing business processes or technologies. The software and especially its architecture has to cope with those frequent changes to permanently remain usable.During software evolution changes can lead to a deterioration of the structure of software architectures called architectural erosion, which hampers or even inhibits further changes because of inconsistencies or lacking program comprehension. To support changes and avoid erosion, especially quality goals, such as evolvability, performance, or usability, and the traceability of design decisions have to be considered during architectural design. This however often is neglected.Existing design methods do not sufficiently support the transition from the quality goals to appropriate architectural solutions because there is still a gap between requirements engineering and architectural design methods. Particularly support is lacking for the goal evolvability and for the traceability of design decisions by explicit model dependencies.This thesis presents a new concept called Goal Solution Scheme, which provides a mapping from goals via architectural principles to solution instruments by explicit dependencies. Thus it helps to select appropriate architectural solutions according to their influence on quality goals. The scheme is discussed especially regarding evolvability, and it is embedded in a goal-oriented architectural design method, which enhances and integrates established methods and concepts from requirements engineering as well as architectural design. This is supplemented by a traceability concept, which combines a rule-based approach with information retrieval techniques for a (semi-) automated establishment of links with specific link types and attributes for rich semantics and a high precision and recall.The feasibility of the design approach has been evaluated in a case study of a software platform for mobile robots. A prototype tool suite called EMFTrace was implemented as an extensible platform based on Eclipse technology to show the practicability of the thesis' concept. It integrates design models from external CASE tools in a joint model repository by means of XML technology, applies rules for link establishment, and provides validation capabilities for rules and links

Advances in Grid Computing

This book approaches the grid computing with a perspective on the latest achievements in the field, providing an insight into the current research trends and advances, and presenting a large range of innovative research papers. The topics covered in this book include resource and data management, grid architectures and development, and grid-enabled applications. New ideas employing heuristic methods from swarm intelligence or genetic algorithm and quantum encryption are considered in order to explain two main aspects of grid computing: resource management and data management. The book addresses also some aspects of grid computing that regard architecture and development, and includes a diverse range of applications for grid computing, including possible human grid computing system, simulation of the fusion reaction, ubiquitous healthcare service provisioning and complex water systems

The 1989 Goddard Conference on Space Applications of Artificial Intelligence

The following topics are addressed: mission operations support; planning and scheduling; fault isolation/diagnosis; image processing and machine vision; data management; and modeling and simulation

Performance Observability and Monitoring of High Performance Computing with Microservices

Traditionally, High Performance Computing (HPC) softwarehas been built and deployed as bulk-synchronous, parallel executables based on the message-passing interface (MPI) programming model. The rise of data-oriented computing paradigms and an explosion in the variety of applications that need to be supported on HPC platforms have forced a re-think of the appropriate programming and execution models to integrate this new functionality. In situ workflows demarcate a paradigm shift in HPC software development methodologies enabling a range of new applications --- from user-level data services to machine learning (ML) workflows that run alongside traditional scientific simulations. By tracing the evolution of HPC software developmentover the past 30 years, this dissertation identifies the key elements and trends responsible for the emergence of coupled, distributed, in situ workflows. This dissertation's focus is on coupled in situ workflows involving composable, high-performance microservices. After outlining the motivation to enable performance observability of these services and why existing HPC performance tools and techniques can not be applied in this context, this dissertation proposes a solution wherein a set of techniques gathers, analyzes, and orients performance data from different sources to generate observability. By leveraging microservice components initially designed to build high performance data services, this dissertation demonstrates their broader applicability for building and deploying performance monitoring and visualization as services within an in situ workflow. The results from this dissertation suggest that: (1) integration of performance data from different sources is vital to understanding the performance of service components, (2) the in situ (online) analysis of this performance data is needed to enable the adaptivity of distributed components and manage monitoring data volume, (3) statistical modeling combined with performance observations can help generate better service configurations, and (4) services are a promising architecture choice for deploying in situ performance monitoring and visualization functionality. This dissertation includes previously published and co-authored material and unpublished co-authored material

Information resources management, 1984-1989: A bibliography with indexes

This bibliography contains 768 annotated references to reports and journal articles entered into the NASA scientific and technical information database 1984 to 1989

Interoperability Gap Challenges for Learning Object Repositories & Learning Management Systems

An interoperability gap exists between Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and Learning Object Repositories (LORs). Learning Objects (LOs) and the associated Learning Object Metadata (LOM) that is stored within LORs adhere to a variety of LOM standards. A common LOM standard found in LORs is the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) Content Aggregation Model (CAM). In contrast, LMSs are independent computer systems that manage and deliver course content to students via a web interface. This research addressed three important issues related to the interoperability gap: (a) a lack of a metadata standard that defined the format of how student assessment data should be communicated from LMSs to LORs, (b) a lack of an architectural standard for the movement of data from LMSs to LORs, and (c) a lack of middleware that facilitated the movement of the student assessment data from the LMSs to LORs. This research achieved the following objectives: (a) the SCORM CAM LOM standard was extended to facilitate the storage of student assessment data, (b) Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) was identified as the best architecture to resolve the interoperability gap between LMSs and LORs, (c) a panel of Computer Information Systems (CIS) experts participated in a five-stage, web-based, anonymous Delphi process that approved and ranked 28 functional requirements for a proposed middleware application, and (d) the functional requirements were verified via the development of a prototype that transferred student assessment data from a LMSs into the LOM of LOs that are stored within a LOR. In conclusion, the research demonstrated that there are three acceptable approaches to extending the SCORM LOM standard: (a) new metadata elements, (b) new vocabulary values, and (c) the reference of an internal or external XML file using a location element. The main accomplishments of the research were the gathering of SOA functional requirements and the development of a prototype that provided an approach for the resolution of the interoperability gap that exists between LMSs and LORs