10,435 research outputs found
A Perspective on the Future of Middleware-based Software Engineering
International audienceMiddleware is a software layer that stands between the networked operating system and the application and provides well known reusable solutions to frequently encountered problems like heterogeneity, interoperability, security, dependability. Further, with networks becoming increasingly pervasive, middleware appears as a major building block for the development of future software systems. Starting with the impact of pervasive networking on computing models, manifested by now common grid and ubiquitous computing, this paper surveys related challenges for the middleware and related impact on the software development. Indeed, future applications will need to cope with advanced non-functional properties such as contextawareness and mobility, for which adequate middleware support must be devised together with accompanying software development notations, methods and tools. This leads us to introduce our view on next generation middleware, considering both technological advances in the networking area but also the need for closer integration with software engineering best practices, to ultimately suggest middleware-based software processes
Context Aware Computing for The Internet of Things: A Survey
As we are moving towards the Internet of Things (IoT), the number of sensors
deployed around the world is growing at a rapid pace. Market research has shown
a significant growth of sensor deployments over the past decade and has
predicted a significant increment of the growth rate in the future. These
sensors continuously generate enormous amounts of data. However, in order to
add value to raw sensor data we need to understand it. Collection, modelling,
reasoning, and distribution of context in relation to sensor data plays
critical role in this challenge. Context-aware computing has proven to be
successful in understanding sensor data. In this paper, we survey context
awareness from an IoT perspective. We present the necessary background by
introducing the IoT paradigm and context-aware fundamentals at the beginning.
Then we provide an in-depth analysis of context life cycle. We evaluate a
subset of projects (50) which represent the majority of research and commercial
solutions proposed in the field of context-aware computing conducted over the
last decade (2001-2011) based on our own taxonomy. Finally, based on our
evaluation, we highlight the lessons to be learnt from the past and some
possible directions for future research. The survey addresses a broad range of
techniques, methods, models, functionalities, systems, applications, and
middleware solutions related to context awareness and IoT. Our goal is not only
to analyse, compare and consolidate past research work but also to appreciate
their findings and discuss their applicability towards the IoT.Comment: IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials Journal, 201
A Framework for Evaluating Model-Driven Self-adaptive Software Systems
In the last few years, Model Driven Development (MDD), Component-based
Software Development (CBSD), and context-oriented software have become
interesting alternatives for the design and construction of self-adaptive
software systems. In general, the ultimate goal of these technologies is to be
able to reduce development costs and effort, while improving the modularity,
flexibility, adaptability, and reliability of software systems. An analysis of
these technologies shows them all to include the principle of the separation of
concerns, and their further integration is a key factor to obtaining
high-quality and self-adaptable software systems. Each technology identifies
different concerns and deals with them separately in order to specify the
design of the self-adaptive applications, and, at the same time, support
software with adaptability and context-awareness. This research studies the
development methodologies that employ the principles of model-driven
development in building self-adaptive software systems. To this aim, this
article proposes an evaluation framework for analysing and evaluating the
features of model-driven approaches and their ability to support software with
self-adaptability and dependability in highly dynamic contextual environment.
Such evaluation framework can facilitate the software developers on selecting a
development methodology that suits their software requirements and reduces the
development effort of building self-adaptive software systems. This study
highlights the major drawbacks of the propped model-driven approaches in the
related works, and emphasise on considering the volatile aspects of
self-adaptive software in the analysis, design and implementation phases of the
development methodologies. In addition, we argue that the development
methodologies should leave the selection of modelling languages and modelling
tools to the software developers.Comment: model-driven architecture, COP, AOP, component composition,
self-adaptive application, context oriented software developmen
Interaction systems design and the protocol- and middleware-centred paradigms in distributed application development
This paper aims at demonstrating the benefits and importance of interaction systems design in the development of distributed applications. We position interaction systems design with respect to two paradigms that have influenced the design of distributed applications: the middleware-centred and the protocol-centred paradigm. We argue that interaction systems that support application-level interactions should be explicitly designed, using the externally observable behaviour of the interaction system as a starting point in interaction systems design. This practice has two main benefits: to promote a systematic design method, in which the correctness of the design of an interaction system can be assessed against its service specification; and, to shield the design of application parts that use the interaction system from choices in the design of the supporting interaction system
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