Model-driven performance evaluation for service engineering

Service engineering and service-oriented architecture as an integration and platform technology is a recent approach to software systems integration. Software quality aspects such as performance are of central importance for the integration of heterogeneous, distributed service-based systems. Empirical performance evaluation is a process of measuring and calculating performance metrics of the implemented software. We present an approach for the empirical, model-based performance evaluation of services and service compositions in the context of model-driven service engineering. Temporal databases theory is utilised for the empirical performance evaluation of model-driven developed service systems

Quality-aware model-driven service engineering

Service engineering and service-oriented architecture as an integration and platform technology is a recent approach to software systems integration. Quality aspects ranging from interoperability to maintainability to performance are of central importance for the integration of heterogeneous, distributed service-based systems. Architecture models can substantially influence quality attributes of the implemented software systems. Besides the benefits of explicit architectures on maintainability and reuse, architectural constraints such as styles, reference architectures and architectural patterns can influence observable software properties such as performance. Empirical performance evaluation is a process of measuring and evaluating the performance of implemented software. We present an approach for addressing the quality of services and service-based systems at the model-level in the context of model-driven service engineering. The focus on architecture-level models is a consequence of the black-box character of services

Ontology-based patterns for the integration of business processes and enterprise application architectures

Increasingly, enterprises are using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as an approach to Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). SOA has the potential to bridge the gap between business and technology and to improve the reuse of existing applications and the interoperability with new ones. In addition to service architecture descriptions, architecture abstractions like patterns and styles capture design knowledge and allow the reuse of successfully applied designs, thus improving the quality of software. Knowledge gained from integration projects can be captured to build a repository of semantically enriched, experience-based solutions. Business patterns identify the interaction and structure between users, business processes, and data. Specific integration and composition patterns at a more technical level address enterprise application integration and capture reliable architecture solutions. We use an ontology-based approach to capture architecture and process patterns. Ontology techniques for pattern definition, extension and composition are developed and their applicability in business process-driven application integration is demonstrated

Contribution to Quality-driven Evolutionary Software Development process for Service-Oriented Architectures

The quality of software is a key element for the successful of a system. Currently, with the advance of the technology, consumers demand more and better services. Models for the development process have also to be adapted to new requirements. This is particular true in the case of service oriented systems (domain of this thesis), where an unpredictable number of users can access to one or several services. This work proposes an improvement in the models for the software development process based on the theory of the evolutionary software development. The main objective is to maintain and improve the quality of software as long as possible and with the minimum effort and cost. Usually, this process is supported on methods known in the literature as agile software development methods. Other key element in this thesis is the service oriented software architecture. Software architecture plays an important role in the quality of any software system. The Service oriented architecture adds the service flexibility, the services are autonomous and compact assets, and they can be improved and integrated with better facility. The proposed model in this thesis for evolutionary software development makes emphasis in the quality of services. Therefore, some principles of evolutionary development are redefined and new processes are introduced, such as: architecture assessment, architecture recovery and architecture conformance. Every new process will be evaluated with case studies considering quality aspects. They have been selected according to the market demand, they are: the performance, security and evolutionability. Other aspects could be considered of the same way than the three previous, but we believe that these quality attributes are enough to demonstrate the viability of our proposal

Development of an online collaborative working environment for design and manufacturing

This research is to develop a novel collaborative working environment (CWE) for manufacturing and design using advanced Web/Internet technologies such as Web Service, Grid Service and other related software tools/packages. To achieve the above, the following research modules are developed by the author: A service oriented framework for computer aid design, which acts as an online collaboration system, has been developed with the utilisation of the latest technology, Web Service. The concept of Service-Oriented Architecture has been implemented in the framework. Users from anywhere in the world can join the design process from their PCs, no matter what operation system they are using. The service-oriented system has the capability of going through firewalls and can afford multi-users due to the characteristics of Web service. Also the loose-coupling structure makes the system very easy to be updated. Another module for the CWE is to solve the software sharing problem when the platform is used among several geographically dispersed users or organisations. A software package bank system has been developed, which utilised the ideology of service oriented approach and successfully solved traditional problems in this field. Based on the outcomes mentioned above, the research finally developed a more powerful infrastructure using Grid service, which is a further development of Grid computing and Web service. The Grid service is considered to be the most important future solvent for Internet

An interactive metaheuristic search framework for software serviceidentification from business process models

In recent years, the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) model of computing has become widely used and has provided efficient and agile business solutions in response to inevitable and rapid changes in business requirements. Software service identification is a crucial component in the production of a service-oriented architecture and subsequent successful software development, yet current service identification methods have limitations. For example, service identification methods are either not sufficiently comprehensive to handle the totality of service identification activities, or they lack computational support, or they pay insufficient attention to quality checks of resulting services. To address these limitations, comprehensive computationally intelligent support for software engineers when deriving software services from an organisation’s business process models shows great potential, especially when the impact of human preference on the quality of the resulting solutions can be incorporated. Accordingly, this research attempts to apply interactive metaheuristic search to effectively bridge the gap between business and SOA technology and so increase business agility.A novel, comprehensive framework is introduced that is driven by domain independent role-based business process models, and uses an interactive metaheuristic search-based service identification approach based on a genetic algorithm, while adhering to SOA principles. Termed BPMiSearch, the framework is composed of three main layers. The first layer is concerned with processing inputs from business process models into search space elements by modelling input data and presenting them at an appropriate level of granularity. The second layer focuses on identifying software services from the specified search space. The third layer refines the resulting services to map the business elements in the resulting candidate services to the corresponding service components. The proposed BPMiSearch framework has been evaluated by applying it to a healthcare domain case study, specifically, Cancer Care and Registration (CCR) business processes at the King Hussein Cancer Centre, Amman, Jordan.Experiments show that the impact of software engineer interaction on the quality of the outcomes in terms of search effectiveness, efficiency, and level of user satisfaction, is assessed. Results show that BPMiSearch has rapid search performance to positively support software engineers in the identification of services from role-based business process models while adhering to SOA principles. High-quality services are identified that might not have been arrived at manually by software engineers. Furthermore, it is found that BPMiSearch is sensitive and responsive to software engineer interaction resulting in a positive level of user trust, acceptance, and satisfaction with the candidate services

The Semantic Grid: A future e-Science infrastructure

e-Science offers a promising vision of how computer and communication technology can support and enhance the scientific process. It does this by enabling scientists to generate, analyse, share and discuss their insights, experiments and results in an effective manner. The underlying computer infrastructure that provides these facilities is commonly referred to as the Grid. At this time, there are a number of grid applications being developed and there is a whole raft of computer technologies that provide fragments of the necessary functionality. However there is currently a major gap between these endeavours and the vision of e-Science in which there is a high degree of easy-to-use and seamless automation and in which there are flexible collaborations and computations on a global scale. To bridge this practice–aspiration divide, this paper presents a research agenda whose aim is to move from the current state of the art in e-Science infrastructure, to the future infrastructure that is needed to support the full richness of the e-Science vision. Here the future e-Science research infrastructure is termed the Semantic Grid (Semantic Grid to Grid is meant to connote a similar relationship to the one that exists between the Semantic Web and the Web). In particular, we present a conceptual architecture for the Semantic Grid. This architecture adopts a service-oriented perspective in which distinct stakeholders in the scientific process, represented as software agents, provide services to one another, under various service level agreements, in various forms of marketplace. We then focus predominantly on the issues concerned with the way that knowledge is acquired and used in such environments since we believe this is the key differentiator between current grid endeavours and those envisioned for the Semantic Grid

Tape Mbo'e: A First Experimental Assessment

The development of software not only needs to consider the construction process, but also other aspects such as cost, human resources and communication among stakehold- ers. The lack of simplicity into this context becomes explicit when some restrictions, such as service oriented architecture, must be considered as the basic style to build sus- tainable applications into environments were practitioners are not aware of this software technology. In addition to this, most of the available software processes are not directly applicable nor are they reusable, so learning times becomes risk for the development of the project. Therefore, Tape Mbo'e (TME) has been proposed to support the building of such applications, into development environments like developing countries where we can have economic constraints and scarcity of proficient practitioners. The first application of TME has been to develop a service-based application whose goal is to provide the interoperability among legacy systems of different public agencies in Paraguay. Initial results of this experience indicated the feasibility and simplicity of TME when applied in this field. The evaluation process, its results and conclusions are described in this paper

E-Testing based on service oriented architecture

The extensive use of technology in learning and working, is forcing its use in the assessment process. A lot of software packages exist in the market to realize automated assessment. Several of them are very comprehensive, but most of them are stand alone applications without possibilities for interoperability, adaptability according to learner characteristics and possibilities for content reuse. In this paper we describe the purposes and the process of designing an interoperable E-Testing Framework by remodelling an existing E-Testing system and introducing new structured Service Oriented Architecture, based on encapsulating existing business functions as loosely coupled, reusable, platform-independent services which collectively realize required business objectives. This common framework should support interoperable content, exchange of data and learner profiles, and give the possibility for search and retrieval of any data bank content in local and remote repositories