The Enterprise Architecture Analysis Tool – Support for the Predictive, Probabilistic Architecture Modeling Framework

The business of contemporary organizations is heavily dependent on information systems. Business processes and IT are interwoven and numerous technologies are in use. How the involved systems affect each other or impact the organizations’ business domain is often uncertain, thus decision-making regarding information technology is challenging. Enterprise architecture (EA) is a holistic, model-based management approach. Many of the available EA software tools focus on documenting and have limited analysis capabilities. In this article, a tool for EA analysis is presented, supporting the analysis of properties such as business fit, security, and interoperability. The tool is implemented to support the Predictive, Probabilistic Architecture Modeling Framework to specify and apply assessment frameworks for performing property analysis on EA models

Semantic model-driven development of service-centric software architectures

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a recent architectural paradigm that has received much attention. The prevalent focus on platforms such as Web services, however, needs to be complemented by appropriate software engineering methods. We propose the model-driven development of service-centric software systems. We present in particular an investigation into the role of enriched semantic modelling for a modeldriven development framework for service-centric software systems. Ontologies as the foundations of semantic modelling and its enhancement through architectural pattern modelling are at the core of the proposed approach. We introduce foundations and discuss the benefits and also the challenges in this context

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

A distributed solution to software reuse

Reuse can be applied to all stages of the software lifecycle to enhance quality and to shorten time of completion for a project. During the phases of design and implementation are some examples of where reuse can be applied, but one frequent obstruction to development is the building of and the identifying of desirable components. This can be costly in the short term but an organisation can gain the profits of applying this scheme if they are seeking long-term goals. Web services are a recent development in distributed computing. This thesis combines the two research areas to produce a distributed solution to software reuse that displays the advantages of distributed computing within a reuse system. This resulted in a web application with access to web services that allowed two different formats of component to be inserted into a reuse repository. These components were searchable by keywords and the results are adjustable by the popularity of a component’s extraction from the system and by user ratings of it; this improved the accuracy of the search. This work displays the accuracy, usability, and speed of this system when tested with five undergraduate and five postgraduate students

DEVELOPMENT OF A FORMAL FRAMEWORK FOR USABLE OPERATIONS SUPPORT IN E-HEALTH BASED SYSTEMS

This study uses advanced communications and computing technologies to support health care delivery and education. The automated e-Health-based system was designed to eliminate clumsy and tedious treatment procedures associated with manual treatment processes prevalent in care centres, especially in the developing countries. The operations support functionalities of the system are provided within a formal framework to eliminate system errors, improve dependability and enhance its usability. The framework presented in this thesis uses algebraic specifications in object constraint language (OCL) and Unified Modelling Language (UML) in the analysis and design of some subsystems in an e-Health based system. Wireless Markup Language (WML) and Java programming language were used to develop the operations support functionality with real-time access to medical information via hand-held devices. The application was deployed on a 3-tiered client / server architecture with hand-held devices as clients, providing mobile access to real-time information from server-based systems within a care centre. The system was evaluated empirically and analytically. The application’s usability evaluation was done using a questionnaire based on the attributes suggested by ISO, ANSI and ITU. The product was found to be usable with a mean rating above 4 on a scale of 5 for all attributes used for the measurement. The study revealed that 92% of the medical professionals who evaluated the application would like to see it deployed for use in medical centres in order to enhance health care delivery