A Code Tagging Approach to Software Product Line Development:An Application to Satellite Communication Libraries

International audienceSoftware product line engineering seeks to systematise reuse when developing families of similar software systems so as to minimise development time, cost and defects. To realise variability at the code level, product line methods classically advocate usage of inheritance, components, frameworks, aspects or generative techniques. However, these might require unaffordable paradigm shifts for developers if the software was not thought at the outset as a product line. Furthermore, these techniques can be conflicting with a company's coding practices or external regulations. These concerns were the motivation for the industry- university collaboration described in this paper in which we developed a minimally intrusive coding technique based on tags. The approach was complemented with traceability from code to feature diagrams which were exploited for automated configuration. It is supported by a toolchain and is now in use in the partner company for the development of flight grade satellite communica- tion software libraries

Pando: Personal Volunteer Computing in Browsers

The large penetration and continued growth in ownership of personal electronic devices represents a freely available and largely untapped source of computing power. To leverage those, we present Pando, a new volunteer computing tool based on a declarative concurrent programming model and implemented using JavaScript, WebRTC, and WebSockets. This tool enables a dynamically varying number of failure-prone personal devices contributed by volunteers to parallelize the application of a function on a stream of values, by using the devices' browsers. We show that Pando can provide throughput improvements compared to a single personal device, on a variety of compute-bound applications including animation rendering and image processing. We also show the flexibility of our approach by deploying Pando on personal devices connected over a local network, on Grid5000, a French-wide computing grid in a virtual private network, and seven PlanetLab nodes distributed in a wide area network over Europe.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, 2 table

Integrating the Supply Chain with RFID: A Technical and Business Analysis

This paper presents an in-depth analysis of the technical and business implications of adopting Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in organizational settings. The year 2004 marked a significant shift toward adopting RFID because of mandates by large retailers and government organizations. The use of RFID technology is expected to increase rapidly in the next few years. At present, however, initial barriers against widespread adoption include standards, interoperability, costs, forward compatibility, and lack of familiarity. This paper describes basic components of an RFID system including tags, readers, and antennas and how they work together using an integrated supply chain model. Our analysis suggests that business needs to overcome human resource scarcity, security, legal and financial challenges and make informed decision regarding standards and process reengineering. The technology is not fully mature and suffers from issues of attenuation and interference. A laboratory experiment conducted by the authors\u27 shows that the middleware is not yet at a plug-and-play stage, which means that initial adopters need to spend considerable effort to integrate RFID into their existing business processes. Appendices contain a glossary of common RFID terms, a list of RFID vendors and detailed findings of the laboratory experiment. NOTE: BECAUSE OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS USED, THIS ARTICLE IS LONG; APPROXIMATELY 850KB IN BOTH JOURNAL AND ARTICLE VERSIO

Developing a traffic control device maintenance management system interfacing with Gis

Roadway systems contain a wide variety of spatially distributed physical features which require installation, maintenance and replacement. These features include traffic control devices such as signs, signals, pavement markings and streetlights. Several technologies exist that can be utilized by the transportation sector to improve program management of a number of these features. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology provides a powerful environment for the capture, storage, retrieval, analysis, and display of spatial (locationally defined) data. A need exists to provide an inventory of the transportation physical plant to interface with a work management system. Information pertaining to the number and condition of such features is required for planning, operating, maintaining, managing and budgeting needs. This thesis summarizes the development of a user-friendly, computerized process to establish a graphical interface between a roadway inventory database and GIS; Evaluation of existing technologies and a survey of current literature will provide a basis for the design of a Traffic Control Device Maintenance Management System. This system will provide a consistent form of technology transfer on a common platform. This system will manage resources by integrating work-orders and the database. The system will utilize GIS technology to integrate a work-order system and a database reporting system for resource management. The work order interface capabilities will include maintenance work-order management, project cost and progress tracking, and program planning and policy analysis; The key is to develop a user-friendly system useful to both the field-level installation crews and planning-level management. A case study in Clark County, Nevada, will be used to evaluate alternative methods of collecting and data on traffic control devices and to illustrate the development of a GIS-based management system. This system is intended to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of operational practices as well as serve as a vital decision support tool for planning and management