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

Multi-Platform Generative Development of Component & Connector Systems using Model and Code Libraries

Component-based software engineering aims to reduce software development effort by reusing established components as building blocks of complex systems. Defining components in general-purpose programming languages restricts their reuse to platforms supporting these languages and complicates component composition with implementation details. The vision of model-driven engineering is to reduce the gap between developer intention and implementation details by lifting abstract models to primary development artifacts and systematically transforming these into executable systems. For sufficiently complex systems the transformation from abstract models to platform-specific implementations requires augmentation with platform-specific components. We propose a model-driven mechanism to transform platform-independent logical component & connector architectures into platform-specific implementations combining model and code libraries. This mechanism allows to postpone commitment to a specific platform and thus increases reuse of software architectures and components.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 1 listin

Component-based software engineering

To solve the problems coming with the current software development methodologies, component-based software engineering has caught many researchers\u27 attention recently. In component-based software engineering, a software system is considered as a set of software components assembled together instead of as a set of functions from the traditional perspective. Software components can be bought from third party vendors as off-the-shelf components and be assembled together. Component-based software engineering, though very promising, needs to solve several core issues before it becomes a mature software development strategy. The goal of this dissertation is to establish an infrastructure for component-based software development. The author identifies and studies some of the core issues such as component planning, component building, component assembling, component representation, and component retrieval. A software development process model is developed in this dissertation to emphasize the reuse of existing software components. The software development process model addresses how a software system should be planned and built to maximize the reuse of software components. It conducts domain engineering and application engineering simultaneously to map a software system to a set of existing components in such a way that the development of a software system can reuse the existing software components to the full extent. Besides the planning of software development based on component technology, the migration and integration of legacy systems, most of which are non-component-based systems, to the component-based software systems are studied. A framework and several methodologies are developed to serve as the guidelines of adopting component technology in legacy systems. Component retrieval is also studied in this dissertation. One of the most important issues in component-based software engineering is how to find a software component quickly and accurately in a component repository. A component representation framework is developed in this dissertation to represent software components. Based on the component representation framework, an efficient searching method that combines neural network, information retrieval, and Bayesian inference technology is developed. Finally a prototype component retrieval system is implemented to demonstrate the correctness and feasibility of the proposed method

An MDE Approach for Domain based Architectural Components Modelling.

International audienceComponent Based Software Engineering (CBSE) is a popular and widely adopted software engineering paradigm that has proven his usefulness and success to increase reusability and efficiency in various application domains. In this paper, we propose a common metamodel of a component to support all the requirements of CBSE taking into account the specificities of each domain. The resulting modeling framework serves primarily to capture the basic concepts of concerns related to component systems development based on the clear separation between the development process, interactions and the domain knowledge. As a proof of concept, we are evaluating the feasibility of our approach through the CCM component model applied to an use case for building systems having real-time requirements

Detecting the Onset of Dementia using Context-Oriented Architecture

In the last few years, Aspect Oriented Software De- velopment (AOSD) and Context Oriented Software Development (COSD) have become interesting alternatives for the design and construction of self-adaptive software systems. An analysis of these technologies shows them all to employ the principle of the separation of concerns, Model Driven Architecture (MDA) and Component-based Software Development (CBSD) for building high quality of software systems. In general, the ultimate goal of these technologies is to be able to reduce development costs and effort, while improving the adaptability, and dependability of software systems. COSD, has emerged as a generic devel- opment paradigm towards constructing self-adaptive software by integrating MDA with context-oriented component model. The self-adaptive applications are developed using a Context- Oriented Component-based Applications Model-Driven Architec- ture (COCA-MDA), which generates an Architecture Description language (ADL) presenting the architecture as a components- based software system. COCA-MDA enables the developers to modularise the application based on their context-dependent behaviours, and separate the context-dependent functionality from the context-free functionality of the application. In this article, we wish to study the impact of the decomposition mechanism performed in MDA approaches over the software self-adaptability. We argue that a better and significant advance in software modularity based on context information can increase software adaptability and increase their performance and modi- fiability

Microservices and Machine Learning Algorithms for Adaptive Green Buildings

In recent years, the use of services for Open Systems development has consolidated and strengthened. Advances in the Service Science and Engineering (SSE) community, promoted by the reinforcement of Web Services and Semantic Web technologies and the presence of new Cloud computing techniques, such as the proliferation of microservices solutions, have allowed software architects to experiment and develop new ways of building open and adaptable computer systems at runtime. Home automation, intelligent buildings, robotics, graphical user interfaces are some of the social atmosphere environments suitable in which to apply certain innovative trends. This paper presents a schema for the adaptation of Dynamic Computer Systems (DCS) using interdisciplinary techniques on model-driven engineering, service engineering and soft computing. The proposal manages an orchestrated microservices schema for adapting component-based software architectural systems at runtime. This schema has been developed as a three-layer adaptive transformation process that is supported on a rule-based decision-making service implemented by means of Machine Learning (ML) algorithms. The experimental development was implemented in the Solar Energy Research Center (CIESOL) applying the proposed microservices schema for adapting home architectural atmosphere systems on Green Buildings

Using Dynamic Modeling and Simulation to Improve the COTS Software Process

In the last several years, software industry has undergone a significant transition to the use of existing component products in building systems. Nowadays, more and more solutions are built by integrating Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products rather than building from scratch. This new approach for software development has specific features that add new factors that need to be taken into account to successfully face software development. In this paper, we present the first results of developing a dynamic simulation model to model and simulate the COTS-based software development process with the aim of helping to understand the specific features of this kind of software development, and design and evaluate software process improvements. An example of how to use these dynamic simulation models to study how the system integration starting point affects the main project variables is shown.CICYT TIC2001-1143-C03-0

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

MONOD, a Collaborative Tool for Manipulating Biological Knowledge

Research article written in 2004 describing MONOD, an early biological knowledge management systemWe describe an open source software tool called MONOD, for Modeler’s Notebook and Datastore, designed to capture and communicate knowledge generated during the process of building models of many-component biological systems. We used MONOD to construct a model of the pheromone response signaling pathway of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. MONOD allowed the accumulation, documentation, and exchange of data, valuations, assumptions, and decisions generated during the model building process. MONOD thus helped preserve a record of the steps taken on the path between from the experimental data to the computable model. We believe that MONOD and its successors may streamline the processes of building models, communicating with other researchers, and managing and manipulating biological knowledge. "Collaborative annotation"-- fine-grained, structured, searchable communication enabled by software tools of this type-- could positively affect the practice of biological research

Building an Architectural Component Model for a Telehealth Service

Copyright © 2015 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY).Models of services, processes and technology are useful tools for conceptualizing complex systems such as healthcare. The application of a component architecture helps illustrate the processes and technologies that are important to the operation of a health service and conceptualize the relationships between each component. Telehealth services are relatively recent and have characteristics that do not fit neatly into established models of health services. This paper analyzes the components used to build a telehealth in the home service in South Australia and the design choices that were taken. The service used commodity-based devices and systems to deliver simple to use, low-cost in the home care. Building on this analysis, the components required in an architectural component model of a telehealth service are identified enabling a provisional architecture for telehealth services to be derived from an existing internationally recognized architectural model for eHealth systems. Situated within the broad family of eHealth architectures, a Telehealth Architectural Model of telehealth processes, software, devices, common systems and ICT infrastructure is proposed that represents the components required to support telehealth and allows for customization of services according to clinical models of care