Explorar kubernetes e devOps num contexto de IoT

Containerized solutions and container orchestration technologies have recently been of great interest to organizations as a way of accelerating both software development and delivery processes. However, adopting these is a rather complex shift that may impact an organization and teams that were already established. This is where development cultures such as DevOps emerge to ease such shift amongst teams, promoting collaboration and automation of development and deployment processes throughout. The purpose of the current dissertation is to illustrate the path that led to the use of DevOps and containerization as means to support the development and deployment of a proof of concept system, Firefighter Sync – an Internet of Things based solution applied to a firefighting monitoring scenario. The goal, besides implementing Firefighter Sync, was to propose and deploy a development and operations ecosystem based on DevOps practices to achieve a full automation pipeline for both the development and operations processes. Firefighter Sync enabled the exploration of such state-of-the-art solutions such as Kubernetes to support container-based deployment and Jenkins for a fully automated CI/CD pipeline. Firefighter Sync clearly illustrates that addressing the development of a system from a DevOps perspective from the very beginning, although it requires an accentuated learning curve due to the large range of concepts and technologies addressed throughout, has illustrated to effectively impact the development process as well as ease the solution for future evolution. A good example is the automation process pipeline, that whilst allowing an easy integration of new features within a DevOps process – implies addressing the development and operations as a whole – it abstracts specific technological concerns turning these transversals to the traditional stages from development to deployment.Soluções de contentores e orquestração de contentores têm vindo a tornar-se de grande interesse para as organizações como uma forma de acelerar os processos de desenvolvimento e entrega de software. No entanto, adotá-las é uma mudança bastante complexa que pode impactar uma organização e equipas já estabelecidas. É aqui que surgem culturas como o DevOps para facilitar essa mudança, promovendo a colaboração e a automação dos processos de desenvolvimento e deployment entre equipas. O objetivo desta dissertação é ilustrar o caminho que levou ao uso de DevOps e à conteinerização de modo a apoiar o desenvolvimento e o deployment de um sistema como prova de conceito, o Firefighter Sync – uma solução baseada na Internet das Coisas aplicada a um cenário de monitorização de combate a incêndios. Além de implementar o Firefighter Sync, o objetivo era também propor e implementar um ecossistema de desenvolvimento e operações com base nas práticas de DevOps para alcançar uma pipeline de automação completa para os processos de desenvolvimento e operações. O Firefighter Sync permitiu explorar soluções que constituem o estado da arte neste contexto, como o Kubernetes para apoiar o deployment baseado em contentores e o Jenkins para suportar a pipeline de CI/CD totalmente automatizada. O Firefighter Sync ilustra claramente que abordar o desenvolvimento de um sistema a partir da perspectiva de DevOps, embora exija uma curva de aprendizagem acentuada devido à grande variedade de conceitos e tecnologias inerentes ao longo do processo, demonstrou tornar mais eficiente o processo de desenvolvimento, bem como facilitar evolução futura. Um exemplo é a pipeline de automação, que permite uma fácil integração de novos recursos dentro de um processo de DevOps – que implica abordar o desenvolvimento e as operações como um todo – abstraindo assim preocupações tecnológicas específicas, transformando essas transversais nas fases tradicionais do desenvolvimento ao deployment.Mestrado em Engenharia Informátic

Software como um Serviço: uma plataforma eficaz para oferta de sistemas holísticos de gestão da performance

This study main objective was to assess the viability of development of a Performance Management (PM) system, delivered in the form of Software as a Service (SaaS), specific for the hospitality industry and to evaluate the benefits of its use. Software deployed in the cloud, delivered and licensed as a service, is becoming increasingly common and accepted in a business context. Although, Business Intelligence (BI) solutions are not usually distributed in the SaaS model, there are some examples that this is changing. To achieve the study objective, design science research methodology was employed in the development of a prototype. This prototype was deployed in four hotels and its results evaluated. Evaluation of the prototype was focused both on the system technical characteristics and business benefits. Results shown that hotels were very satisfied with the system and that building a prototype and making it available in the form of SaaS is a good solution to assess BI systems contribution to improve management performance.O objetivo principal deste estudo é avaliar a viabilidade de desenvolvimento de um sistema de Gestão da Performance, entregue sob a forma de “Software como Serviço” (SaaS), específico para o setor hoteleiro, e também avaliar os benefícios de seu uso. O software implantado na cloud, entregue e licenciado como um serviço, é cada vez mais aceite num contexto de negócios. Todavia, não é comum que soluções de Business Intelligence (BI) sejam distribuídas neste modelo SaaS. No entanto, existem alguns exemplos de que isso se está a alterar. Para atingir o objetivo do estudo, foi utilizada Design Science Research como metodologia de pesquisa científica para desenvolvimento de um protótipo. Este protótipo foi implementado em quatro hotéis para que os seus resultados pudessem ser avaliados. A avaliação foi focada tanto nas características técnicas do sistema como nos benefícios para o negócio. Os resultados mostraram que os hotéis estavam muito satisfeitos com o sistema e que construir um protótipo e disponibilizá-lo sob a forma de SaaS é uma boa solução para avaliar a contribuição dos sistemas de BI para melhorar o desempenho da gestão.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Designing a collaborative AutoML tool to help organizations become data-driven

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementThis study aims to address a lack of knowledge in the emerging field of automated machine learning (AutoML) techniques. While the AutoML technology develops further and further and provides increasingly robust and interesting results, there is only little to no current research on how this technology can be adopted and scaled across different functions and teams of any organization. Thus, this study raises the research question of how an information system that leverages AutoML techniques can empower organizations and their non-technical individuals to collaborate on and adopt machine learning techniques in their daily lives to unlock the value of available data. To gain a clear analytical lens, this study is conducted in the environment of Management Consulting Companies (MCCs) as they span all industries and multiple tasks within diverse organizations and therefore promise a good transfer of knowledge to other application areas. A special emphasis is given to non-technical users and the possibilities of them participating in such a system as that has the potential to reach a large number of real-world practitioners. The identified problem is tackled with a Design Science Research (DSR) approach. A workflow of how an information system can support its users to leverage AutoML serves as an artifact that is evaluated by experts. Learnings from the theory behind the proposal and its evaluation contribute to literature around AutoML and the transformation of the MCC industry as well as practical applications in both fields. Results suggest that AutoML is best used to conduct quick experiments and find out which applications have the highest business value before involving experts. Major challenges are to help non-technical users define a use case and prepare data

Automating embedded analysis capabilities and managing software complexity in multiphysics simulation part II: application to partial differential equations

A template-based generic programming approach was presented in a previous paper that separates the development effort of programming a physical model from that of computing additional quantities, such as derivatives, needed for embedded analysis algorithms. In this paper, we describe the implementation details for using the template-based generic programming approach for simulation and analysis of partial differential equations (PDEs). We detail several of the hurdles that we have encountered, and some of the software infrastructure developed to overcome them. We end with a demonstration where we present shape optimization and uncertainty quantification results for a 3D PDE application

A demonstration case on the transformation of software architectures for service specification

This paper presents a demonstration case on the successive application of a model-based technique to assist on the refinement of software logical architectures. The technique is essentially based on the transformation of use cases into object diagrams. The applicability of the technique is illustrated by presenting some results from a mobile application. For mobile software, the definition of the underlying service-oriented architecture must consider as user requirements the services themselves, the mobile operators entry points and the final clients interfaces, and use them to characterize the platform. Within the presented demonstration case, the specification of one service of the mobile application was obtained by successively applying the technique.Research funded by FCT and FEDER under project STACOS (POSI/CHS/48875/2002)