On the development of a component model for the realization of Industry 4.0

“© © 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.”The fourth industrial revolution promotes Industrial Cyber Physical Systems (ICPS) as the key to achieve smart, efficient, flexible and self-organizing production plants. In a shop floor there are heterogeneous physical and logical assets that form the ICPS. But without proper communication and composition techniques the integration of these assets in ICPS is compromised. Component Based Software Engineering (CBSE) is a discipline of growing relevance for ICPS because integration and composition issues have been extensively researched in the software domain. Under the Reference Architecture for Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0), the Industry 4.0 Component Model inherits aspects of CBSE to specify how several industrial plant assets can form an ICPS. The technological aspects for physical assets digitalization and integration have been explored, but the I4.0 Component model lacks proposals and use cases for dealing with industrial software components. In this work we discuss the development of the Smart Component Model as a proposal for integration of software components in ICPS. Furthermore, we focus on how prediction and monitoring applications could be converted in I4.0 Components and integrated in ICPS. To sustain our proposals, we describe a real industrial case study where these developments are being applied.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Software Frameworks for Model Composition

A software framework is an architecture or infrastructure intended to enable the integration and interoperation of software components. Specialized types of software frameworks are those specifically intended to support the composition of models or other components within a simulation system. Such frameworks are intended to simplify the process of assembling a complex model or simulation system from simpler component models as well as to promote the reuse of the component models. Several different types of software frameworks for model composition have been designed and implemented; those types include common library, product line architecture, interoperability protocol, object model, formal, and integrative environment. The various framework types have different components, processes for composing models, and intended applications. In this survey the fundamental terms and concepts of software frameworks for model composition are presented, the different types of such frameworks are explained and compared, and important examples of each type are described

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

A decentralised semantic architecture for social networking platforms

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonSocial networking platforms (SNPs) are complex distributed software applications exhibiting many challenges related to data portability. Since existing platforms are propriety in design, users cannot easily share their data with other SNPs, however decentralisation of social networking platforms can provide a solution to this problem. There is a difference of opinion, the way the research and developer communities have pursued this issue. Existing approaches used in decentralisation provide limited structural detail and lack in providing a systematic framework of design activities. There is a need for an architectural framework based on standardised software architectural principles and technologies to guide the design and development of decentralised social networking platforms in order to improve the level of both data portability and interoperability. The main aim of this research is to develop an architectural solution to achieve data portability among SNPs via decentralisation. Existing proposed decentralised platforms are based on a distributed structure and are mainly for a specific aspect such as access control or security and privacy. In addition to this, existing approaches lack in practicality due to underdeveloped and non-standardised design. To solve these issues a new architectural framework is needed, which can provide design and development guidelines for the decentralised social networking platform. The goal of this thesis is to study, design and develop an architectural framework for social networking platforms that can incorporate the requirements of the decentralisation, to make portability possible. The synergies between the software engineering principles and social web technologies are investigated to create a standard approach. The proposed architecture is based on component-based software development (CBSD) and aspect-oriented software development (AOSD), a unified approach known as CAM (Component Aspect Model). The foundations of the proposed architecture are based on decentralised social networking architecture (DSNA), architectural style which is derived from CAM. Components and aspects are the building blocks of the proposed decentralised social networking platform architecture. From a development perspective, each component represents a social network functionality and aspects represent the properties and preferences that are used to decentralise the functionality. The model for the component composition is a major challenge because the use of CAM for social networks has not been attempted before. The proposed architecture comprehensively integrates the DSNA architectural style into each architectural component. Portability among SNPs by means of decentralisation can be summarised into three steps. (1) Definition of the architectural style, (2) implementation of the architectural style into components and (3) integration of the component composition. To date component composition approaches have not been used for social networks as a way to develop social network functionality. The concept of middleware has been adapted to achieve the composition feature of the architecture. In the architecture Social Network Support Layer (SNSL) functions as middleware to facilitate component composition. Existing middleware solutions still lack integration of CBSD and AOSD concepts. This limitation is characterised by, a lack of explicit guidelines for composition, a lack of declarative specification and definition model to express component composition and a lack of support for role allocation. This research overcome these limitations. The application of the architecture is based on the W3C SWAT (Social Web Acid Test) scenario. A Messaging application is developed to evaluate the scenario based on the Design Science Research Methodology. The architectural style is defined in the first stage of design followed by the component-based architecture. The architectural style is defined to guide the architecture and the component composition model. In the second stage, the design and implementation of composition technology (that is SNSL) are developed with architectural style and the rules defined in the first stage. The refined version of the architecture is evaluated in the third stage, according to WC3 SWAT test. The definitive version of the proposed architecture with the benchmarked result can be used to design and build social networking platforms, allowing users to share and collaborate information across the different social networking platforms

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

Ontology-based modelling of architectural styles

The conceptual modelling of software architectures is of central importance for the quality of a software system. A rich modelling language is required to integrate the different aspects of architecture modelling, such as architectural styles, structural and behavioural modelling, into a coherent framework. Architectural styles are often neglected in software architectures. We propose an ontological approach for architectural style modelling based on description logic as an abstract, meta-level modelling instrument. We introduce a framework for style definition and style combination. The application of the ontological framework in the form of an integration into existing architectural description notations is illustrated

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

Data integration through service-based mediation for web-enabled information systems

The Web and its underlying platform technologies have often been used to integrate existing software and information systems. Traditional techniques for data representation and transformations between documents are not sufficient to support a flexible and maintainable data integration solution that meets the requirements of modern complex Web-enabled software and information systems. The difficulty arises from the high degree of complexity of data structures, for example in business and technology applications, and from the constant change of data and its representation. In the Web context, where the Web platform is used to integrate different organisations or software systems, additionally the problem of heterogeneity arises. We introduce a specific data integration solution for Web applications such as Web-enabled information systems. Our contribution is an integration technology framework for Web-enabled information systems comprising, firstly, a data integration technique based on the declarative specification of transformation rules and the construction of connectors that handle the integration and, secondly, a mediator architecture based on information services and the constructed connectors to handle the integration process