Resolving Architectural Mismatches of COTS Through Architectural Reconciliation

The integration of COTS components into a system under development entails architectural mismatches. These have been tackled, so far, at the component level, through component adaptation techniques, but they also must be tackled at an architectural level of abstraction. In this paper we propose an approach for resolving architectural mismatches, with the aid of architectural reconciliation. The approach consists of designing and subsequently reconciling two architectural models, one that is forward-engineered from the requirements and another that is reverse-engineered from the COTS-based implementation. The final reconciled model is optimally adapted both to the requirements and to the actual COTS-based implementation. The contribution of this paper lies in the application of architectural reconciliation in the context of COTS-based software development. Architectural modeling is based upon the UML 2.0 standard, while the reconciliation is performed by transforming the two models, with the help of architectural design decisions.

Approach for Highly Dependable Software-Intensive Systems

Author-contributed print itemhe objectives of the proposal are creating new methods and tools for effective constructing software-intensive systems based on multiple perspectives that are used to reflect differing stakeholder's concerns. The models and methods will incorporate rapid prototyping, explicit architecting and consistent engineering techniques into a synthesis approach for highly dependable software-intensive systems (HDSIS)

Architecture-based Evolution of Dependable Software-intensive Systems

This cumulative habilitation thesis, proposes concepts for (i) modelling and analysing dependability based on architectural models of software-intensive systems early in development, (ii) decomposition and composition of modelling languages and analysis techniques to enable more flexibility in evolution, and (iii) bridging the divergent levels of abstraction between data of the operation phase, architectural models and source code of the development phase

Towards More Flexible Architecture Description Languages for Industrial Applications

Architecture Description Languages (ADLs) have emerged in recent years as a tool for providing high-level descriptions of software systems in terms of their architectural elements and the relationships among them. Most of the current ADLs exhibit limitations which prevent their widespread use in industrial applications. In this paper, we discuss these limitations and introduce ALI, an ADL that has been developed to address such limitations. The ALI language provides a rich and flexible syntax for describing component interfaces, architectural patterns, and meta-information. Multiple graphical architectural views can then be derived from ALI’s textual notation

The ENVRI reference model

Advances in automation, communication, sensing and computation enable experimental scientific processes to generate data at increasingly great speeds and volumes. Research infrastructures are devised to take advantage of these data, providing advanced capabilities for acquisition, sharing, processing, and analysis; enabling advanced research and playing an ever-increasing role in the environmental and Earth science research domain. The ENVRI community identified several recurring requirements in the development of environmental research infrastructures such as i) duplication of efforts to solve similar problems; ii) lack of standards to harmonise and accelerate development, and bring about interoperability; iii) a large number of data models and data information systems within the domain, and iv) a steep learning curve for integration complex research infrastructure systems. To address these challenges, the ENVRI community has developed and refined the Environmental Research Infrastructures Reference Model (ENVRI Reference Model or ENVRI RM), a modelling framework encoding this knowledge. The proposed modelling framework encompasses a language and a notation to describe the research domain, its systems and the requirements and challenges faced when implementing those systems. By adopting ENVRI RM as an integrative approach, the environmental research community can secure interoperability between infrastructures, enable reuse, share resources, experiences and common language, reduce unnecessary duplication of effort, and speed up the understanding of research infrastructure systems. This chapter provides a short introduction to the ENVRI RM