MGSim - Simulation tools for multi-core processor architectures

MGSim is an open source discrete event simulator for on-chip hardware components, developed at the University of Amsterdam. It is intended to be a research and teaching vehicle to study the fine-grained hardware/software interactions on many-core and hardware multithreaded processors. It includes support for core models with different instruction sets, a configurable multi-core interconnect, multiple configurable cache and memory models, a dedicated I/O subsystem, and comprehensive monitoring and interaction facilities. The default model configuration shipped with MGSim implements Microgrids, a many-core architecture with hardware concurrency management. MGSim is furthermore written mostly in C++ and uses object classes to represent chip components. It is optimized for architecture models that can be described as process networks.Comment: 33 pages, 22 figures, 4 listings, 2 table

Model driven configuration management

Model Driven Configuration Management (MDCM) ist ein neuartiger Ansatz, sowohl Konfigurationen als auch Architekturen der Softwareentwicklung durch gemeinsame Modelle darzustellen. Diese Modelle sollen dann als Input für Konfigurationsmanagement (CM) Tools und als Basis für die modellgetriebene Generierung von Code oder Konfigurationsdateien verwendet werden können. Durch die Verschmelzung von Konfigurationsmanagement und modellgetriebener Softwareentwicklung (MDSD) reicht das Zielpublikum dieser Arbeit von Konfigurations-Managern bis hin zu Software-Architekten und Entwicklern. Alle diese Rollen haben mit denselben Problemen zu kämpfen: Redundanz und die daraus entstehende Fehleranfälligkeit und Inkonsistenz beziehungsweise die dadurch zusätzlich anfallende Arbeit. MDCM verwendet allgemeine plattform-unabhängige Modelle, um ein System zu beschreiben. Aus diesen Modellen werden dann über Transformatoren detaillierte Modelle generiert. Dieses Vorgehen kennt man bereits vom MDSD. MDCM erweitert dieses Vorgehen um Modelle, die Konfigurationen beschreiben. Dadurch kann das allgemeine Modell sowohl als Basis für plattform-spezifische Modelle als auch für konfigurations-spezifische Modelle verwendet werden. Das Konfigurations-Modell beschreibt die Konfigurations-Einheiten und deren Beziehungen, während das plattform-spezifische Modell die Software-Komponenten und deren Verbindungen beschreibt. Der Model Driven Configuration Editor (MDCE) wurde im Rahmen dieser Arbeit entwickelt, um das Arbeiten mit und Generieren von Modellen zu vereinfachen. Der MDCE ermöglicht es, fertige Konfigurationen sowie das Grundgerüst von Applikationen zu generieren. Mit Hilfe von MDSD und auch des Editors soll die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Entwicklern/ Architekten und Konfigurations-Managern verbessert werden. Der Software Architekt soll dabei bei der Erstellung von Modellen unterstützt werden. Außerdem soll die Kommunikation zwischen Entwicklern und Konfigurations-Manager durch die einheitlichen Modelle verbessert werden. Letzterer profitiert außerdem von der Möglichkeit, aus den Modellen fertige Konfigurationen bzw. Input für CM Tools zu generieren. Kriterien für eine gute Lösung beinhalten die Verminderung von Redundanz im Entwicklungsprozess, ein Vorgehensmodell basierend auf der Idee von MDCM und durchgängigen, flexiblen und erweiterbaren Tool-Support für alle Arbeitsvorgänge. Diese Kriterien sollen durch folgende Entwicklungen erreicht werden: • MDCM - ein Konzept zur Verschmelzung von Konfigurations-Management und modellgetriebener Softwareentwicklung • ein Prozessmodell für MDCM • ein flexibler Ansatz bzw. ein Vorgehensmodell, einen Editor für MDCM zu entwickeln • der MDCE, ein Prototyp für Tool-Support des MDCM Prozesses.Model Driven Configuration Management (MDCM) deals with the concept of representing configurations and software development architectures using models based on common modeling languages like UML. These models can be used as an input for configuration management (CM) suites, as a foundation for an Model Driven Software Development (MDSD) workflow or to generate configuration files for different purposes. As a result of merging CM and MDSD, the target audience ranges from software developer to configuration manager. Even though there is a brief explanation of all used technologies, previous knowledge in CM, MDSD and UML will help to understand the covered topics. Each role mentioned above has to fight with the usual problems of software development: redundancy and error-proneness, inconsistency and the resulting higher amount of work. The main approach of MDCM is to use primary general models as a foundation for generating other more detailed models by using transformations. This procedure is also used by MDSD, but MDCM enhances this approach with models describing configurations. Based on a primary, platform independent model, a model for configurations and software development can be generated. The model for configuration management includes information on the configuration items and their relations and the model for software development defines the software components (classes, packages and methods). All the needed functionality like writing and transforming the models, is provided by the Model Driven Configuration Editor (MDCE), which is one big achievement of this work. It offers easy modelling of the configuration items and software components as well as the generation of models and application skeletons. This approach reduces redundancy and increases the cooperation between development and configuration management. MDCM and the editor support the software architect on creating the models for the development system and on coordinating those concepts with the configuration manager. The latter will benefit from the import of the configuration models to the CM suite provided by MDCE. And the software developer can use the code generation and MDSD functionality of MDCE to automatise parts of his work. Criteria for a good solution contain less redundancy, a procedure model for the development processes and tool support for all workflows, which should be easy to use and individually extendable. This work tries to accomplish these targets through the following achievements: • a concept for merging CM and MDSD called MDCM • a process model for MDCM • the model driven configuration editor MDCE • instructions how to create and enhance the MDC

Process Mining Opportunities for CMMI Assessments

Software process improvement has become essential for striving at satisfying the needs of customers and requeriments of markets reagrding the quality of software products. To improve software processes in a systematic and structures way, also called process maturity some models have been developed, e.g. CMMI. CMMI specifies key process areas (KPA5) on different levels of maturity. To grow in maturity, software companies should implement theses KPAs. For assess KPAs in a quantitative way, data should be collected from that process, preferably on the basis of already existing and used software engineering tools. Previous research showed that particular configuration management can collect data from software processes, the called software process mining. The objective of this project is to investigate literature on tool support in particular CMMI KPAs to find out whether there are tools that could be supported by process mining.Outgoin

The GENESIS platform, its distribution, and web services

The GENESIS project is developing an Open Source platform that supports co-operation and communication among software engineers belonging to distributed development teams involved in modeling, controlling, and measuring software development and maintenance processes. The GENESIS platform is made up of three main elements: a distributed workflow management system, a resource management system, and an artefact management system (OSCAR, developed at Durham). The platform is designed to be non-invasive and have a low barrier to entry (in terms of the effort required to begin using the system). This is accomplished, as far as possible, by adapting the platform to the workflow processes and tools already in place in an organisation. OSCAR (Open-Source Component Artefact Repository) is the artefact management system, used to store and retrieve any item produced by any member of a software engineering team. Traditional artefacts (documents and code, for example) as well as non-traditional items (such as informal annotations, mailing list postings, and personnel profiles) are managed by the system, which has the capability to maintain a rich set of relationships between the artefacts (for traceability and comprehension purposes). Each instance of OSCAR contains a software configuration management system (currently, a plugin is provided to use CVS). Currently, OSCAR is slightly distributed: the workflow management system can use more than one instance of a repository, but a single instance of OSCAR can use only one repository. There are a few known systems which provide some form of real distributed software configuration management, which, it is hoped, can be used to inspire further development of the distribution of OSCAR and its associated services. Initially, OSCAR and the rest of the GENESIS platform communicated using RMI, but a web service interface is currently under development. As an initial attempt at realising this, the RMI interface is simply wrapped to provide servlets. The web services approach allows for a single instance of an OSCAR repository to serve many projects, and for potential global distribution of a single instance of the GENESIS platform. Possible avenues for future work include: applications to e-learning and e-science (applying OSCAR to the Grid, in order to support educational and scientific collaboration); using OSCAR as a basis for supporting collaborative design work; instrumenting the tools in the GENESIS platform to provide data for studies of software engineering practices; and studying process models (for example, determining the difference between the ideal models defined in the literature and the real processes of software engineering)

Computational dynamic support model for social support assignments around stressed individuals among graduate students

Configuring the best resources for optimal overall performance is one of the challenging topics in Computer Science domains. Within the domain of intelligent social support assignment applications to help individuals with stress, it requires important aspects of configuring a possible set of input and parameters to obtain optimal solutions from both computational support provider and recipient models. However, the existing configuration algorithms are often randomized and static. Thus, their results can vary significantly between multiple runs. In the context of social support perspectives, the assigned support may not sufficient or cause a burden to the providers. Hence, this study aims to develop the dynamic configuration algorithm to provide an optimal support assignment based on information generated from both social support recipient and provision computational models. The computational models that simulate support providers and recipients behaviours were developed to generate several simulated patterns. These models explain the dynamics of support seeking and provision behaviours and were evaluated using equilibria analysis and automatic logical verification approaches for 14 selected empirical cases. Later, the dynamic configuration algorithm was designed to utilize possible support assignments based on support provision requirements. The algorithm complexity analysis was used to measure the execution time in the worst case. Finally, a prototype was developed and validated with 30 graduate students. This study allows to explore computational analysis in explicit comprehension of how seeking and giving support process can be obtained at different case conditions. Also, the study explicitly shows the psychological stress of support recipient can be reduced after the dynamic configuration algorithm process assigned selected social support providers from social support network members. Furthermore, this study provides an alternative method for software engineers in intelligent stress management systems to integrate social support-based concepts as one of the mechanisms in addressing the support of an individual with cognitive related stress

A Reference Architecture for Service Lifecycle Management – Construction and Application to Designing and Analyzing IT Support

Service-orientation and the underlying concept of service-oriented architectures are a means to successfully address the need for flexibility and interoperability of software applications, which in turn leads to improved IT support of business processes. With a growing level of diffusion, sophistication and maturity, the number of services and interdependencies is gradually rising. This increasingly requires companies to implement a systematic management of services along their entire lifecycle. Service lifecycle management (SLM), i.e., the management of services from the initiating idea to their disposal, is becoming a crucial success factor. Not surprisingly, the academic and practice communities increasingly postulate comprehensive IT support for SLM to counteract the inherent complexity. The topic is still in its infancy, with no comprehensive models available that help evaluating and designing IT support in SLM. This thesis presents a reference architecture for SLM and applies it to the evaluation and designing of SLM IT support in companies. The artifact, which largely resulted from consortium research efforts, draws from an extensive analysis of existing SLM applications, case studies, focus group discussions, bilateral interviews and existing literature. Formal procedure models and a configuration terminology allow adapting and applying the reference architecture to a company’s individual setting. Corresponding usage examples prove its applicability and demonstrate the arising benefits within various SLM IT support design and evaluation tasks. A statistical analysis of the knowledge embodied within the reference data leads to novel, highly significant findings. For example, contemporary standard applications do not yet emphasize the lifecycle concept but rather tend to focus on small parts of the lifecycle, especially on service operation. This forces user companies either into a best-of-breed or a custom-development strategy if they are to implement integrated IT support for their SLM activities. SLM software vendors and internal software development units need to undergo a paradigm shift in order to better reflect the numerous interdependencies and increasing intertwining within services’ lifecycles. The SLM architecture is a first step towards achieving this goal.:Content Overview List of Figures....................................................................................... xi List of Tables ...................................................................................... xiv List of Abbreviations.......................................................................xviii 1 Introduction .................................................................................... 1 2 Foundations ................................................................................... 13 3 Architecture Structure and Strategy Layer .............................. 57 4 Process Layer ................................................................................ 75 5 Information Systems Layer ....................................................... 103 6 Architecture Application and Extension ................................. 137 7 Results, Evaluation and Outlook .............................................. 195 Appendix ..........................................................................................203 References .......................................................................................... 463 Curriculum Vitae.............................................................................. 498 Bibliographic Data............................................................................ 49

Implementando o Gitflow para Gerencia de Configuração em um Projeto de Desenvolvimento de Software Ágil: Um Relato de Experiência

In software engineering, Software Configuration Management is a set of support activities that allows for the orderly absorption of changes inherent to software development. For that, organization models for code versioning like Gitflow have been proposed. In Gitflow, two fixed branches (master and develop) are used to store the project history and be the starting point for changes. Despite the popularity of Gitflow for being considered a simple workflow, there are few: (a) reports of its use in practice and / or (b) documentation on how to deploy it in a real environment. This paper presents the process of adapting Gitflow and creating rules for its application in a real software development project. This adaptation took into account the opinions of managers and developers of a team of approximately 30 people within an agile Scrum life cycle. As a result, definitions and documents were generated to keep track of development, in addition to defining the necessary steps for its application considering the development process adopted by the team

Enhancing modeling and change support for process families through change patterns

The increasing adoption of process-aware information systems (PAISs), together with the variability of business processes (BPs), has resulted in large collections of related process model variants (i.e., process families). To effectively deal with process families, several proposals (e.g., C-EPC, Provop) exist that extend BP modeling languages with variability-specific constructs. While fostering reuse and reducing modeling efforts, respective constructs imply additional complexity and demand proper support for process designers when creating and modifying process families. Recently, generic and language independent adaptation patterns were successfully introduced for creating and evolving single BP models. However, they are not sufficient to cope with the specific needs for modeling and evolving process families. This paper suggests a complementary set of generic and language-independent change patterns specifically tailored to the needs of process families. When used in combination with existing adaptation patterns, change patterns for process families will enable the modeling and evolution of process families at a high-level of abstraction. Further, they will serve as reference for implementing tools or comparing proposals managing process families. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.This work has been developed with the support of MICINN under the Project EVERYWARE TIN2010-18011.Ayora Esteras, C.; Torres Bosch, MV.; Weber, B.; Reichert, M.; Pelechano Ferragud, V. (2013). Enhancing modeling and change support for process families through change patterns. En Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling, BPMDS 2013. Springer Verlag. 246-260. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38484-4_18S246260van der Aalst, W.M.P., ter Hofstede, A.H.M., Barros, B.: Workflow Patterns. Distributed and Parallel Databases 14(1), 5–51 (2003)Aghakasiri, Z., Mirian-Hosseinabadi, S.H.: Workflow change patterns: Opportunities for extension and reuse. In: Proc. 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Springer, Heidelberg (2010)Lanz, A., Weber, B., Reichert, M.: Time patterns for process-aware information systems. Requirements Engineering, 1–29 (2012)La Rosa, M., van der Aalst, W.M.P., Dumas, M., ter Hofstede, A.H.M.: Questionnaire-based variability modeling for system configuration. Software and System Modeling 8(2), 251–274 (2009)Lerner, B.S., Christov, S., Osterweil, L.J., Bendraou, R., Kannengiesser, U., Wise, A.: Exception Handling Patterns for Process Modeling. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 36(2), 162–183 (2010)Li, C., Reichert, M., Wombacher, A.: Mining business process variants: Challenges, scenarios, algorithms. Data Knowledge & Engineering 70(5), 409–434 (2011)Marrella, A., Mecella, M., Russo, A.: Featuring automatic adaptivity through workflow enactment and planning. In: Proc. CollaborateCom 2011, pp. 372–381 (2011)Müller, D., Herbst, J., Hammori, M., Reichert, M.: IT support for release management processes in the automotive industry. 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LNCS, vol. 4001, pp. 288–302. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)Smirnov, S., Weidlich, M., Mendling, J., Weske, M.: Object-sensitive action patterns in process model repositories. In: Muehlen, M.z., Su, J. (eds.) BPM 2010 Workshops. LNBIP, vol. 66, pp. 251–263. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)Weber, B., Reichert, M., Rinderle-Ma, S.: Change patterns and change support features - Enhancing flexibility in process-aware information systems. Data Knowledge & Engineering 66, 438–466 (2008)Weber, B., Sadiq, S., Reichert, M.: Beyond rigidity - dynamic process lifecycle support. Computer Science 23, 47–65 (2009)Weber, B., Reichert, M., Reijers, H.A., Mendling, J.: Refactoring large process model repositories. Computers in Industry 62(5), 467–486 (2011