Managing Evolving Business Workflows through the Capture of Descriptive Information

Business systems these days need to be agile to address the needs of a changing world. In particular the discipline of Enterprise Application Integration requires business process management to be highly reconfigurable with the ability to support dynamic workflows, inter-application integration and process reconfiguration. Basing EAI systems on model-resident or on a so-called description-driven approach enables aspects of flexibility, distribution, system evolution and integration to be addressed in a domain-independent manner. Such a system called CRISTAL is described in this paper with particular emphasis on its application to EAI problem domains. A practical example of the CRISTAL technology in the domain of manufacturing systems, called Agilium, is described to demonstrate the principles of model-driven system evolution and integration. The approach is compared to other model-driven development approaches such as the Model-Driven Architecture of the OMG and so-called Adaptive Object Models.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures. Presented at the eCOMO'2003 4th Int. Workshop on Conceptual Modeling Approaches for e-Busines

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

Middleware and Services for Dynamic Adaptive Neural Network Arrays

Dynamic Adaptive Neural Network Arrays (DANNAs) are neuromorphic systems that exhibit spiking behaviors and can be designed using evolutionary optimization. Array elements are rapidly reconfigurable and can function as either neurons or synapses with programmable interconnections and parameters. Visualization applications can examine DANNA element connections, parameters, and functionality, and evolutionary optimization applications can utilize DANNA to speedup neural network simulations. To facilitate interactions with DANNAs from these applications, we have developed a language-agnostic application programming interface (API) that abstracts away low-level communication details with a DANNA and provides a high-level interface for reprogramming and controlling a DANNA. The library has also been designed in modules in order to adapt to future changes in the design of DANNA, including changes to the DANNA element design, DANNA communication protocol, and connection. In addition to communicating with DANNAs, it is also beneficial for applications to store networks with known functionality. Hence, a Representational State Transfer (REST) API with a MongoDB database back-end has been developed to encourage the collection and exploration of networks

QuiiQ automation foundation

Tese de mestrado. Engenharia Informática. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

Conceptualizing a framework for cyber-physical systems of systems development and deployment

ABSTRACT Cyber-physical systems (CPS) refer to the next generation of embedded ICT systems that are interconnected, collaborative and that provide users and businesses with a wide range of smart applications and services. Software in CPS applications ranges from small systems to large systems, aka. Systems of Systems (SoS), such as smart grids and cities. CPSoS require managing massive amounts of data, being aware of their emerging behavior, and scaling out to progressively evolve and add new systems. Cloud computing supports processing and storing massive amounts of data, hosting and delivering services, and configuring selfprovisioned resources. Therefore, cloud computing is the natural candidate to solve CPSoS needs. However, the diversity of platforms and the low-level cloud programming models make difficult to find a common solution for the development and deployment of CPSoS. This paper presents the architectural foundations of a cloud-centric framework for automating the development and deployment of CPSoS service applications to converge towards a common open service platform for CPSoS applications. This framework relies on the well-known qualities of the microservices architecture style, the autonomic computing paradigm, and the model-driven software development approach. Its implementation and validation is on-going at two European and national projects

A Generic Network and System Management Framework

Networks and distributed systems have formed the basis of an ongoing communications revolution that has led to the genesis of a wide variety of services. The constantly increasing size and complexity of these systems does not come without problems. In some organisations, the deployment of Information Technology has reached a state where the benefits from downsizing and rightsizing by adding new services are undermined by the effort required to keep the system running. Management of networks and distributed systems in general has a straightforward goal: to provide a productive environment in which work can be performed effectively. The work required for management should be a small fraction of the total effort. Most IT systems are still managed in an ad hoc style without any carefully elaborated plan. In such an environment the success of management decisions depends totally on the qualification and knowledge of the administrator. The thesis provides an analysis of the state of the art in the area of Network and System Management and identifies the key requirements that must be addressed for the provisioning of Integrated Management Services. These include the integration of the different management related aspects (i.e. integration of heterogeneous Network, System and Service Management). The thesis then proposes a new framework, INSMware, for the provision of Management Services. It provides a fundamental basis for the realisation of a new approach to Network and System Management. It is argued that Management Systems can be derived from a set of pre-fabricated and reusable Building Blocks that break up the required functionality into a number of separate entities rather than being developed from scratch. It proposes a high-level logical model in order to accommodate the range of requirements and environments applicable to Integrated Network and System Management that can be used as a reference model. A development methodology is introduced that reflects principles of the proposed approach, and provides guidelines to structure the analysis, design and implementation phases of a management system. The INSMware approach can further be combined with the componentware paradigm for the implementation of the management system. Based on these principles, a prototype for the management of SNMP systems has been implemented using industry standard middleware technologies. It is argued that development of a management system based on Componentware principles can offer a number of benefits. INSMware Components may be re-used and system solutions will become more modular and thereby easier to construct and maintain