Towards an aspect weaving BPEL engine

This position paper proposes the use of dynamic aspects and the visitor design pattern to obtain a highly configurable and extensible BPEL engine. Using these two techniques, the core of this infrastructural software can be customised to meet new requirements and add features such as debugging, execution monitoring, or changing to another Web Service selection policy. Additionally, it can easily be extended to cope with customer-specific BPEL extensions. We propose the use of dynamic aspects not only on the engine itself but also on the workflow in order to tackle the problems of Web Service hot deployment and hot fixes to long running processes. In this way, composing aWeb Service "on-the-fly" means weaving its choreography interface into the workflow

ImageJ2: ImageJ for the next generation of scientific image data

ImageJ is an image analysis program extensively used in the biological sciences and beyond. Due to its ease of use, recordable macro language, and extensible plug-in architecture, ImageJ enjoys contributions from non-programmers, amateur programmers, and professional developers alike. Enabling such a diversity of contributors has resulted in a large community that spans the biological and physical sciences. However, a rapidly growing user base, diverging plugin suites, and technical limitations have revealed a clear need for a concerted software engineering effort to support emerging imaging paradigms, to ensure the software's ability to handle the requirements of modern science. Due to these new and emerging challenges in scientific imaging, ImageJ is at a critical development crossroads. We present ImageJ2, a total redesign of ImageJ offering a host of new functionality. It separates concerns, fully decoupling the data model from the user interface. It emphasizes integration with external applications to maximize interoperability. Its robust new plugin framework allows everything from image formats, to scripting languages, to visualization to be extended by the community. The redesigned data model supports arbitrarily large, N-dimensional datasets, which are increasingly common in modern image acquisition. Despite the scope of these changes, backwards compatibility is maintained such that this new functionality can be seamlessly integrated with the classic ImageJ interface, allowing users and developers to migrate to these new methods at their own pace. ImageJ2 provides a framework engineered for flexibility, intended to support these requirements as well as accommodate future needs

Tools and Processes for enhanced Product Customization

O fornecimento de um sistema personalizável permite que clientes e parceiros expandam as funcionalidades do produto para abranger as suas necessidades e os seus objetivos específicos. Mas as alterações ou adições de funcionalidades ao sistema-base requerem um profundo conhecimento da sua estrutura e do seu funcionamento, assim como competências técnicas que garantam alterações totalmente funcionais. Com o intuito de minimizar as dificuldades inerentes ao processo de desenvolvimento e teste destas customizações, os fornecedores de software disponibilizam ferramentas e documentação de suporte.O principal foco do presente trabalho consiste na análise de projetos de customização, suas ferramentas e documentação de suporte ao desenvolvimento, para a resolução ou minimização das dificuldades e problemas do processo de customização. Através da definição de uma estratégia de suporte à customização que propõe a extracção de conhecimento como forma de documentação orientada pelos conceitos dos Collective Knowledge Systems. E uma ferramenta que aumenta a simplicidade e a fiabilidade do processo apresentando de uma forma intuitiva ao utilizador a análise do código produzida pelo compilador.O presente trabalho contempla ainda a implementação dessa estratégia de suporte ao processo de customização do Manufacturing Execution System (MES) da Critical Manufacturing (CMF), com vista a validar a sua eficácia.O Critical Manufacturing MES é um sistema de informação personalizável que realiza a gestão das operações em ambientes avançados de fabricação garantindo um elevado desempenho e competitividade. A CMF garante a personalização do sistema para corresponder aos requisitos dos clientes e parceiros, mas a complexidade inerente à oferta de um sistema completo e competitivo implica uma estratégia de apoio à customização que garanta um processo simples, rápido e fiável.Os resultados esperados para o presente trabalho, e consequentes da definição de uma estratégia de apoio à customização de software são: (1) uma ferramenta e documentação de apoio que orientem os clientes e parceiros no seu processo de customização e (2), um aumento da confiança e eficiência dos clientes e parceiros no desenvolvimento das suas personalizações através de um processo mais rápido e fiável. A estratégia de apoio à customização definida procura ser a mais abrangente e genérica possível de forma a facilitar a sua adoção por outras entidades.Providing a customizable system allows customers and partners to expand product functionality to meet their specific needs and goals. But the changes or additions of functionalities to the base system require a deep knowledge of its structure and functionality, as well as technical skills that ensure fully functional modifications. In order to minimize the inherent difficulties of the development and testing process of these customizations, software suppliers provide support tools and documentation.The main focus of the present work is the analysis of customization projects, their support tools and documentation, to solve or minimize the customization process difficulties and problems. Through the definition of a customization support strategy that proposes knowledge extraction as a kind of documentation guided by the Collective Knowledge Systems concepts. And a tool that improves the process simplicity and reliability due to displaying intuitively the compilers code analysis to the user. The present work also covers the implementation of this support strategy to the process of customization of the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) of Critical Manufacturing (CMF), in order to validate its effectiveness.Critical Manufacturing MES is a customizable information system that performs operations management in advanced manufacturing environments while ensuring high performance and competitiveness. CMF provides system customizations to meet customer and partner requirements, but the inherent complexity in offering a complete and competitive system implies a customization support strategy that ensures a simple, fast and reliable process.The expected results for the present work, and following the definition of a software customization support strategy are: (1) a tool and documentation that support and guide customers and partners in their customization process, and (2) an increase in the confidence and efficiency of customers and partners on the development of their customizations through a more rapid and efficient process. The customization support strategy seeks to be as comprehensive and generic as possible to facilitate its adoption by other entities

Deliverable JRA1.1: Evaluation of current network control and management planes for multi-domain network infrastructure

This deliverable includes a compilation and evaluation of available control and management architectures and protocols applicable to a multilayer infrastructure in a multi-domain Virtual Network environment.The scope of this deliverable is mainly focused on the virtualisation of the resources within a network and at processing nodes. The virtualization of the FEDERICA infrastructure allows the provisioning of its available resources to users by means of FEDERICA slices. A slice is seen by the user as a real physical network under his/her domain, however it maps to a logical partition (a virtual instance) of the physical FEDERICA resources. A slice is built to exhibit to the highest degree all the principles applicable to a physical network (isolation, reproducibility, manageability, ...). Currently, there are no standard definitions available for network virtualization or its associated architectures. Therefore, this deliverable proposes the Virtual Network layer architecture and evaluates a set of Management- and Control Planes that can be used for the partitioning and virtualization of the FEDERICA network resources. This evaluation has been performed taking into account an initial set of FEDERICA requirements; a possible extension of the selected tools will be evaluated in future deliverables. The studies described in this deliverable define the virtual architecture of the FEDERICA infrastructure. During this activity, the need has been recognised to establish a new set of basic definitions (taxonomy) for the building blocks that compose the so-called slice, i.e. the virtual network instantiation (which is virtual with regard to the abstracted view made of the building blocks of the FEDERICA infrastructure) and its architectural plane representation. These definitions will be established as a common nomenclature for the FEDERICA project. Other important aspects when defining a new architecture are the user requirements. It is crucial that the resulting architecture fits the demands that users may have. Since this deliverable has been produced at the same time as the contact process with users, made by the project activities related to the Use Case definitions, JRA1 has proposed a set of basic Use Cases to be considered as starting point for its internal studies. When researchers want to experiment with their developments, they need not only network resources on their slices, but also a slice of the processing resources. These processing slice resources are understood as virtual machine instances that users can use to make them behave as software routers or end nodes, on which to download the software protocols or applications they have produced and want to assess in a realistic environment. Hence, this deliverable also studies the APIs of several virtual machine management software products in order to identify which best suits FEDERICA’s needs.Postprint (published version