141,236 research outputs found
Pattern Reification as the Basis for Description-Driven Systems
One of the main factors driving object-oriented software development for
information systems is the requirement for systems to be tolerant to change. To
address this issue in designing systems, this paper proposes a pattern-based,
object-oriented, description-driven system (DDS) architecture as an extension
to the standard UML four-layer meta-model. A DDS architecture is proposed in
which aspects of both static and dynamic systems behavior can be captured via
descriptive models and meta-models. The proposed architecture embodies four
main elements - firstly, the adoption of a multi-layered meta-modeling
architecture and reflective meta-level architecture, secondly the
identification of four data modeling relationships that can be made explicit
such that they can be modified dynamically, thirdly the identification of five
design patterns which have emerged from practice and have proved essential in
providing reusable building blocks for data management, and fourthly the
encoding of the structural properties of the five design patterns by means of
one fundamental pattern, the Graph pattern. A practical example of this
philosophy, the CRISTAL project, is used to demonstrate the use of
description-driven data objects to handle system evolution.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figure
Software engineering and middleware: a roadmap (Invited talk)
The construction of a large class of distributed systems can be simplified by leveraging middleware, which is layered between network operating systems and application components. Middleware resolves heterogeneity and facilitates communication and coordination of distributed components. Existing middleware products enable software engineers to build systems that are distributed across a local-area network. State-of-the-art middleware research aims to push this boundary towards Internet-scale distribution, adaptive and reconfigurable middleware and middleware for dependable and wireless systems. The challenge for software engineering research is to devise notations, techniques, methods and tools for distributed system construction that systematically build and exploit the capabilities that middleware deliver
A survey of agent-oriented methodologies
This article introduces the current agent-oriented methodologies. It discusses what approaches have been followed (mainly extending existing object oriented and knowledge engineering methodologies), the suitability of these approaches for agent modelling, and some conclusions drawn from the survey
On the emergent Semantic Web and overlooked issues
The emergent Semantic Web, despite being in its infancy, has already received a lotof attention from academia and industry. This resulted in an abundance of prototype systems and discussion most of which are centred around the underlying infrastructure. However, when we critically review the work done to date we realise that there is little discussion with respect to the vision of the Semantic Web. In particular, there is an observed dearth of discussion on how to deliver knowledge sharing in an environment such as the Semantic Web in effective and efficient manners. There are a lot of overlooked issues, associated with agents and trust to hidden assumptions made with respect to knowledge representation and robust reasoning in a distributed environment. These issues could potentially hinder further development if not considered at the early stages of designing Semantic Web systems. In this perspectives paper, we aim to help engineers and practitioners of the Semantic Web by raising awareness of these issues
OperA/ALIVE/OperettA
Comprehensive models for organizations must, on the one hand, be able to specify global goals and requirements but, on the other hand, cannot assume that particular actors will always act according to the needs and expectations of the system design. Concepts as organizational rules (Zambonelli 2002), norms and institutions (Dignum and Dignum 2001; Esteva et al. 2002), and social structures (Parunak and Odell 2002) arise from the idea that the effective engineering of organizations needs high-level, actor-independent concepts and abstractions that explicitly define the organization in which agents live (Zambonelli 2002).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
Characterizing traits of coordination
How can one recognize coordination languages and technologies? As this report
shows, the common approach that contrasts coordination with computation is
intellectually unsound: depending on the selected understanding of the word
"computation", it either captures too many or too few programming languages.
Instead, we argue for objective criteria that can be used to evaluate how well
programming technologies offer coordination services. Of the various criteria
commonly used in this community, we are able to isolate three that are strongly
characterizing: black-box componentization, which we had identified previously,
but also interface extensibility and customizability of run-time optimization
goals. These criteria are well matched by Intel's Concurrent Collections and
AstraKahn, and also by OpenCL, POSIX and VMWare ESX.Comment: 11 pages, 3 table
Towards formal models and languages for verifiable Multi-Robot Systems
Incorrect operations of a Multi-Robot System (MRS) may not only lead to
unsatisfactory results, but can also cause economic losses and threats to
safety. These threats may not always be apparent, since they may arise as
unforeseen consequences of the interactions between elements of the system.
This call for tools and techniques that can help in providing guarantees about
MRSs behaviour. We think that, whenever possible, these guarantees should be
backed up by formal proofs to complement traditional approaches based on
testing and simulation.
We believe that tailored linguistic support to specify MRSs is a major step
towards this goal. In particular, reducing the gap between typical features of
an MRS and the level of abstraction of the linguistic primitives would simplify
both the specification of these systems and the verification of their
properties. In this work, we review different agent-oriented languages and
their features; we then consider a selection of case studies of interest and
implement them useing the surveyed languages. We also evaluate and compare
effectiveness of the proposed solution, considering, in particular, easiness of
expressing non-trivial behaviour.Comment: Changed formattin
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