A case studies approach to the analysis of profiling and framing structures for pervasive information systems

Model-Based/Driven Development (MDD) constitutes an approach to software design and development that potentially contributes to: concepts closer to domain and reduction of semantic gaps; automation and less sensitivity to technological changes; capture of expert knowledge and reuse. The widespread adoption of pervasive technologies as basis for new systems and applications, lead to the need of effectively design pervasive information systems that properly fulfil the goals they were designed for. This paper presents a profiling and framing structure approach for the development of Pervasive Information Systems (PIS). This profiling and framing structure allows the organization of the functionality that can be assigned to computational devices in a system and of the corresponding development structures and models, being. The proposed approach enables a structural approach to PIS development. The paper also presents two case studies that allowed demonstrating the applicability of the approach.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Profiling and framing structures for pervasive information systems development

Pervasive computing is a research field of computing technology that aims to achieve a new computing paradigm. Software engineering has been, since its existence, subject of research and improvement in several areas of interest. Model-Based/Driven Development (MDD) constitutes an approach to software design and development that potentially contributes to: concepts closer to domain and reduction of semantic gaps; automation and less sensitivity to technological changes; capture of expert knowledge and reuse. This paper presents a profiling and framing structure approach for the development of Pervasive Information Systems (PIS). This profiling and framing structure allows the organization of the functionality that can be assigned to computational devices in a system and of the corresponding development structures and models, being. The proposed approach enables a structural approach to PIS development. The paper also presents a case study that allowed demonstrating the applicability of the approach.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Quality-aware model-driven service engineering

Service engineering and service-oriented architecture as an integration and platform technology is a recent approach to software systems integration. Quality aspects ranging from interoperability to maintainability to performance are of central importance for the integration of heterogeneous, distributed service-based systems. Architecture models can substantially influence quality attributes of the implemented software systems. Besides the benefits of explicit architectures on maintainability and reuse, architectural constraints such as styles, reference architectures and architectural patterns can influence observable software properties such as performance. Empirical performance evaluation is a process of measuring and evaluating the performance of implemented software. We present an approach for addressing the quality of services and service-based systems at the model-level in the context of model-driven service engineering. The focus on architecture-level models is a consequence of the black-box character of services

Content-driven design and architecture of E-learning applications

E-learning applications combine content with learning technology systems to support the creation of content and its delivery to the learner. In the future, we can expect the distinction between learning content and its supporting infrastructure to become blurred. Content objects will interact with infrastructure services as independent objects. Our solution to the development of e-learning applications – content-driven design and architecture – is based on content-centric ontological modelling and development of architectures. Knowledge and modelling will play an important role in the development of content and architectures. Our approach integrates content with interaction (in technical and educational terms) and services (the principle organization for a system architecture), based on techniques from different fields, including software engineering, learning design, and knowledge engineering

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

An ontology framework for developing platform-independent knowledge-based engineering systems in the aerospace industry

This paper presents the development of a novel knowledge-based engineering (KBE) framework for implementing platform-independent knowledge-enabled product design systems within the aerospace industry. The aim of the KBE framework is to strengthen the structure, reuse and portability of knowledge consumed within KBE systems in view of supporting the cost-effective and long-term preservation of knowledge within such systems. The proposed KBE framework uses an ontology-based approach for semantic knowledge management and adopts a model-driven architecture style from the software engineering discipline. Its phases are mainly (1) Capture knowledge required for KBE system; (2) Ontology model construct of KBE system; (3) Platform-independent model (PIM) technology selection and implementation and (4) Integration of PIM KBE knowledge with computer-aided design system. A rigorous methodology is employed which is comprised of five qualitative phases namely, requirement analysis for the KBE framework, identifying software and ontological engineering elements, integration of both elements, proof of concept prototype demonstrator and finally experts validation. A case study investigating four primitive three-dimensional geometry shapes is used to quantify the applicability of the KBE framework in the aerospace industry. Additionally, experts within the aerospace and software engineering sector validated the strengths/benefits and limitations of the KBE framework. The major benefits of the developed approach are in the reduction of man-hours required for developing KBE systems within the aerospace industry and the maintainability and abstraction of the knowledge required for developing KBE systems. This approach strengthens knowledge reuse and eliminates platform-specific approaches to developing KBE systems ensuring the preservation of KBE knowledge for the long term

Pattern-Based Development of Domain-Specific Modelling Languages

Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. A. Pescador, A. Garmendia, E. Guerra, J. Sánchez Cuadrado and J. de Lara, "Pattern-based development of Domain-Specific Modelling Languages," Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS), 2015 ACM/IEEE 18th International Conference on, Ottawa, ON, 2015, pp. 166-175. doi: 10.1109/MODELS.2015.7338247Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) promotes the use of models to conduct all phases of software development in an automated way. Models are frequently defined using Domain- Specific Modelling Languages (DSMLs), which many times need to be developed for the domain at hand. However, while constructing DSMLs is a recurring activity in MDE, there is scarce support for gathering, reusing and enacting knowledge for their design and implementation. This forces the development of every new DSML to start from scratch. To alleviate this problem, we propose the construction of DSMLs and their modelling environments aided by patterns which gather knowledge of specific domains, design alternatives, concrete syntax, dynamic semantics and functionality for the modelling environment. They may have associated services, realized via components. Our approach is supported by a tool that enables the construction of DSMLs through the application of patterns, and synthesizes a graphical modelling environment according to them.Work supported by the Spanish MINECO (TIN2011-24139 and TIN2014-52129-R), the R&D programme of the Madrid Region (S2013/ICE-3006), and the EU commission (FP7-ICT-2013-10, #611125)

Designing Reusable Systems that Can Handle Change - Description-Driven Systems : Revisiting Object-Oriented Principles

In the age of the Cloud and so-called Big Data systems must be increasingly flexible, reconfigurable and adaptable to change in addition to being developed rapidly. As a consequence, designing systems to cater for evolution is becoming critical to their success. To be able to cope with change, systems must have the capability of reuse and the ability to adapt as and when necessary to changes in requirements. Allowing systems to be self-describing is one way to facilitate this. To address the issues of reuse in designing evolvable systems, this paper proposes a so-called description-driven approach to systems design. This approach enables new versions of data structures and processes to be created alongside the old, thereby providing a history of changes to the underlying data models and enabling the capture of provenance data. The efficacy of the description-driven approach is exemplified by the CRISTAL project. CRISTAL is based on description-driven design principles; it uses versions of stored descriptions to define various versions of data which can be stored in diverse forms. This paper discusses the need for capturing holistic system description when modelling large-scale distributed systems.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure and 1 table. Accepted by the 9th Int Conf on the Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE'14). Lisbon, Portugal. April 201

An approach to architecture-centric domain-specific modelling and implementation for software development and reuse.

Model-driven development has been considered to be the hope of improving software productivity significantly. However, it has not been achieved even after many years of research and application. Models are only and still used at the analysis and design stage, furthermore, models gradually deviate from system implementation. The thesis integrates domain-specific modelling and web service techniques with model-driven development and proposes a unified approach, SODSMI (Service Oriented executable Domain-Specific Modelling and Implementation), to build the executable domain-specific model and to achieve the target of model-driven development. The approach is organised by domain space at architectural level which is the elementary unit of the domain-specific modelling and implementation framework. The research of SODSMI is made up of three main parts: Firstly, xDSM (eXecutable Domain-Specific Model) is proposed as the core construction for domain-specific modelling. Behaviour scenario is adopted to build the meta-modelling framework for xDSM. Secondly, XDML language (eXecutable Domain-specific Meta-modelling Language) is designed to describe the xDSM meta-model and its application model. Thirdly, DSMEI (Domain-Specific Model Execution Infrastructure) is designed as the execution environment for xDSM. Web services are adopted as the implementation entities mapping to core functions of xDSM so as to achieve the service-oriented domain-specific application. The thesis embodies the core value of model and provides a feasible approach to achieve real model-driven development from modelling to system implementation which makes domain-specific software development and reuse coming true