Empirical Validation of Cyber-Foraging Architectural Tactics for Surrogate Provisioning

Background Cyber-foraging architectural tactics are used to build mobile applications that leverage proximate, intermediate cloud surrogates for computation offload and data staging. Compared to direct access to cloud resources, the use of intermediate surrogates improves system qualities such as response time, energy efficiency, and resilience. However, the state-of-the-art mostly focuses on introducing new architectural tactics rather than quantitatively comparing the existing tactics, which can help software architects and software engineers with new insights on each tactic. Aim Our work aims at empirically evaluating the architectural tactics for surrogate provisioning, specifically with respect to resilience and energy efficiency. Method We follow a systematic experimentation framework to collect relevant data on Static Surrogate Provisioning and Dynamic Surrogate Provisioning tactics. Our experimentation approach can be reused for validation of other cyber-foraging tactics. We perform statistical analysis to support our hypotheses, as compared to baseline measurements with no cyber-foraging tactics deployed. Results Our findings show that Static Surrogate Provisioning tactics provide higher resilience than Dynamic Surrogate Provisioning tactics for runtime environmental changes. Both surrogate provisioning tactics perform with no significant difference with respect to their energy efficiency. We observe that the overhead of the runtime optimization algorithm is similar for both tactic types. Conclusions The presented quantitative evidence on the impact of different tactics empowers software architects and software engineers with the ability to make more conscious design decisions. This contribution, as a starting point, emphasizes the use of quantifiable metrics to make better-informed trade-offs between desired quality attributes. Our next step is to focus on the impact of runtime programmable infrastructure on the quality of cyber-foraging systems

Architecture design decision maps for software sustainability

In spite of the exciting hype around sustainability, we are very much lacking suitable instruments to design software-intensive systems that are sustainable and enable sustainability goals. To fill this gap, we advocate the treatment of sustainability as a software quality property and defined a software sustainability assessment method that helps to make sustainability-driven design decisions. The method essentially relies on the definition of so-called ``decision maps'', i.e. views aimed at framing the architecture design concerns around the four sustainability dimensions mentioned above - technical, economic, social and environmental sustainability. In this context, this paper presents the notion of decision map. We then use a number of illustrative examples extracted from industrial projects, to summarize our lessons learned and reflections with general observations and future research directions, with the goal to spark a discussion in the research community

The analysis of the tools for program intelligibility variability conditioned by energy efficiency of execution

У овој докторској дисертацији анализиран је утицај једне од техника заштите софтвера, позната као маскирање (енг. obfuscation), на енергетску ефикасност извршавања кода. Циљ рада је да проучи колико овакви захвати утичу на промену профила потрошње електричне енергије, односно рангирање алата за промену разумљивости програма на основу енергетског профила за чије генерисање је развијена програмска подршка. Тестирање је реализовано коришћењем различитих комерцијалних алата над релевантним тест сценаријима и резултати су приказани уз одговарајућу анализу.U ovoj doktorskoj disertaciji analiziran je uticaj jedne od tehnika zaštite softvera, poznata kao maskiranje (eng. obfuscation), na energetsku efikasnost izvršavanja koda. Cilj rada je da prouči koliko ovakvi zahvati utiču na promenu profila potrošnje električne energije, odnosno rangiranje alata za promenu razumljivosti programa na osnovu energetskog profila za čije generisanje je razvijena programska podrška. Testiranje je realizovano korišćenjem različitih komercijalnih alata nad relevantnim test scenarijima i rezultati su prikazani uz odgovarajuću analizu.This doctoral dissertation analyze the influence of one of the software protection techniques known as obfuscation, to the power efficiency of code obfuscation. The aim of the dissertation is to study the effect of these techniques on the change of power profile consumption, i.e., ranking of tools for changing the program intelligibility based on energy profile for the generation of witch a program support has been developed. The testing is realized by using various commercial software for relevant test scenarious and the results are presented with the corresponding analysis