Resolving Architectural Mismatches of COTS Through Architectural Reconciliation

The integration of COTS components into a system under development entails architectural mismatches. These have been tackled, so far, at the component level, through component adaptation techniques, but they also must be tackled at an architectural level of abstraction. In this paper we propose an approach for resolving architectural mismatches, with the aid of architectural reconciliation. The approach consists of designing and subsequently reconciling two architectural models, one that is forward-engineered from the requirements and another that is reverse-engineered from the COTS-based implementation. The final reconciled model is optimally adapted both to the requirements and to the actual COTS-based implementation. The contribution of this paper lies in the application of architectural reconciliation in the context of COTS-based software development. Architectural modeling is based upon the UML 2.0 standard, while the reconciliation is performed by transforming the two models, with the help of architectural design decisions.

A web-based teaching/learning environment to support collaborative knowledge construction in design

A web-based application has been developed as part of a recently completed research which proposed a conceptual framework to collect, analyze and compare different design experiences and to construct structured representations of the emerging knowledge in digital architectural design. The paper introduces the theoretical and practical development of this application as a teaching/learning environment which has significantly contributed to the development and testing of the ideas developed throughout the research. Later in the paper, the application of BLIP in two experimental (design) workshops is reported and evaluated according to the extent to which the application facilitates generation, modification and utilization of design knowledge

Cracks in the Glass: The Emergence of a New Image Typology from the Spatio-temporal Schisms of the 'Filmic' Virtual Reality Panorama

Virtual Reality Panoramas have fascinated me for some time; their interactive nature affording a spectatorial engagement not evident within other forms of painting or digital imagery. This interactivity is not generally linear as is evident in animation or film, nor is the engagement with the image reduced to the physical or visual border of the image, as its limit is never visible to the viewer in its entirety. Further, the time taken to interact and navigate across the Virtual Reality panorama’s surface is not reflected or recorded within the observed image. The procedural construction of the Virtual Reality panorama creates an a-temporal image event that denies the durée of its own index and creation. This is particularly evident in the cinematic experiments conducted by Jeffrey Shaw in the 1990s that ‘spatialised’ time and image through the fusion of the formal typology of the Panorama together with the cinematic moving-image, creating a new kind of image technology. The incorporation of the space enclosed by the panorama’s drum, into the conception and execution of the cinematic event, reveals an interesting conceptual paradox. Space and time infinitely and autonomously repeat upon each other as the linear trajectory of the singular cinematic shot is interrupted by a ‘time schism’ on the surface of the panorama. This paper explores what this conceptual paradox means to the evolution of emerging image-technologies and how Shaw’s ‘mixed-reality’ installation reveals a wholly new image typology that presents techniques and concepts though which to record, interrogate, and represent time and space in Architecture

Architectural Adequacy and Evolutionary Adequacy as Characteristics of a Candidate Informational Money

For money-like informational commodities the notions of architectural adequacy and evolutionary adequacy are proposed as the first two stages of a moneyness maturity hierarchy. Then three classes of informational commodities are distinguished: exclusively informational commodities, strictly informational commodities, and ownable informational commodities. For each class money-like instances of that commodity class, as well as monies of that class may exist. With the help of these classifications and making use of previous assessments of Bitcoin, it is argued that at this stage Bitcoin is unlikely ever to evolve into a money. Assessing the evolutionary adequacy of Bitcoin is perceived in terms of a search through its design hull for superior design alternatives. An extensive comparison is made between the search for superior design alternatives to Bitcoin and the search for design alternatives to a specific and unconventional view on the definition of fractions.Comment: 25 page

Towards an Understanding of the Analogical and Digital interface in Architecture by Means of Communication and Cultural Theory

In Siegfried Giedion's last text entitled, Architecture and the Phenomena of Transition, he traces the evolution of Western architectural space-conceptions from Antiquity to Modernity. In turn, Gideon's work influenced the cultural theorist Marshal McLuhan (McLuhan 1962, 44), who developed a media-structuralist account of the Western evolution of space-conceptions but, in terms of media effects on human senses, sensibility and consciousness. McLuhan referred to the pre-Socratic perception of space as ‘acoustic space', which engages perception synesthetically (a ratio of all the senses in interplay) at a human scale; i.e. as an embodied consciousness. However, since Antiquity, a Western space-conception evolved which he describes as ‘visual space'; the result of the abstraction of the eye from synesthesia or the dominance of the eye over the other senses. This sensibility, or spatial bias, was conditioned by the evolution of the phonetic alphabet environment (a medium that extends the eye) which fostered a progressively analytical mechanical worldview in the West. However, during the 19th century, with the invention of electric communications (a medium that extends the nervous system) and, eventually with the emergence of wired connectivity and information technology, McLuhan again characterised our post-modern space-conception as ‘neo-acoustic'; i.e. a digitally amplified space and concomitantly extended perception characterized as virtual synesthesia. Post-Modern neo-acoustic space is a side-effect of the electronic extension of our nervous system and brain which constitutes the environmental surround facilitating human communication within the ‘Global Village'. Today, we more and more live in a networked world (wired and wireless) sustaining individual and collective consciousness by means of disembodied images, or virtual simulacra; that is, a social reality in which consciousness is constituted of sensory images generated in real-time communication of information processing and programming. In particular, McLuhan's media studies enhance one's awareness of the cultural formation of spatial biases conditioned by technological environments. During our pre-alphabet (acoustic space) and phonetic alphabet (visual space) traditions, these respective cultures fostered conceptions of architectural space and form grounded in physical or analogue extensions of the human body. With the emergence of an electronic neo-acoustic space, or cyberspace, whereby synaesthesia is mediated digitally at the scale of a global surround, our body image, or paper identity tends towards the discorporeal. We are living between dual or hybrid influences of embodied and discarnate acoustic spaces, which foster new conceptions and approaches in architectural design. Architectural conceptions of visual space, acoustic space and neo-acoustic or cyberspace will be explored in this paper

Introduction to the special issue : civil society in Ukraine : building on Euromaidan legacy

The idea of this Special Issue appeared in early 2014, when the heat of the fire on Kyiv’s Independence Square had not fully cooled down and when many civic activists and newborn volunteers had turned their ceaseless energy to yet another fire first in Crimea and then in Eastern Ukraine. The events that seemingly put the state of Ukraine on the brink of its very existence were evolving too fast, but civil society’s response to them was no less prompt and adaptive. Volunteers and activists were trying on new roles each day as they were helping those escaping persecution, repression and hostilities, equipping and maintaining those who fought with weapons or joining their ranks, developing reform agenda and drafting legislative proposals. What seemed astounding back then, and still does today, was how those thousands of volunteers and millions of “ordinary citizens” who mobilized to support new civic initiatives took over the functions of the weak and nearly collapsed state eroded by corruption, nepotism, the neglect of its citizens and of the country’s national interests. Challenging a post-Soviet monster disguised behind the mask of electoral democracy and market economy, citizens were bringing in a new social contract based on trust and solidarity on which a new state could be built. The speed of events and the scale of civil society engagement precluded any long-term comprehensive analysis, yet researchers’ zeal to reflect upon what looked as a tectonic move in Ukraine’s political and social development took over. At first, our idea was to co-author an article examining civil society’s role in a post-Euromaidan Ukraine, but soon enough the task became too big. The initial idea thus evolved into producing an edited volume with different authors looking into their respective fields of civil society in Ukraine in order to grasp at least a small portion of change. We are grateful to many researchers in Ukraine and abroad who responded to our call for papers in May 2016 and who contributed their ideas to this Special Issue. Some of these ideas eventually turned into articles and we would like to give special thanks to those colleagues who bore with us through rounds of revisions till the very end of this journey. Their articles made this Special Issue happen. We are also grateful to the Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal for hosting this Special Issue and for supporting our initiative from the early stages through review and editing to the publication process. We would like to thank UACES – the Academic Association for Contemporary European Studies, UESA – the Ukrainian European Studies Association and the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence in European Studies at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy for their financial and logistical support in organizing the Final Conference of this project, which took place at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy on November 21, 2017, the fourth anniversary of the Euromaidan. We are also enormously grateful to all the participants of the Conference for their remarks, comments and questions. Finally, we would like to extend our gratitude to the Kyiv office of Baker McKenzie, which has provided financial support to the publication of this Issue

From Monolith to Microservices: A Classification of Refactoring Approaches

While the recently emerged Microservices architectural style is widely discussed in literature, it is difficult to find clear guidance on the process of refactoring legacy applications. The importance of the topic is underpinned by high costs and effort of a refactoring process which has several other implications, e.g. overall processes (DevOps) and team structure. Software architects facing this challenge are in need of selecting an appropriate strategy and refactoring technique. One of the most discussed aspects in this context is finding the right service granularity to fully leverage the advantages of a Microservices architecture. This study first discusses the notion of architectural refactoring and subsequently compares 10 existing refactoring approaches recently proposed in academic literature. The approaches are classified by the underlying decomposition technique and visually presented in the form of a decision guide for quick reference. The review yielded a variety of strategies to break down a monolithic application into independent services. With one exception, most approaches are only applicable under certain conditions. Further concerns are the significant amount of input data some approaches require as well as limited or prototypical tool support.Comment: 13 pages, 4 tables, 2 figures, Software Engineering Aspects of Continuous Development and New Paradigms of Software Production and Deployment, First International Workshop, DEVOPS 2018, Chateau de Villebrumier, France, March 5-6, 2018, Revised Selected Paper