Ontology-based patterns for the integration of business processes and enterprise application architectures

Increasingly, enterprises are using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as an approach to Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). SOA has the potential to bridge the gap between business and technology and to improve the reuse of existing applications and the interoperability with new ones. In addition to service architecture descriptions, architecture abstractions like patterns and styles capture design knowledge and allow the reuse of successfully applied designs, thus improving the quality of software. Knowledge gained from integration projects can be captured to build a repository of semantically enriched, experience-based solutions. Business patterns identify the interaction and structure between users, business processes, and data. Specific integration and composition patterns at a more technical level address enterprise application integration and capture reliable architecture solutions. We use an ontology-based approach to capture architecture and process patterns. Ontology techniques for pattern definition, extension and composition are developed and their applicability in business process-driven application integration is demonstrated

Frameworks: the future of formal software development?

It could be argued that the primary issue to be dealt with in software engineering today is re-use of software. Current software development rarely, if ever, starts from nothing. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the development of specifications. To overcome this problem, various works have attempted to show how specifications can be built using architectural principles. We discuss one such approach in particular, the Architectural Semantics of Open Distributed Processing. We show the limitations of this work with regard to the architecting of specifications and propose a new approach, based on frameworks. To highlight the approach we use the work currently being done in the TOSCA project in its development of a service creation and validation environment for telecommunication services

Early aspects: aspect-oriented requirements engineering and architecture design

This paper reports on the third Early Aspects: Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Architecture Design Workshop, which has been held in Lancaster, UK, on March 21, 2004. The workshop included a presentation session and working sessions in which the particular topics on early aspects were discussed. The primary goal of the workshop was to focus on challenges to defining methodical software development processes for aspects from early on in the software life cycle and explore the potential of proposed methods and techniques to scale up to industrial applications

Designing community care systems with AUML

This paper describes an approach to developing an appropriate agent environment appropriate for use in community care applications. Key to its success is that software designers collaborate with environment builders to provide the levels of cooperation and support required within an integrated agent–oriented community system. Agent-oriented Unified Modeling Language (AUML) is a practical approach to the analysis, design, implementation and management of such an agent-based system, whilst providing the power and expressiveness necessary to support the specification, design and organization of a health care service. The background of an agent-based community care application to support the elderly is described. Our approach to building agent–oriented software development solutions emphasizes the importance of AUML as a fundamental initial step in producing more general agent–based architectures. This approach aims to present an effective methodology for an agent software development process using a service oriented approach, by addressing the agent decomposition, abstraction, and organization characteristics, whilst reducing its complexity by exploiting AUML’s productivity potential. </p

Microservice Transition and its Granularity Problem: A Systematic Mapping Study

Microservices have gained wide recognition and acceptance in software industries as an emerging architectural style for autonomic, scalable, and more reliable computing. The transition to microservices has been highly motivated by the need for better alignment of technical design decisions with improving value potentials of architectures. Despite microservices' popularity, research still lacks disciplined understanding of transition and consensus on the principles and activities underlying "micro-ing" architectures. In this paper, we report on a systematic mapping study that consolidates various views, approaches and activities that commonly assist in the transition to microservices. The study aims to provide a better understanding of the transition; it also contributes a working definition of the transition and technical activities underlying it. We term the transition and technical activities leading to microservice architectures as microservitization. We then shed light on a fundamental problem of microservitization: microservice granularity and reasoning about its adaptation as first-class entities. This study reviews state-of-the-art and -practice related to reasoning about microservice granularity; it reviews modelling approaches, aspects considered, guidelines and processes used to reason about microservice granularity. This study identifies opportunities for future research and development related to reasoning about microservice granularity.Comment: 36 pages including references, 6 figures, and 3 table

A system to support dissemination of knowledge and sharing of experiences in the working environment

In the information era enterprises strive to be productive and efficient. One feature of this goal is to engage their employees in education programmes, help them gain new experiences and knowledge and adapt to an ever-changing working environment. Such programmes require thorough design in order to achieve satisfactory results. Lately, enterprises recognising the role technology can play in the education of their employees, have adopted systems that supplement the traditional educational model with mechanisms that enable the sharing of experiences and knowledge [5]. In this paper we describe an architecture and a system prototype that allows users to search easily for information, interact with colleagues and share experiences, to compose and disseminate best practices and knowledge. The design of this system is based on insights gained from the operation of the Greek Taxation System