Specification of coordination behaviors in software architecture using the Reo coordination language

One of the key goals of a software architecture is to help application designers analyze a software system at a higher level of abstraction than implementation. Software architects often use architecture description languages (ADLs) and their supporting tools to specify software architectures. Existing ADLs often lack formal foundations for design, analysis and reconfiguration of software architectures. The Reo language has a strong formal basis and promotes loose coupling, distribution, mobility, exogenous coordination, and dynamic reconfigurability. This thesis focus on assessing the Reo coordination language as an ADL by doing the following work: a) specify a distributed meeting scheduling system using the Reo coordination language; b) assess the Reo coordination language as an ADL using an existing metho

Preface: Special issue on Foundations of Coordination Languages and Software Architectures (selected papers from FOCLASA'09)

International audienceThis issue contains extended versions of selected papers from the 8th International Workshop on the Foundations of Coordination Languages and Software Architectures (FOCLASA'09)

Special Section on Foundations of Coordination Languages and Software Architectures (Selected Papers from FOCLASA'10)

International audienceThis section contains extended versions of selected papers from the 9th International Workshop on the Foundations of Coordination Languages and Software Architectures (FOCLASA'10)

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

Proceedings of International Workshop "Global Computing: Programming Environments, Languages, Security and Analysis of Systems"

According to the IST/ FET proactive initiative on GLOBAL COMPUTING, the goal is to obtain techniques (models, frameworks, methods, algorithms) for constructing systems that are flexible, dependable, secure, robust and efficient. The dominant concerns are not those of representing and manipulating data efficiently but rather those of handling the co-ordination and interaction, security, reliability, robustness, failure modes, and control of risk of the entities in the system and the overall design, description and performance of the system itself. Completely different paradigms of computer science may have to be developed to tackle these issues effectively. The research should concentrate on systems having the following characteristics: • The systems are composed of autonomous computational entities where activity is not centrally controlled, either because global control is impossible or impractical, or because the entities are created or controlled by different owners. • The computational entities are mobile, due to the movement of the physical platforms or by movement of the entity from one platform to another. • The configuration varies over time. For instance, the system is open to the introduction of new computational entities and likewise their deletion. The behaviour of the entities may vary over time. • The systems operate with incomplete information about the environment. For instance, information becomes rapidly out of date and mobility requires information about the environment to be discovered. The ultimate goal of the research action is to provide a solid scientific foundation for the design of such systems, and to lay the groundwork for achieving effective principles for building and analysing such systems. This workshop covers the aspects related to languages and programming environments as well as analysis of systems and resources involving 9 projects (AGILE , DART, DEGAS , MIKADO, MRG, MYTHS, PEPITO, PROFUNDIS, SECURE) out of the 13 founded under the initiative. After an year from the start of the projects, the goal of the workshop is to fix the state of the art on the topics covered by the two clusters related to programming environments and analysis of systems as well as to devise strategies and new ideas to profitably continue the research effort towards the overall objective of the initiative. We acknowledge the Dipartimento di Informatica and Tlc of the University of Trento, the Comune di Rovereto, the project DEGAS for partially funding the event and the Events and Meetings Office of the University of Trento for the valuable collaboration

Ontology-based composition and matching for dynamic cloud service coordination

Recent cross-organisational software service offerings, such as cloud computing, create higher integration needs. In particular, services are combined through brokers and mediators, solutions to allow individual services to collaborate and their interaction to be coordinated are required. The need to address dynamic management - caused by cloud and on-demand environments - can be addressed through service coordination based on ontology-based composition and matching techniques. Our solution to composition and matching utilises a service coordination space that acts as a passive infrastructure for collaboration where users submit requests that are then selected and taken on by providers. We discuss the information models and the coordination principles of such a collaboration environment in terms of an ontology and its underlying description logics. We provide ontology-based solutions for structural composition of descriptions and matching between requested and provided services

Architecture Diagrams: A Graphical Language for Architecture Style Specification

Architecture styles characterise families of architectures sharing common characteristics. We have recently proposed configuration logics for architecture style specification. In this paper, we study a graphical notation to enhance readability and easiness of expression. We study simple architecture diagrams and a more expressive extension, interval architecture diagrams. For each type of diagrams, we present its semantics, a set of necessary and sufficient consistency conditions and a method that allows to characterise compositionally the specified architectures. We provide several examples illustrating the application of the results. We also present a polynomial-time algorithm for checking that a given architecture conforms to the architecture style specified by a diagram.Comment: In Proceedings ICE 2016, arXiv:1608.0313

Challenging the Computational Metaphor: Implications for How We Think

This paper explores the role of the traditional computational metaphor in our thinking as computer scientists, its influence on epistemological styles, and its implications for our understanding of cognition. It proposes to replace the conventional metaphor--a sequence of steps--with the notion of a community of interacting entities, and examines the ramifications of such a shift on these various ways in which we think