A Framework for Evaluating Model-Driven Self-adaptive Software Systems

In the last few years, Model Driven Development (MDD), Component-based Software Development (CBSD), and context-oriented software have become interesting alternatives for the design and construction of self-adaptive software systems. In general, the ultimate goal of these technologies is to be able to reduce development costs and effort, while improving the modularity, flexibility, adaptability, and reliability of software systems. An analysis of these technologies shows them all to include the principle of the separation of concerns, and their further integration is a key factor to obtaining high-quality and self-adaptable software systems. Each technology identifies different concerns and deals with them separately in order to specify the design of the self-adaptive applications, and, at the same time, support software with adaptability and context-awareness. This research studies the development methodologies that employ the principles of model-driven development in building self-adaptive software systems. To this aim, this article proposes an evaluation framework for analysing and evaluating the features of model-driven approaches and their ability to support software with self-adaptability and dependability in highly dynamic contextual environment. Such evaluation framework can facilitate the software developers on selecting a development methodology that suits their software requirements and reduces the development effort of building self-adaptive software systems. This study highlights the major drawbacks of the propped model-driven approaches in the related works, and emphasise on considering the volatile aspects of self-adaptive software in the analysis, design and implementation phases of the development methodologies. In addition, we argue that the development methodologies should leave the selection of modelling languages and modelling tools to the software developers.Comment: model-driven architecture, COP, AOP, component composition, self-adaptive application, context oriented software developmen

A Framework for Evaluating Model-Driven Self-adaptive Software Systems

In the last few years, Model Driven Development (MDD), Component-based Software Development (CBSD), and context-oriented software have become interesting alternatives for the design and construction of self-adaptive software systems. In general, the ultimate goal of these technologies is to be able to reduce development costs and effort, while improving the modularity, flexibility, adaptability, and reliability of software systems. An analysis of these technologies shows them all to include the principle of the separation of concerns, and their further integration is a key factor to obtaining high-quality and self-adaptable software systems. Each technology identifies different concerns and deals with them separately in order to specify the design of the self-adaptive applications, and, at the same time, support software with adaptability and context-awareness. This research studies the development methodologies that employ the principles of model-driven development in building self-adaptive software systems. To this aim, this article proposes an evaluation framework for analysing and evaluating the features of model-driven approaches and their ability to support software with self-adaptability and dependability in highly dynamic contextual environment. Such evaluation framework can facilitate the software developers on selecting a development methodology that suits their software requirements and reduces the development effort of building self-adaptive software systems. This study highlights the major drawbacks of the propped model-driven approaches in the related works, and emphasise on considering the volatile aspects of self-adaptive software in the analysis, design and implementation phases of the development methodologies. In addition, we argue that the development methodologies should leave the selection of modelling languages and modelling tools to the software developers

Context Oriented Software Middleware

Our middleware approach, Context-Oriented Software Middleware (COSM), supports context-dependent software with self-adaptability and dependability in a mobile computing environment. The COSM-middleware is a generic and platform-independent adaptation engine, which performs a runtime composition of the software's context-dependent behaviours based on the execution contexts. Our middleware distinguishes between the context-dependent and context-independent functionality of software systems. This enables the COSM-middleware to adapt the application behaviour by composing a set of context-oriented components, that implement the context-dependent functionality of the software. Accordingly, the software dependability is achieved by considering the functionality of the COSM-middleware and the adaptation impact/costs. The COSM-middleware uses a dynamic policy-based engine to evaluate the adaptation outputs and verify the fitness of the adaptation output with the application's objectives, goals and the architecture quality attributes. These capabilities are demonstrated through an empirical evaluation of a case study implementation

Towards safe and flexible object adaptation

In this paper, a programming language NextEJ is proposed. NextEJ is based on Epsilon model, which realizes object adaptation to contexts. The novelty of Epsilon model is its ability to make objects be able to freely enter or leave contexts dynamically and belong to multiple contexts at a time. However, such kind of flexibility also easily brings type-unsafety. NextEJ tackles this problem by introduc-ing a new feature called context activation scope. Inside a context activation scope, it is assured that an object is al-ways bound with the role activated so that no method-not-understood errors occur at run-time. Furthermore, context activation scope can be nested so that multiple contexts can be activated at a time. A role instance has a pre-defined field thisContext which refers to its enclosing context instance. In the case of multiple context activations, the reference of thisContext is interpreted as a composite context whose behavior is determined by the order of activations

Electronic Imaging & the Visual Arts. EVA 2014 Florence

Information Technologies of interest for Culture Heritage are presented: multimedia systems, data-bases, data protection, access to digital content, Virtual Galleries. Particular reference is reserved to digital images (Electronic Imaging & the Visual Arts), regarding Cultural Institutions (Museums, Libraries, Palace - Monuments, Archaeological Sites). The International Conference includes the following Sessions: Strategic Issues; EC Projects and Related Networks & Initiatives; 2D - 3D Technologies and Applications; Virtual Galleries - Museums and Related Initiatives; Access to the Culture Information. Three Workshops regard: International Cooperation; Innovation and Enterprise; e.Culture Cloud

ACHIEVING AUTONOMIC SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE USING CASE BASED REASONING

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) enables composition of large and complex computational units out of the available atomic services. However, implementation of SOA, for its dynamic nature, could bring about challenges in terms of service discovery, service interaction, service composition, robustness, etc. In the near future, SOA will often need to dynamically re-configuring and re-organizing its topologies of interactions between the web services because of some unpredictable events, such as crashes or network problems, which will cause service unavailability. Complexity and dynamism of the current and future global network system require service architecture that is capable of autonomously changing its structure and functionality to meet dynamic changes in the requirements and environment with little human intervention. This then needs to motivate the research described throughout this thesis. In this thesis, the idea of introducing autonomy and adapting case-based reasoning into SOA in order to extend the intelligence and capability of SOA is contributed and elaborated. It is conducted by proposing architecture of an autonomic SOA framework based on case-based reasoning and the architectural considerations of autonomic computing paradigm. It is then followed by developing and analyzing formal models of the proposed architecture using Petri Net. The framework is also tested and analyzed through case studies, simulation, and prototype development. The case studies show feasibility to employing case-based reasoning and autonomic computing into SOA domain and the simulation results show believability that it would increase the intelligence, capability, usability and robustness of SOA. It was shown that SOA can be improved to cope with dynamic environment and services unavailability by incorporating case-based reasoning and autonomic computing paradigm to monitor and analyze events and service requests, then to plan and execute the appropriate actions using the knowledge stored in knowledge database

The development of a computer-based information system to inform social work interventions with unaccompanied minors. Relational Social Work

This article describes the development of an information system, built in order to monitor the data gathered in the context of a pilot project for early child protection interventions with unaccompanied minors. The project included multidisciplinary expert teams, that carried out interviews with children and young people from the moment of their arrival on the Italian territory, assessing their strengths and needs. A comprehensive information system was developed with the extensive input of social workers, applying a participatory approach. Pre-existing forms for data collection and social work assessment tools had been analyzed and modified to include specific variables, addressing the unaccompanied minors\u2019 needs. The system included quantitative variables (characteristics of children and families, their journey to Italy and the child welfare interventions) and qualitative data (written professional evaluation). The goal has been the construction of a userfriendly information system, adaptable to other social services working with unaccompanied minors. It can improve the understanding of the phenomenon and support the evaluation of the child protection paths devoted to the