Model Based Development of Quality-Aware Software Services

Modelling languages and development frameworks give support for functional and structural description of software architectures. But quality-aware applications require languages which allow expressing QoS as a first-class concept during architecture design and service composition, and to extend existing tools and infrastructures adding support for modelling, evaluating, managing and monitoring QoS aspects. In addition to its functional behaviour and internal structure, the developer of each service must consider the fulfilment of its quality requirements. If the service is flexible, the output quality depends both on input quality and available resources (e.g., amounts of CPU execution time and memory). From the software engineering point of view, modelling of quality-aware requirements and architectures require modelling support for the description of quality concepts, support for the analysis of quality properties (e.g. model checking and consistencies of quality constraints, assembly of quality), tool support for the transition from quality requirements to quality-aware architectures, and from quality-aware architecture to service run-time infrastructures. Quality management in run-time service infrastructures must give support for handling quality concepts dynamically. QoS-aware modeling frameworks and QoS-aware runtime management infrastructures require a common evolution to get their integration

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

Forum Session at the First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC03)

The First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC) was held in Trento, December 15-18, 2003. The focus of the conference ---Service Oriented Computing (SOC)--- is the new emerging paradigm for distributed computing and e-business processing that has evolved from object-oriented and component computing to enable building agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries. Of the 181 papers submitted to the ICSOC conference, 10 were selected for the forum session which took place on December the 16th, 2003. The papers were chosen based on their technical quality, originality, relevance to SOC and for their nature of being best suited for a poster presentation or a demonstration. This technical report contains the 10 papers presented during the forum session at the ICSOC conference. In particular, the last two papers in the report ere submitted as industrial papers

Considerations about quality in model-driven engineering

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11219-016-9350-6The virtue of quality is not itself a subject; it depends on a subject. In the software engineering field, quality means good software products that meet customer expectations, constraints, and requirements. Despite the numerous approaches, methods, descriptive models, and tools, that have been developed, a level of consensus has been reached by software practitioners. However, in the model-driven engineering (MDE) field, which has emerged from software engineering paradigms, quality continues to be a great challenge since the subject is not fully defined. The use of models alone is not enough to manage all of the quality issues at the modeling language level. In this work, we present the current state and some relevant considerations regarding quality in MDE, by identifying current categories in quality conception and by highlighting quality issues in real applications of the model-driven initiatives. We identified 16 categories in the definition of quality in MDE. From this identification, by applying an adaptive sampling approach, we discovered the five most influential authors for the works that propose definitions of quality. These include (in order): the OMG standards (e.g., MDA, UML, MOF, OCL, SysML), the ISO standards for software quality models (e.g., 9126 and 25,000), Krogstie, Lindland, and Moody. We also discovered families of works about quality, i.e., works that belong to the same author or topic. Seventy-three works were found with evidence of the mismatch between the academic/research field of quality evaluation of modeling languages and actual MDE practice in industry. We demonstrate that this field does not currently solve quality issues reported in industrial scenarios. The evidence of the mismatch was grouped in eight categories, four for academic/research evidence and four for industrial reports. These categories were detected based on the scope proposed in each one of the academic/research works and from the questions and issues raised by real practitioners. We then proposed a scenario to illustrate quality issues in a real information system project in which multiple modeling languages were used. For the evaluation of the quality of this MDE scenario, we chose one of the most cited and influential quality frameworks; it was detected from the information obtained in the identification of the categories about quality definition for MDE. We demonstrated that the selected framework falls short in addressing the quality issues. Finally, based on the findings, we derive eight challenges for quality evaluation in MDE projects that current quality initiatives do not address sufficiently.F.G, would like to thank COLCIENCIAS (Colombia) for funding this work through the Colciencias Grant call 512-2010. This work has been supported by the Gene-ralitat Valenciana Project IDEO (PROMETEOII/2014/039), the European Commission FP7 Project CaaS (611351), and ERDF structural funds.Giraldo-Velásquez, FD.; España Cubillo, S.; Pastor López, O.; Giraldo, WJ. (2016). Considerations about quality in model-driven engineering. Software Quality Journal. 1-66. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-016-9350-6S166(1985). Iso information processing—documentation symbols and conventions for data, program and system flowcharts, program network charts and system resources charts. ISO 5807:1985(E) (pp. 1–25).(2011). Iso/iec/ieee systems and software engineering – architecture description. 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In 2014 IEEE Eighth International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS) (pp. 1–12).Giraldo, F.D., España, S., & Pastor, O. (2016). Evidences of the mismatch between industry and academy on modelling language quality evaluation. arXiv: 1606.02025 .González, C., & Cabot, J. (2014). Formal verification of static software models in mde: a systematic review. Information and Software Technology, 56(8), 821–838. cited By (since 1996)0.González, C.A., Büttner, F., Clarisó, R., & Cabot, J. (2012). Emftocsp: a tool for the lightweight verification of emf models. pages 44–50. Affiliation: cole des Mines de Nantes, INRIA, LINA, Nantes, France; Affiliation: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. Cited By (since 1996):1.Gorschek, T., Tempero, E., & Angelis, L. (2014). On the use of software design models in software development practice: an empirical investigation. Journal of Systems and Software, 95(0), 176– 193.Goulão, M., Amaral, V., & Mernik, M. (2016). 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In Nierstrasz, O., Whittle, J., Harel, D., & Reggio, G. (Eds.) Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems, volume 4199 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science (pp. 27–41). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.Lange, C.F.J., & Chaudron, M.R.V. (2006). Effe

Reverse engineering in construction

Recently a great deal of research into construction IT has been completed, and this is ongoing to improve efficiency and quality in the construction sector. The new innovation of 3D laser scanning is aimed at being used to improve the efficiency and quality of construction projects, such as maintenance of buildings or group of buildings that are going to be renovated for new services. The 3D laser scanner will be integrated with other VR tools such as GIS solutions and workbench for visualisation, analysis and interaction with a building VR model. An integration strategy is proposed for an Ordnance Survey map of the area and 3D model created by means of the laser scanner. The integrated model will then be transferred to the VR workbench in order to visualise, interact and analyse the interested buildings on purpose

Advanced Techniques for Assets Maintenance Management

16th IFAC Symposium on Information Control Problems in Manufacturing INCOM 2018 Bergamo, Italy, 11–13 June 2018. Edited by Marco Macchi, László Monostori, Roberto PintoThe aim of this paper is to remark the importance of new and advanced techniques supporting decision making in different business processes for maintenance and assets management, as well as the basic need of adopting a certain management framework with a clear processes map and the corresponding IT supporting systems. Framework processes and systems will be the key fundamental enablers for success and for continuous improvement. The suggested framework will help to define and improve business policies and work procedures for the assets operation and maintenance along their life cycle. The following sections present some achievements on this focus, proposing finally possible future lines for a research agenda within this field of assets management

Managing healthcare workflows in a multi-agent system environment

Whilst Multi-Agent System (MAS) architectures appear to offer a more flexible model for designers and developers of complex, collaborative information systems, implementing real-world business processes that can be delegated to autonomous agents is still a relatively difficult task. Although a range of agent tools and toolkits exist, there still remains the need to move the creation of models nearer to code generation, in order that the development path be more rigorous and repeatable. In particular, it is essential that complex organisational process workflows are captured and expressed in a way that MAS can successfully interpret. Using a complex social care system as an exemplar, we describe a technique whereby a business process is captured, expressed, verified and specified in a suitable format for a healthcare MAS.</p