Architecture for Provenance Systems

This document covers the logical and process architectures of provenance systems. The logical architecture identifies key roles and their interactions, whereas the process architecture discusses distribution and security. A fundamental aspect of our presentation is its technology-independent nature, which makes it reusable: the principles that are exposed in this document may be applied to different technologies

The future of management: The NASA paradigm

Prototypes of 21st century management, especially for large scale enterprises, may well be found within the aerospace industry. The space era inaugurated a number of projects of such scope and magnitude that another type of management had to be created to ensure successful achievement. The challenges will be not just in terms of technology and its management, but also human and cultural in dimension. Futurists, students of management, and those concerned with technological administration would do well to review the literature of emerging space management for its wider implications. NASA offers a paradigm, or demonstrated model, of future trends in the field of management at large. More research is needed on issues of leadership for Earth based project in space and space based programs with managers there. It is needed to realize that large scale technical enterprises, such as are undertaken in space, require a new form of management. NASA and other responsible agencies are urged to study excellence in space macromanagement, including the necessary multidisciplinary skills. Two recommended targets are the application of general living systems theory and macromanagement concepts for space stations in the 1990s

Programming patterns and development guidelines for Semantic Sensor Grids (SemSorGrid4Env)

The web of Linked Data holds great potential for the creation of semantic applications that can combine self-describing structured data from many sources including sensor networks. Such applications build upon the success of an earlier generation of 'rapidly developed' applications that utilised RESTful APIs. This deliverable details experience, best practice, and design patterns for developing high-level web-based APIs in support of semantic web applications and mashups for sensor grids. Its main contributions are a proposal for combining Linked Data with RESTful application development summarised through a set of design principles; and the application of these design principles to Semantic Sensor Grids through the development of a High-Level API for Observations. These are supported by implementations of the High-Level API for Observations in software, and example semantic mashups that utilise the API

Software theory change for resilient near-complete specifications

Software evolution and its laws are essential for antifragile system design and development. In this paper we model early-stage perfective and corrective changes to software system architecture in terms of logical operations of expansion and safe contraction on a theory. As a result, we formulate an inference-based notion of property specification resilience for computational systems, intended as resistance to change. The individuated resilient core of a software system is used to characterize adaptability properties

Software theory change for resilient near-complete specifications

Software evolution and its laws are essential for antifragile system design and development. In this paper we model early-stage perfective and corrective changes to software system architecture in terms of logical operations of expansion and safe contraction on a theory. As a result, we formulate an inference-based notion of property specification resilience for computational systems, intended as resistance to change. The individuated resilient core of a software system is used to characterize adaptability properties

An Architecture for Provenance Systems

This document covers the logical and process architectures of provenance systems. The logical architecture identifies key roles and their interactions, whereas the process architecture discusses distribution and security. A fundamental aspect of our presentation is its technology-independent nature, which makes it reusable: the principles that are exposed in this document may be applied to different technologies

MORPH: A Reference Architecture for Configuration and Behaviour Self-Adaptation

An architectural approach to self-adaptive systems involves runtime change of system configuration (i.e., the system's components, their bindings and operational parameters) and behaviour update (i.e., component orchestration). Thus, dynamic reconfiguration and discrete event control theory are at the heart of architectural adaptation. Although controlling configuration and behaviour at runtime has been discussed and applied to architectural adaptation, architectures for self-adaptive systems often compound these two aspects reducing the potential for adaptability. In this paper we propose a reference architecture that allows for coordinated yet transparent and independent adaptation of system configuration and behaviour

THE DESIGN OF KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEMS FOR MANAGING ILL-STRUCTURED SOFTWARE PROJECTS

Current planning and control procedures for large-scale software projects are not sufficiently equipped to deal with changing or imprecise requirements, resource breakdowns, unexpected delays, etc. We propose a solution for managing change in projects, based on a semantic model of the software design and development processes. At the heart of this technique is the formation of islands of project knowledge in a way that facilitates dealing with most design and plan revisions locally. A protocol for interactive change management is presented that advocates need-based formation of coalitions between islands as a means for graceful degradation in the place of strict hierarchical control. The results of initial empirical investigations of the usability of the approach and plans for its continuing evaluation are also reported.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

A Measurement-Driven Process Model For Managing Inconsistent Software Requirements

Inconsistency is a pervasive issue in software engineering. Both general rules of inconsistency management and special case-based approaches to handling inconsistency have recently been considered. In this paper, we present a process model for handling requirements inconsistency within the Viewpoints framework. In this process model, when an inconsistency among viewpoints is detected, a set of candidate proposals for handling inconsistency will be generated using techniques fromMulti-agent automated negotiations. The proposals are then prioritized using an integrated measurement of inconsistencies. The viewpoints involved in the inconsistency will then enter the negotiations by being presented with the candidate proposals and thus selecting an acceptable proposal based on the priorities associated with each candidate proposal. To facilitate usability, in our process, we assume that the natural language requirements statements are first translated into corresponding logical formulas using a translator software. Moreover, the candidate proposals for handling inconsistency are also translated back from formal logic into natural language before being presented for selection