Developing modular product family using GeMoCURE within an SME

Companies adopt the strategy of producing variety of products to be competitive and responsive to market. Product variation is becoming an important factor in companies' ability to accurately meet customer requirements. Ever increasing consumer options mean that customers have more choices than ever before which put commercial pressures on companies to continue to diversify. This can be a particular problem within Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) who do not always have the level of resources to meet these requirements. As such, methods are required that provide means for companies to be able to produce a wide range of products at the lowest cost and shortest time. This paper details a new modular product design methodology that provides a focus on developing modular product families. The methodology's function is described and a case study detailed of how it was used within an SME to define the company's product portfolio and create a new Generic Product Function Structure from which a new family of product variants can be developed. The methodology lends itself to modular re-use which has the potential to support rapid development and configuration of product variants

ReCooPla: a DSL for coordination-based reconfiguration of software architectures

In production environments where change is the rule rather than the exception, adaptation of software plays an important role. Such adaptations presuppose dynamic reconfiguration of the system architecture, owever, it is in the static setting (design-phase) that such reconfigurations must be designed and analysed, to reclude erroneous evolutions. Modern software systems, which are built from the coordinated composition of loosely-coupled software components, are naturally adaptable; and coordination specification is, usually, the main reference point to inserting changes in these systems. In this paper, a domain-specific language—referred to as ReCooPLa—is proposed to design reconfigurations that change the coordination structures, so that they are analysed before being applied in run time. Moreover, a reconfiguration engine is introduced, that takes conveniently translated ReCooPLa specifications and applies them to coordination structures.(undefined

Improving Organizational Decision Making Using a SAF-T based Business Intelligence System

Today, companies need to quickly adapt to business changes and react to customers\u27 tendencies and market demands in an unpredictable environment. In this field, the analytical systems represent an important asset that each company should have and use. Data Warehousing Systems (DWS) support companies\u27 analytical needs, however, the development and integration of the data systems is a critical part. Due to specificities of the involved data, each DWS is unique, which compromises the use of reusable components or even the use of pre-built solutions. In this paper, we propose a standard skeleton for a DWS based on Portuguese Audit Tax documents (SAF-T (PT)). These documents represent a standardized procedure for every Portuguese company, providing the necessary data about billing, accounting, and taxation. Thus, they can provide the foundations to use them as a standard data representation to create a DWS that can be posteriorly explored by analytical techniques to generate useful insights

Auto-scaling techniques for cloud-based Complex Event Processing

One key topic in cloud computing is elasticity, which is the ability of the cloud environment to timely adapt the resource assignment along with the workload demand. According to cloud on-demand model, the infrastructure should be able to scale up and down to unpredictable workloads, in order to achieve both a guaranteed service level and cost efficiency. This work addresses the cloud elasticity problem, with particular reference to the Complex Event Processing (CEP) systems. CEP systems are designed to process large volumes of event-driven data streams and continuously provide results with a low latency and in real-time. CEP systems need to adapt to changing query and events loads. Because of the high computational requirements and varying loads, CEP are distributed system and running on cloud infrastructures. In this work we review the cloud computing auto-scaling solutions, and study their suit- ability in the CEP model. We implement some solutions in a CEP prototype and evaluate the experimental results

MOLECULAR DYNAMICS SIMULATION OF DICARBOXYLIC ACID COATED AQUEOUS AEROSOL: STRUCTURE AND PROCESSING OF WATER VAPOR

Low molecular weight dicarboxylic acids constitute a significant fraction of water-soluble organic aerosols in the atmosphere. They have a potential contribution to the formation of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and are involved in a series of chemical reactions occurring in atmosphere. In this work, molecular dynamics simulation method was used to probe the structure and the interfacial properties of the dicarboxylic acid coated aqueous aerosol. Low molecular weight dicarboxylic acids of various chain lengths and water solubility were chosen to coat a water droplet consisting of 2440 water molecules. For malonic acid coated aerosol, the surface acid molecules dissolved into the water core and form an ordered structure due to the hydrophobic interactions. For other nanoaerosols coated with low solubility acids, phase separation between water and acid molecules was observed. To study the water processing of the coated aerosols, the water vapor accommodation factors were calculated

Enterprise modelling framework for dynamic and complex business environment: socio-technical systems perspective

The modern business environment is characterised by dynamism and ambiguity. The causes include global economic change, rapid change requirements, shortened development life cycles and the increasing complexity of information technology and information systems (IT/IS). However, enterprises have been seen as socio-technical systems. The dynamic complex business environment cannot be understood without intensive modelling and simulation. Nevertheless, there is no single description of reality, which has been seen as relative to its context and point of view. Human perception is considered an important determinant for the subjectivist view of reality. Many scholars working in the socio-technical systems and enterprise modelling domains have conceived the holistic sociotechnical systems analysis and design possible using a limited number of procedural and modelling approaches. For instance, the ETHICS and Human-centred design approaches of socio-technical analysis and design, goal-oriented and process-oriented modelling of enterprise modelling perspectives, and the Zachman and DoDAF enterprise architecture frameworks all have limitations that can be improved upon, which have been significantly explained in this thesis. [Continues.

NMR struture determination and MD simultations of membrane peptides and proteins : a peptide derived from H+-V-ATPase subunit alpha, and MscL

H+-V-ATPase est une protéine responsable de la translocation des protons. Les propriétés structurales d'un peptide dérivé de la sous-unité a de H+-V-ATPase, ont été étudiées. La structure dans des micelles de SDS a été déterminée par RMN. Il a été démontré par dichroisme circulaire que le peptide est structuré en feuillet beta dans l'octylglucoside à haut pH, tandis qu'il présente 60\% d'hélice alpha dans le SDS. Ces observations ont été expliquées par des simulations de dynamique moléculaire, qui ont démontré que le peptide est inseré dans la micelle de SDS à haut pH, alors qu'en présence d'octylglucoside il est en interaction avec la surface de la micelle. La structure RMN en combinaison avec les simulations nous a permis d'identifier les residues participant au canal périplasmique. Dans la deuxième partie de la thèse, des essais de préparation d'échantillons du canal mécanosensible de haute conductance (MscL) dans des bicouches orientées de lipides ont été réalisés afin d'étudier cette protéine par RMN du solideThe structural properties of a peptide derived from the proton translocating H+-V-ATPase subunit a were studied. An NMR structure was obtained in SDS micelles. Circular dichroism measurements indicated that the peptide formed a beta-sheet at high pH in octylglucoside, while it was 60% alpha-helical in SDS. These findings were explained using molecular dynamics simulations, which indicated that at high pH the peptide took a transmembrane position in SDS but was located in the interface region in octylglucoside. The combination of the NMR structure and the MD simulations allowed us to identify the residues that line the lumenal proton channe