A design model for Open Distributed Processing systems

This paper proposes design concepts that allow the conception, understanding and development of complex technical structures for open distributed systems. The proposed concepts are related to, and partially motivated by, the present work on Open Distributed Processing (ODP). As opposed to the current ODP approach, the concepts are aimed at supporting a design trajectory with several, related abstraction levels. Simple examples are used to illustrate the proposed concepts

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

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: NL

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: N

What makes industries believe in formal methods

The introduction of formal methods in the design and development departments of an industrial company has far reaching and long lasting consequences. In fact it changes the whole environment of methods, tools and skills that determine the design culture of that company. A decision to replace current design practice by formal methods, therefore, appears a vital one and is not lightly taken. The past has shown that efforts to introduce formal methods in industry has faced a lot of controversy and opposition at various hierarchical levels in companies, resulting in a marginal spread of such methods. This paper revisits the requirements for formal description techniques and identifies some critical success and inhibiting factors associated with the introduction of formal methods in the industrial practice. One of the inhibiting factors is the often encountered lack of appropriateness of the formal model to express and manipulate the design concerns that determine the world of the engineer. This factor motivated our research in the area of architectural and implementation design concepts. The last two sections of this paper report on some results of this research

Predicting Network Attacks Using Ontology-Driven Inference

Graph knowledge models and ontologies are very powerful modeling and re asoning tools. We propose an effective approach to model network attacks and attack prediction which plays important roles in security management. The goals of this study are: First we model network attacks, their prerequisites and consequences using knowledge representation methods in order to provide description logic reasoning and inference over attack domain concepts. And secondly, we propose an ontology-based system which predicts potential attacks using inference and observing information which provided by sensory inputs. We generate our ontology and evaluate corresponding methods using CAPEC, CWE, and CVE hierarchical datasets. Results from experiments show significant capability improvements comparing to traditional hierarchical and relational models. Proposed method also reduces false alarms and improves intrusion detection effectiveness.Comment: 9 page

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

A Rigorous Approach to Relate Enterprise and Computational Viewpoints

Multiviewpoint approaches allow stakeholders to design a system from stakeholder-specific viewpoints. By this, a separation of concerns is achieved, which makes designs more manageable. However, to construct a consistent multiviewpoint design, the relations between viewpoints must be defined precisely, so that the consistency of designs from these viewpoints can be verified. The goal of this paper is to make the consistency rules between (a slightly adapted version of) the RM-ODP enterprise and computational viewpoints more precise and to make checking the consistency between these viewpoints practically applicable. To achieve this goal, we apply a generic framework for relating viewpoints that includes reusable consistency rules. We implemented the consistency rules in a tool to show their applicability

Planning strategically, designing architecturally : a framework for digital library services

In an era of unprecedented technological innovation and evolving user expectations and information seeking behaviour, we are arguably now an online society, with digital services increasingly common and increasingly preferred. As a trusted information provider, libraries are in an advantageous position to respond, but this requires integrated strategic and enterprise architecture planning, for information technology (IT) has evolved from a support role to a strategic role, providing the core management systems, communication networks, and delivery channels of the modern library. Further, IT components do not function in isolation from one another, but are interdependent elements of distributed and multidimensional systems encompassing people, processes, and technologies, which must consider social, economic, legal, organisational, and ergonomic requirements and relationships, as well as being logically sound from a technical perspective. Strategic planning provides direction, while enterprise architecture strategically aligns and holistically integrates business and information system architectures. While challenging, such integrated planning should be regarded as an opportunity for the library to evolve as an enterprise in the digital age, or at minimum, to simply keep pace with societal change and alternative service providers. Without strategy, a library risks being directed by outside forces with independent motivations and inadequate understanding of its broader societal role. Without enterprise architecture, it risks technological disparity, redundancy, and obsolescence. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this conceptual paper provides an integrated framework for strategic and architectural planning of digital library services. The concept of the library as an enterprise is also introduced