Exploring adaptation & self-adaptation in autonomic computing systems

This panel paper sets out to discuss what self-adaptation means, and to explore the extent to which current autonomic systems exhibit truly self-adaptive behaviour. Many of the currently cited examples are clearly adaptive, but debate remains as to what extent they are simply following prescribed adaptation rules within preset bounds, and to what extent they have the ability to truly learn new behaviour. Is there a standard test that can be applied to differentiate? Is adaptive behaviour sufficient anyway? Other autonomic computing issues are also discussed

Identification of Technology Integration Challenges at Two Global Automotive OEMs

Platform design has been firmly established in the automotive industry as a strategy to provide wider product variety while maintaining cost effective production. But this strategy can struggle to keep up with the pace and nature of emerging technologies. This paper reviews the existing approaches to modelling product platforms, and showcases the challenges at OEMs introducing new technological innovations in their platforms. A gap is identified in the methods to assess the ability of existing platforms to integrate new technologies whenever they become available

Collaborative networks: A pillar of digital transformation

UID/EEA/00066/2019 POCI-01-0247-FEDER-033926The notion of digital transformation encompasses the adoption and integration of a variety of new information and communication technologies for the development of more efficient, flexible, agile, and sustainable solutions for industrial systems. Besides technology, this process also involves new organizational forms and leads to new business models. As such, this work addresses the contribution of collaborative networks to such a transformation. An analysis of the collaborative aspects required in the various dimensions of the 4th industrial revolution is conducted based on a literature survey and experiences gained from several research projects. A mapping between the identified collaboration needs and research results that can be adopted from the collaborative networks area is presented. Furthermore, several new research challenges are identified and briefly characterized.publishe

Phenolic profiling, biological activities and in silico studies of Acacia tortilis (Forssk.) Hayne ssp. raddiana extracts

The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support through national funds FCT/MCTES to CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020). L. Barros and R. C. Calhelha thank the national funding by the FCT, P.I., through the institutional scientific employment program-contract for their contracts. M. Carocho also thanks the project ValorNatural for his research contract. The authors are also grateful to the FEDER-Interreg España- Portugal programme for financial support through the project 0377_Iberphenol_6_E.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Engineering of next generation cyber-physical automation system architectures

Cyber-Physical-Systems (CPS) enable flexible and reconfigurable realization of automation system architectures, utilizing distributed control architectures with non-hierarchical modules linked together through different communication systems. Several control system architectures have been developed and validated in the past years by research groups. However, there is still a lack of implementation in industry. The intention of this work is to provide a summary of current alternative control system architectures that could be applied in industrial automation domain as well as a review of their commonalities. The aim is to point out the differences between the traditional centralized and hierarchical architectures to discussed ones, which rely on decentralized decision-making and control. Challenges and impacts that industries and engineers face in the process of adopting decentralized control architectures are discussed, analysing the obstacles for industrial acceptance and the new necessary interdisciplinary engineering skills. Finally, an outlook of possible mitigation and migration actions required to implement the decentralized control architectures is addressed.The authors would like to thank the European Commission for the support, and the partners of the EU Horizon 2020 project PERFoRM (2016b) for the fruitful discussions. The PERFoRM project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 680435.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Feature-based methodology for supporting architecture refactoring and maintenance of long-life software systems

Zusammenfassung Langlebige Software-Systeme durchlaufen viele bedeutende Veraenderungen im Laufe ihres Lebenszyklus, um der Weiterentwicklung der Problemdomaenen zu folgen. Normalerweise ist es schwierig eine Software-Systemarchitektur den schnellen Weiterentwicklungen einer Problemdomaene anzupassen und mit der Zeit wird der Unterschied zwischen der Problemdomaene und der Software-Systemarchitektur zu groß, um weitere Softwareentwicklung sinnvoll fortzufuehren. Fristgerechte Refactorings der Systemarchitektur sind notwendig, um dieses Problem zu vermeiden. Aufgrund des verhaeltnismaeßig hohen Gefahrenpotenzials und des zeitlich stark verzoegerten Nutzens von Refactorings, werden diese Maßnahmen normalerweise bis zum letztmoeglichen Zeitpunkt hinausgeschoben. In der Regel ist das Management abgeneigt Architektur-Refactorings zu akzeptieren, außer diese sind absolut notwendig. Die bevorzugte Vorgehensweise ist, neue Systemmerkmale ad hoc hinzuzufuegen und nach dem Motto ”Aendere nie etwas an einem funktionierenden System!” vorzugehen. Letztlich ist das Ergebnis ein Architekturzerfall (Architekturdrift). Die Notwendigkeit kleiner Refactoring-Schritte fuehrt zur Notwendigkeit des Architektur-Reengineerings. Im Gegensatz zum Refactoring, das eine normale Entwicklungstaetigkeit darstellt, ist Reengineering eine Form der Software- ”Revolution”. Reengineeringprojekte sind sehr riskant und kostspielig. Der Nutzen des Reengineerings ist normalerweise nicht so hoch wie erwartet. Wenn nach dem Reengineering schließlich die erforderlichen Architekturaenderungen statt.nden, kann dies zu spaet sein. Trotz der enormen in das Projekt gesteckten Bemuehungen erfuellen die Resultate des Reengineerings normalerweise nicht die Erwartungen. Es kann passieren, dass sehr bald ein neues, kostspieliges Reengineering erforderlich wird. In dieser Arbeit werden das Problem der Softwareevolution und der Zerfall von Softwarearchitekturen behandelt. Eine Methode wird vorgestellt, welche die Softwareentwicklung in ihrer entscheidenden Phase, dem Architekturrefactoring, unterstuetzt. Die Softwareentwicklung wird sowohl in technischer als auch organisatorischer Hinsicht unterstuetzt. Diese Arbeit hat neue Techniken entwickelt, welche die Reverse-Engineering-, Architecture-Recovery- und Architecture-Redesign-Taetigkeiten unterst uetzen. Sie schlaegt auch Aenderungen des Softwareentwicklungsprozesses vor, die fristgerechte Architekturrefactorings erzwingen koennen und damit die Notwendigkeit der Durchfuehrung eines Architektur- Reengineerings vermeiden. In dieser Arbeit wird die Merkmalmodellierung als Hauptinstrument verwendet. Merkmale werden genutzt, um die Abstraktionsluecke zwischen den Anforderungen der Problemdomaene und der Systemarchitektur zu fuellen. Merkmalmodelle werden auch als erster Grundriss fr die Wiederherstellung der verlorenen Systemarchitektur genutzt. Merkmalbasierte Analysen fuehren zu diversen, nuetzlichen Hinweisen fuer den erneuten Entwurf (das Re-Design) einer Architektur. Schließlich wird die Merkmalmodellierung als Kommunikationsmittel zwischen unterschiedlichen Projektbeteiligten (Stakeholdern) im Verlauf des Softwareengineering-Prozesses verwendet und auf dieser Grundlage wird ein neuer Anforderungsde.nitionsprozess vorgeschlagen, der die erforderlichen Architekturrefactorings erzwingt.The long-life software systems withstand many significant changes throughout their life-cycle in order to follow the evolution of the problem domains. Usually, the software system architecture can not follow the rapid evolution of a problem domain and with time, the diversion of the architecture in respect to the domain features becomes prohibiting for software evolution. For avoiding this problem, periodical refactorings of the system architecture are required. Usually, architecture refactorings are postponed until the very last moment, because of the relatively high risk involved and the lack of short-term profit. As a rule, the management is unwilling to accept architecture refactorings unless they become absolutely necessary. The preferred way of working is to add new system features in an ad-hoc manner and to keep the rule ”Never touch a running system!”. The final result is an architecture decay. The need of performing small refactoring activities turns into need for architecture reengineering. In contrast to refactoring, which is a normal evolutionary activity, reengineering is a kind of software ”revolution”. Reengineering projects are risky and expensive. The effectiveness of reengineering is also usually not as high as expected. When finally after reengineering the required architecture changes take place, it can be too late. Despite the enormous invested efforts, the results of the reengineering usually do not satisfy the expectations. It might happen that very soon a new expensive reengineering is required. This thesis deals with the problem of software evolution and the decay of software architectures. It presents a method, which assists software evolution in its crucial part, the architecture refactoring. The assistance is performed for both technical and organizational aspects of the software evolution. The thesis provides new techniques for supporting reverse engineering, architecture recovery and redesigning activities. It also proposes changes to the software engineering process, which can force timely architecture refactorings and thus avoid the need of performing architecture reengineering. For the work in this thesis feature modeling is utilized as a main asset. Features are used to fill the abstraction gap between domain requirements and system architecture. Feature models are also used as an outline for recovering of lost system architectures. Through feature-based analyses a number of useful hints and clues for architecture redesign are produced. Finally, feature modeling is used as a communication between different stakeholders of the software engineering process and on this basis a new requirements engineering process is proposed, which forces the needed architecture refactorings

Security architecture methodology for large net-centric systems

This thesis describes an over-arching security architecture methodology for large network enabled systems that can be scaled down for smaller network centric operations such as present at the University of Missouri-Rolla. By leveraging the five elements of security policy & standards, security risk management, security auditing, security federation and security management, of the proposed security architecture and addressing the specific needs of UMR, the methodology was used to determine places of improvement for UMR --Abstract, page iii