Exploring Model-to-Model Transformations for RIA Architectures by means of a Systematic Mapping Study

This study focuses on model-to-model – M2M – transformations, as part of the Model- Driven Development – MDD – approach, for Rich Internet Applications – RIA. The main aim of this study is to identify fields that require further contributions, and/or research opportunities in the previously mentioned context. We applied mapping studies techniques, since these techniques use the same basic methodology as reviews but are more general and aimed at discovering what the research trends are, allowing to identify gaps in the literature. From an initial set of 132 papers, we selected 30 papers first. Then, thanks to experts’ suggestion, we added 3 additional papers. Therefore, we considered 33 research papers. The performed analysis led to various considerations. Among the important ones, we can mention: there are many newly proposed methods, the scarcity of rigorous and formal validation of such methods, the problem of the portability of Platform Independent Models – PIM, and the low number of tools available for MDD.Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

Exploring Model-to-Model Transformations for RIA Architectures by means of a Systematic Mapping Study

This study focuses on model-to-model – M2M – transformations, as part of the ModelDriven Development – MDD – approach, for Rich Internet Applications – RIA. The main aim of this study is to identify fields that require further contributions, and/or research opportunities in the previously mentioned context. We applied mapping studies techniques, since these techniques use the same basic methodology as reviews but are more general and aimed at discovering what the research trends are, allowing to identify gaps in the literature. From an initial set of 132 papers, we selected 30 papers first. Then, thanks to experts’ suggestion, we added 3 additional papers. Therefore, we considered 33 research papers. The performed analysis led to various considerations. Among the important ones, we can mention: there are many newly proposed methods, the scarcity of rigorous and formal validation of such methods, the problem of the portability of Platform Independent Models – PIM, and the low number of tools available for MDD

iSemServ : a framework for engineering intelligent semantic services

The need for modern enterprises and Web users to simply and rapidly develop and deliver platform-independent services to be accessed over the Web by the global community is growing. This is self-evident, when one considers the omnipresence of electronic services (e-services) on the Web. Accordingly, the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is commonly considered as one of the de facto standards for the provisioning of heterogeneous business functionalities on the Web. As the basis for SOA, Web Services (WS) are commonly preferred, particularly because of their ability to facilitate the integration of heterogeneous systems. However, WS only focus on syntactic descriptions when describing the functional and behavioural aspects of services. This makes it a challenge for services to be automatically discovered, selected, composed, invoked, and executed – without any human intervention. Consequently, Semantic Web Services (SWS) are emerging to deal with such a challenge. SWS represent the convergence of Semantic Web (SW) and WS concepts, in order to enable Web services that can be automatically processed and understood by machines operating with limited or no user intervention. At present, research efforts within the SWS domain are mainly concentrated on semantic services automation aspects, such as discovery, matching, selection, composition, invocation, and execution. Moreover, extensive research has been conducted on the conceptual models and formal languages used in constructing semantic services. However, in terms of the engineering of semantic services, a number of challenges are still prevalent, as demonstrated by the lack of development and use of semantic services in real-world settings. The lack of development and use could be attributed to a number of challenges, such as complex semantic services enabling technologies, leading to a steep learning curve for service developers; lack of unified service platforms for guiding and supporting simple and rapid engineering of semantic services, and the limited integration of semantic technologies with mature service-oriented technologies. vi In addition, a combination of isolated software tools is normally used to engineer semantic services. This could, however, lead to undesirable consequences, such as prolonged service development times, high service development costs, lack of services re-use, and the lack of semantics interoperability, reliability, and re-usability. Furthermore, available software platforms do not support the creation of semantic services that are intelligent beyond the application of semantic descriptions, as envisaged for the next generation of services, where the connection of knowledge is of core importance. In addressing some of the challenges highlighted, this research study adopted a qualitative research approach with the main focus on conceptual modelling. The main contribution of this study is thus a framework called iSemServ to simplify and accelerate the process of engineering intelligent semantic services. The framework has been modelled and developed, based on the principles of simplicity, rapidity, and intelligence. The key contributions of the proposed framework are: (1) An end-to-end and unified approach of engineering intelligent semantic services, thereby enabling service engineers to use one platform to realize all the modules comprising such services; (2) proposal of a model-driven approach that enables the average and expert service engineers to focus on developing intelligent semantic services in a structured, extensible, and platform-independent manner. Thereby increasing developers’ productivity and minimizing development and maintenance costs; (3) complexity hiding through the exploitation of template and rule-based automatic code generators, supporting different service architectural styles and semantic models; and (4) intelligence wrapping of services at message and knowledge levels, for the purposes of automatically processing semantic service requests, responses and reasoning over domain ontologies and semantic descriptions by keeping user intervention at a minimum. The framework was designed by following a model-driven approach and implemented using the Eclipse platform. It was evaluated using practical use case scenarios, comparative analysis, and performance and scalability experiments. In conclusion, the iSemServ framework is considered appropriate for dealing with the complexities and restrictions involved in engineering intelligent semantic services, especially because the amount of time required to generate intelligent semantic vii services using the proposed framework is smaller compared with the time that the service engineer would need to manually generate all the different artefacts comprising an intelligent semantic service. Keywords: Intelligent semantic services, Web services, Ontologies, Intelligent agents, Service engineering, Model-driven techniques, iSemServ framework.ComputingD. Phil. (Computer science