Service-Oriented Dynamic Software Product Lines

An operational example of controls in a smart home demonstrates the potential of a solution that combines the Common Variability Language and a dynamic extension of the Business Process Execution Language to address the need to manage software system variability at runtime

Product Lines for Service Oriented Applications - PL for SOA

Comment: In Proceedings WWV 2011, arXiv:1108.208

Market reactions to the servitization of product offerings - An event study on the software as a service model

Servitization is transforming traditional manufacturing and product-oriented firms across industries in many ways. One of these transformations concerns the business models of firms that transform from selling products to provisioning products as a service with product-service systems (PSS). I analyze this form of servitization in the software industry, where the software as a service business model is becoming the standard for most start-ups as well as some big enterprises like Adobe and Autodesk. Event study methodology is applied to 359 software vendors’ announcements of new software as a service offerings between 2001 and 2015, analyzing how installed base, parallel business models and partnerships with external service providers influence the reaction in the stock price of the software vendors. I find that “as-a- service” business models are not perceived as a substitute but rather as a complement for perpetual product sales and that collaboration with specialized service providers for the delivery of the new offering is rewarded by the stock market. I explain the findings with organizational inertia within the software vendors’ organization as well as that of their customers. The findings are used to discuss how companies can manage the inertia by developing new product lines for the PSS model, offering perpetual product sales in parallel and cooperating with third party service providers for the service delivery. Servitization is transforming traditional manufacturing and product-oriented firms across industries in many ways. One of these transformations concerns the business models of firms that transform from selling products to provisioning products as a service with product-service systems (PSS). I analyze this form of servitization in the software industry, where the software as a service business model is becoming the standard for most start-ups as well as some big enterprises like Adobe and Autodesk. Event study methodology is applied to 359 software vendors’ announcements of new software as a service offerings between 2001 and 2015, analyzing how installed base, parallel business models and partnerships with external service providers influence the reaction in the stock price of the software vendors. I find that “as-a- service” business models are not perceived as a substitute but rather as a complement for perpetual product sales and that collaboration with specialized service providers for the delivery of the new offering is rewarded by the stock market. I explain the findings with organizational inertia within the software vendors’ organization as well as that of their customers. The findings are used to discuss how companies can manage the inertia by developing new product lines for the PSS model, offering perpetual product sales in parallel and cooperating with third party service providers for the service delivery.  Keywords: SaaS, Software-as-a-Service, Servitization, Business model transformation, Stock market

Composition and Self-Adaptation of Service-Based Systems with Feature Models

The adoption of mechanisms for reusing software in pervasive systems has not yet become standard practice. This is because the use of pre-existing software requires the selection, composition and adaptation of prefabricated software parts, as well as the management of some complex problems such as guaranteeing high levels of efficiency and safety in critical domains. In addition to the wide variety of services, pervasive systems are composed of many networked heterogeneous devices with embedded software. In this work, we promote the safe reuse of services in service-based systems using two complementary technologies, Service-Oriented Architecture and Software Product Lines. In order to do this, we extend both the service discovery and composition processes defined in the DAMASCo framework, which currently does not deal with the service variability that constitutes pervasive systems. We use feature models to represent the variability and to self-adapt the services during the composition in a safe way taking context changes into consideration. We illustrate our proposal with a case study related to the driving domain of an Intelligent Transportation System, handling the context information of the environment.Work partially supported by the projects TIN2008-05932, TIN2008-01942, TIN2012-35669, TIN2012-34840 and CSD2007-0004 funded by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and FEDER; P09-TIC-05231 and P11-TIC-7659 funded by Andalusian Government; and FP7-317731 funded by EU. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

A Taxonomy of Variability in Web Service Flows

The combination of Software Product Lines (SPL) and Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) development practices is expected to become a new development paradigm maximizing reuse and business integration. However, multiples issues must be still addressed in order to clarify the connections between both fields. One of the key questions to answer is how SPL practices can be used to support serviceoriented applications. in this context, identifying and managing the points of variability in composite Web services emerges as an inevitable step for making possible such integration. in this position paper we give a first step toward such direction by introducing a comprehensible overview of the main variability points in Web service flows.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2006-0047

Líneas de producto de software (SPL) como complemento para el desarrollo de soluciones orientadas a servicios (SOA): Una revisión de la literatura

Hoy en día la construcción de software exige soluciones cada vez más ágiles y completas que optimicen la forma de implementar sistemas en entornos cada vez más complejos. Las arquitecturas orientadas a servicios –SOA- y las líneas de productos de software –SPL- son dos paradigmas arquitectónicos que reciben bastante interés por parte de investigadores y stakeholders. A lo largo de las décadas pasadas ambas estrategias se aplicaron a grandes proyectos revelando muy buenos resultados en función de características como la flexibilidad y el reúso. Sin embargo, existieron algunas limitaciones como la dependencia de tecnologías y plataformas para las líneas de productos y la ausencia de mecanismos de personalización y reutilización de artefactos en el caso de las arquitecturas orientadas a servicios. Debido a estas deficiencias y a la evidente complementariedad de ambos conceptos se procede con la realización de una revisión sistemática de la literatura que permita presentar de forma ordenada y precisa la manera en que ambos enfoques pueden ser unidos para ofrecer una solución robusta y eficiente. Con esto se busca reducir los costos y el esfuerzo de desarrollo, al igual que el tiempo de implementación y adaptación de soluciones nuevas o existentes.Today the construction of software requires increasingly flexible and complete solutions that optimize the way of implementing systems in increasingly complex environments. The service-oriented architecture -SOA- and software product lines -SPL- two architectural paradigms are receiving considerable interest by researchers and stakeholders. Over the past decades both strategies were applied to large projects revealed very good results in terms of characteristics such as flexibility and reuse. However, there were some limitations such as reliance on technologies and platforms for product lines and the absence of mechanisms for customization and reuse of artifacts in the case of service-oriented architectures. Because of these shortcomings and obvious complementarity of both concepts are applicable to the conduct of a systematic review of the literature to permit the filing of an orderly and precise fashion that both approaches can be joined to provide a robust and efficient solution. This seeks to reduce costs and development effort, as well as deployment time and adaptation of new or existing solutions

A Model-Based Approach to Managing Feature Binding Time in Software Product Line Engineering

Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) is a software reuse paradigm for developing software products, from managed reusable assets, based on analysis of commonality and variability (C & V) of a product line. Many approaches of SPLE use a feature as a key abstraction to capture the C&V. Recently, there have been increasing demands for the provision of flexibility about not only the variability of features but also the variability of when features should be selected (i.e., variability on feature binding times). Current approaches to support variations of feature binding time mostly focused on ad hoc implementation mechanisms. In this paper, we first identify the challenges of feature binding time management and then propose an approach to analyze the variation of feature binding times and use the results to specify model-based architectural components for the product line. Based on the specification, components implementing variable features are parameterized with the binding times and the source codes for the components and the connection between them are generated

A review of information flow diagrammatic models for product-service systems

A product-service system (PSS) is a combination of products and services to create value for both customers and manufacturers. Modelling a PSS based on function orientation offers a useful way to distinguish system inputs and outputs with regards to how data are consumed and information is used, i.e. information flow. This article presents a review of diagrammatic information flow tools, which are designed to describe a system through its functions. The origin, concept and applications of these tools are investigated, followed by an analysis of information flow modelling with regards to key PSS properties. A case study of selection laser melting technology implemented as PSS will then be used to show the application of information flow modelling for PSS design. A discussion based on the usefulness of the tools in modelling the key elements of PSS and possible future research directions are also presented

A virtual factory for smart city service integration

In the last years, new technologies - referred as emerging information and communication technologies (EICTs), have appeared and are immersed in peoples' lives assisting them and facilitating their daily activities. Taking advantage of the diffusion and infusion of these technologies, governments are using EICTs to deliver better public services to citizens. However, to address citizens' demands and to provide customer oriented services governments face various types of challenges. The aim of this research work is to provide solutions to some of the challenges, in particular to the rapid development of electronic public services (EPS) and the service integration in the context of development of smart cities. Following the aim, we propose an approach, called Virtual Factory for Smart City Service Integration. The idea of the virtual factory is to provide a framework to automatically produce software based on a given set of specifications of a family of EPS taking advantage of similarities in the EPS business processes. The expected contributions of this research work is to produce a domain specific language (DSL) for service specification and supporting tools that based on the produced specifications, workflow techniques and ideas of software product lines (SPL) can automatically produce software applications for EPS that can be easily parameterized and completed.(undefined

Towards Product Lining Model-Driven Development Code Generators

A code generator systematically transforms compact models to detailed code. Today, code generation is regarded as an integral part of model-driven development (MDD). Despite its relevance, the development of code generators is an inherently complex task and common methodologies and architectures are lacking. Additionally, reuse and extension of existing code generators only exist on individual parts. A systematic development and reuse based on a code generator product line is still in its infancy. Thus, the aim of this paper is to identify the mechanism necessary for a code generator product line by (a) analyzing the common product line development approach and (b) mapping those to a code generator specific infrastructure. As a first step towards realizing a code generator product line infrastructure, we present a component-based implementation approach based on ideas of variability-aware module systems and point out further research challenges.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development, pp. 539-545, Angers, France, SciTePress, 201