A Framework for Evaluating Model-Driven Self-adaptive Software Systems

In the last few years, Model Driven Development (MDD), Component-based Software Development (CBSD), and context-oriented software have become interesting alternatives for the design and construction of self-adaptive software systems. In general, the ultimate goal of these technologies is to be able to reduce development costs and effort, while improving the modularity, flexibility, adaptability, and reliability of software systems. An analysis of these technologies shows them all to include the principle of the separation of concerns, and their further integration is a key factor to obtaining high-quality and self-adaptable software systems. Each technology identifies different concerns and deals with them separately in order to specify the design of the self-adaptive applications, and, at the same time, support software with adaptability and context-awareness. This research studies the development methodologies that employ the principles of model-driven development in building self-adaptive software systems. To this aim, this article proposes an evaluation framework for analysing and evaluating the features of model-driven approaches and their ability to support software with self-adaptability and dependability in highly dynamic contextual environment. Such evaluation framework can facilitate the software developers on selecting a development methodology that suits their software requirements and reduces the development effort of building self-adaptive software systems. This study highlights the major drawbacks of the propped model-driven approaches in the related works, and emphasise on considering the volatile aspects of self-adaptive software in the analysis, design and implementation phases of the development methodologies. In addition, we argue that the development methodologies should leave the selection of modelling languages and modelling tools to the software developers.Comment: model-driven architecture, COP, AOP, component composition, self-adaptive application, context oriented software developmen

A New Approach for Quality Management in Pervasive Computing Environments

This paper provides an extension of MDA called Context-aware Quality Model Driven Architecture (CQ-MDA) which can be used for quality control in pervasive computing environments. The proposed CQ-MDA approach based on ContextualArchRQMM (Contextual ARCHitecture Quality Requirement MetaModel), being an extension to the MDA, allows for considering quality and resources-awareness while conducting the design process. The contributions of this paper are a meta-model for architecture quality control of context-aware applications and a model driven approach to separate architecture concerns from context and quality concerns and to configure reconfigurable software architectures of distributed systems. To demonstrate the utility of our approach, we use a videoconference system.Comment: 10 pages, 10 Figures, Oral Presentation in ECSA 201

Transformāciju vadītā arhitektūra un tās grafiskie prezentācijas dziņi; Promocijas darbs

Promocijas darbā piedāvāta transformāciju vadītā arhitektūra (TDA) --- modeļbāzēta programmatūras arhitektūra interaktīvām sistēmām, kuras sastāv no vairākām komponentēm, kas sadarbojas. TDA attīsta tālāk OMG modeļu vadītās arhitektūras (MDA) idejas. Atšķirībā no MDA, kas izmanto modeļus un to transformācijas tikai programmatūras izstrādes laikā, TDA tos izmanto arī programmu izpildes laikā. Darbā aprakstīti arī svarīgākie TDA moduļi: TDA kodols (realizē komunikācijas mehānismu, darbību atcelšanas mehānismu un vairākrepozitoriju mehānismu), Vides dzinis (aizvietojams modulis TDA izmantošanai dažādās vidēs), Dialogu logu dzinis (modulis dialogu logu aprakstīšanai un parādīšanai uz ekrāna) un Kļūdu dzinis (kļūdu ziņojumu definēšanai un attēlošanai). TDA koncepcijas tika aprobētas domēnspecifisku rīku būvē, kur apliecināja savu efektivitāti.In this thesis, a model-driven software architecture for interactive systems (systems consisting of multiple interoperating components) is proposed. This architecture, called the Transformation-Driven Architecture (TDA), advances the ideas of the Model-Driven Architecture (MDA). Unlike MDA, which uses models and model transformations at software development time, TDA uses them at runtime. The following important TDA modules are also described in the thesis: TDA Kernel (provides the communication mechanism, the undo/redo mechanism, and the multi-repository mechanism), Environment Engine (a replaceable engine for using TDA in different environments), Dialog Engine (for specifying and displaying dialog windows), and Error Engine (for defining and visualizing error messages). TDA proved its viability, when used as a foundation for building domain-specific tools

Interoperability and Standards: The Way for Innovative Design in Networked Working Environments

Organised by: Cranfield UniversityIn today’s networked economy, strategic business partnerships and outsourcing has become the dominant paradigm where companies focus on core competencies and skills, as creative design, manufacturing, or selling. However, achieving seamless interoperability is an ongoing challenge these networks are facing, due to their distributed and heterogeneous nature. Part of the solution relies on adoption of standards for design and product data representation, but for sectors predominantly characterized by SMEs, such as the furniture sector, implementations need to be tailored to reduce costs. This paper recommends a set of best practices for the fast adoption of the ISO funStep standard modules and presents a framework that enables the usage of visualization data as a way to reduce costs in manufacturing and electronic catalogue design.Mori Seiki – The Machine Tool Compan

Incorporating Agile with MDA Case Study: Online Polling System

Nowadays agile software development is used in greater extend but for small organizations only, whereas MDA is suitable for large organizations but yet not standardized. In this paper the pros and cons of Model Driven Architecture (MDA) and Extreme programming have been discussed. As both of them have some limitations and cannot be used in both large scale and small scale organizations a new architecture has been proposed. In this model it is tried to opt the advantages and important values to overcome the limitations of both the software development procedures. In support to the proposed architecture the implementation of it on Online Polling System has been discussed and all the phases of software development have been explained.Comment: 14 pages,1 Figure,1 Tabl

Considerations regarding the agile development of portals

Starting with methodologies, methods and techniques used generally in the development of information systems, a personal approach regarding quick development of portals has been introduced. After a strict theoretical foundation the proposal has been applied within a real collaborative knowledge portal development project. We consider the proposed agile development approach (based on the prototype technique enriched with MDA valences) suitable to all kind of information systems. The agile development framework establishes the life-cycle phases of product development taking into account the desired functionalities.portal, prototype technique, model driven architecture, agile development

Inter-organizational fault management: Functional and organizational core aspects of management architectures

Outsourcing -- successful, and sometimes painful -- has become one of the hottest topics in IT service management discussions over the past decade. IT services are outsourced to external service provider in order to reduce the effort required for and overhead of delivering these services within the own organization. More recently also IT services providers themselves started to either outsource service parts or to deliver those services in a non-hierarchical cooperation with other providers. Splitting a service into several service parts is a non-trivial task as they have to be implemented, operated, and maintained by different providers. One key aspect of such inter-organizational cooperation is fault management, because it is crucial to locate and solve problems, which reduce the quality of service, quickly and reliably. In this article we present the results of a thorough use case based requirements analysis for an architecture for inter-organizational fault management (ioFMA). Furthermore, a concept of the organizational respective functional model of the ioFMA is given.Comment: International Journal of Computer Networks & Communications (IJCNC