1,240 research outputs found
Modelling Reactive Multimedia: Design and Authoring
Multimedia document authoring is a multifaceted activity, and authoring tools tend to concentrate on a restricted set of the activities involved in the creation of a multimedia artifact. In particular, a distinction may be drawn between the design and the implementation of a multimedia artifact.
This paper presents a comparison of three different authoring paradigms, based on the common case study of a simple interactive animation. We present details of its implementation using the three different authoring tools, MCF, Fran and SMIL 2.0, and we discuss the conclusions that may be drawn from our comparison of the three approaches
Managing Evolving Business Workflows through the Capture of Descriptive Information
Business systems these days need to be agile to address the needs of a
changing world. In particular the discipline of Enterprise Application
Integration requires business process management to be highly reconfigurable
with the ability to support dynamic workflows, inter-application integration
and process reconfiguration. Basing EAI systems on model-resident or on a
so-called description-driven approach enables aspects of flexibility,
distribution, system evolution and integration to be addressed in a
domain-independent manner. Such a system called CRISTAL is described in this
paper with particular emphasis on its application to EAI problem domains. A
practical example of the CRISTAL technology in the domain of manufacturing
systems, called Agilium, is described to demonstrate the principles of
model-driven system evolution and integration. The approach is compared to
other model-driven development approaches such as the Model-Driven Architecture
of the OMG and so-called Adaptive Object Models.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures. Presented at the eCOMO'2003 4th Int. Workshop on
Conceptual Modeling Approaches for e-Busines
Web service control of component-based agile manufacturing systems
Current global business competition has resulted in significant challenges for
manufacturing and production sectors focused on shorter product lifecyc1es, more diverse
and customized products as well as cost pressures from competitors and customers. To
remain competitive, manufacturers, particularly in automotive industry, require the next
generation of manufacturing paradigms supporting flexible and reconfigurable production
systems that allow quick system changeovers for various types of products. In addition,
closer integration of shop floor and business systems is required as indicated by the
research efforts in investigating "Agile and Collaborative Manufacturing Systems" in
supporting the production unit throughout the manufacturing lifecycles.
The integration of a business enterprise with its shop-floor and lifecycle supply partners
is currently only achieved through complex proprietary solutions due to differences in
technology, particularly between automation and business systems. The situation is
further complicated by the diverse types of automation control devices employed.
Recently, the emerging technology of Service Oriented Architecture's (SOA's) and Web
Services (WS) has been demonstrated and proved successful in linking business
applications. The adoption of this Web Services approach at the automation level, that
would enable a seamless integration of business enterprise and a shop-floor system, is an
active research topic within the automotive domain. If successful, reconfigurable
automation systems formed by a network of collaborative autonomous and open control
platform in distributed, loosely coupled manufacturing environment can be realized
through a unifying platform of WS interfaces for devices communication.
The adoption of SOA- Web Services on embedded automation devices can be achieved
employing Device Profile for Web Services (DPWS) protocols which encapsulate device
control functionality as provided services (e.g. device I/O operation, device state
notification, device discovery) and business application interfaces into physical control
components of machining automation. This novel approach supports the possibility of
integrating pervasive enterprise applications through unifying Web Services interfaces
and neutral Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) message communication between
control systems and business applications over standard Ethernet-Local Area Networks
(LAN's). In addition, the re-configurability of the automation system is enhanced via the
utilisation of Web Services throughout an automated control, build, installation, test,
maintenance and reuse system lifecycle via device self-discovery provided by the DPWS
protocol...cont'd
Ubiquitous Integration and Temporal Synchronisation (UbilTS) framework : a solution for building complex multimodal data capture and interactive systems
Contemporary Data Capture and Interactive Systems (DCIS) systems are tied in with various
technical complexities such as multimodal data types, diverse hardware and software
components, time synchronisation issues and distributed deployment configurations. Building
these systems is inherently difficult and requires addressing of these complexities before the
intended and purposeful functionalities can be attained. The technical issues are often
common and similar among diverse applications.
This thesis presents the Ubiquitous Integration and Temporal Synchronisation (UbiITS)
framework, a generic solution to address the technical complexities in building DCISs. The
proposed solution is an abstract software framework that can be extended and customised to
any application requirements. UbiITS includes all fundamental software components,
techniques, system level layer abstractions and reference architecture as a collection to enable
the systematic construction of complex DCISs.
This work details four case studies to showcase the versatility and extensibility of UbiITS
framework’s functionalities and demonstrate how it was employed to successfully solve a
range of technical requirements. In each case UbiITS operated as the core element of each
application. Additionally, these case studies are novel systems by themselves in each of their
domains. Longstanding technical issues such as flexibly integrating and interoperating
multimodal tools, precise time synchronisation, etc., were resolved in each application by
employing UbiITS. The framework enabled establishing a functional system infrastructure in
these cases, essentially opening up new lines of research in each discipline where these
research approaches would not have been possible without the infrastructure provided by the
framework. The thesis further presents a sample implementation of the framework on a
device firmware exhibiting its capability to be directly implemented on a hardware platform.
Summary metrics are also produced to establish the complexity, reusability, extendibility,
implementation and maintainability characteristics of the framework.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grants - EP/F02553X/1, 114433 and 11394
An Object-Oriented Model for Extensible Concurrent Systems: the Composition-Filters Approach
Applying the object-oriented paradigm for the development of large and complex software systems offers several advantages, of which increased extensibility and reusability are the most prominent ones. The object-oriented model is also quite suitable for modeling concurrent systems. However, it appears that extensibility and reusability of concurrent applications is far from trivial. The problems that arise, the so-called inheritance anomalies are analyzed and presented in this paper. A set of requirements for extensible concurrent languages is formulated. As a solution to the identified problems, an extension to the object-oriented model is presented; composition filters. Composition filters capture messages and can express certain constraints and operations on these messages, for example buffering. In this paper we explain the composition filters approach, demonstrate its expressive power through a number of examples and show that composition filters do not suffer from the inheritance anomalies and fulfill the requirements that were established
Modularization Approaches in the Context of Monolithic Simulations
Qualitätsmerkmale eines Software-Systems wie Zuverlässigkeit oder Performanz können über dessen Erfolg oder Scheitern entscheiden. Diese Qualitätsmerkmale können im klassischen Software-Ingenieurswesen erst bestimmt werden, wenn der Entwurfsprozess bereits vollendet ist und Teile des Software-Systems implementiert sind. Computer-Simulationen erlauben es jedoch Schätzungen dieser Werte schon während des Software-Entwurfs zu bestimmen. Simulationen werden erstellt um bestimmte Aspekte eines Systems zu analysieren. Die Repräsentation des Systems ist auf diese Analyse spezialisiert. Diese Spezialisierung resultiert oft in einer monolithischen Struktur der Simulation. Solch eine Struktur kann jedoch die Wartbarkeit der Simulation negativ beeinflussen und das Verständnis und die Wiederverwendbarkeit der Repräsentation des Systems verschlechtern. Die Nachteile einer monolithischen Struktur können durch das Konzept der Modularisierung reduziert werden. In diesem Ansatz wird ein Problem in kleinere Teilprobleme zerlegt. Diese Zerlegung ermöglicht ein besseres Veständnis und eine bessere Handhabung der Teilprobleme.
In dieser Arbeit wird ein Ansatz präsentiert, um die Kopplung von neu entwickelten oder bereits existierenden Simulationen zu einer modularen Simulation zu beschreiben. Dieser Ansatz besteht aus einer Domänenspezifischen Sprache (DSL), die mit modellgetriebenen Technologien entwickelt wird. Die DSL wird in einer Fallstudie angewendet, um die Kopplung von zwei Simulationen zu beschreiben. Weiterhin wird die Kopplung dieser Simulationen mit einem existierenden Kopplungsansatz gemäß der erzeugten Beschreibung manuell implementiert. In dieser Fallstudie wird die Vollständigkeit der Fähigkeit der DSL untersucht, die Kopplung von mehreren Simulation zu einer modularen Simulation zu beschreiben. Weiterhin wird die Genauigkeit des Modularisierungsansatzes bezüglich der Verhaltensbewahrung der modularen Simulation gegenüber der monolithischen Version evaluiert. Hierfür werden die Resultate der modularen Simulation mit denen der monolithischen Version verglichen. Zudem wird die Skalierbarkeit des Ansatzes durch die Betrachtung der Ausführungszeiten untersucht, wenn mehrere Simulationen gekoppelt werden. Außerdem wird der Effekt der Modularisierung auf die Ausführungszeit in Relation zur monolithischen Simulation betrachtet.
Die erhaltenen Resultate zeigen, dass die Kopplung der beiden Simulationen der Fallstudie, mit der DSL beschrieben werden kann. Die Resultate bezüglich der Evaluation der Genauigkeit weisen Probleme bei der Interaktion der Simulationen mit dem Kopplungsansatz auf. Nichts desto trotz bleibt das Verhalten der monolithischen Simulation in der modularen Version insgesamt erhalten. Die Evaluation zeigt, dass die modulare Simulation eine Erhöhung der Ausführungszeit im Vergleich zur monolithischen Version erfährt. Zudem deutet die Analyse der Skalierbarkeit darauf hin, dass die Ausführungszeit der modularen Simulation nicht exponentiell mit der Anzahl der gekoppelten Simulationen wächst
Feature interaction in composed systems. Proceedings. ECOOP 2001 Workshop #08 in association with the 15th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Budapest, Hungary, June 18-22, 2001
Feature interaction is nothing new and not limited to computer science. The problem of undesirable feature interaction (feature interaction problem) has already been investigated in the telecommunication domain. Our goal is the investigation of feature interaction in componet-based systems beyond telecommunication. This Technical Report embraces all position papers accepted at the ECOOP 2001 workshop no. 08 on "Feature Interaction in Composed Systems". The workshop was held on June 18, 2001 at Budapest, Hungary
View-based textual modelling
This work introduces the FURCAS approach, a framework for view-based textual modelling. FURCAS includes means that allow software language engineers to define partial and overlapping textual modelling languages. Furthermore, FURCAS provides an incremental update approach that enables modellers to work with multiple views on the same underlying model. The approach is validated against a set of formal requirements, as well as several industrial case studies showing its practical applicability
- …