A comparison of integration architectures

This paper presents GenSIF, a Generic Systems Integration Framework. GenSIF features a pre-planned development process on a domain-wide basis and facilitates system integration and project coordination for very large, complex and distributed systems. Domain analysis, integration architecture design and infrastructure design are identified as the three main components of GenSIF. In the next step we map Beilcore\u27s OSCA interoperability architecture, ANSA, IBM\u27s SAA and Bull\u27s DCM into GenSIF. Using the GenSIF concepts we compare each of these architectures. GenSIF serves as a general framework to evaluate and position specific architecture. The OSCA architecture is used to discuss the impact of vendor architectures on application development. All opinions expressed in this paper, especially with regard to the OSCA architecture, are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the point of view of any of the mentioned companies

Factors driving enterprise adoption of blockchain technology

Amidst the rapidly evolving advancement of blockchain technology (BT), enterprises face notable challenges in leveraging its transformative potential, starting with a need to understand the technology and how it can be used for particular applications. Two challenges are that many BT trials have not been successful and large-scale implementations that have led to continued use are scarce. This research provides a comprehensive examination of factors that drive the successful adoption of BT for enterprise use cases. A dual-phased approach was employed. First, I introduce a taxonomy matrix correlating BT design characteristics with use case characteristics, offering a framework for BT design and benefits across different enterprise contexts. Second, I conducted case studies of five successful BT cases in large enterprises that led to the adoption in terms of continued use and contrasted them with one failure case. The data collection and analysis of the case studies encompassed technological, organizational, environmental, and inter-organizational variables that led to BT\u27s continued use. The cross-case analysis revealed that compatibility, relative advantage, and observability are primary technological factors contributing to continued use. Within the organizational dimension, organizational knowledge and internal characteristics emerged as crucial elements, while regulatory compliance came out to be a significant factor. Based on the cross-case analysis, I develop theoretical propositions about the factors that lead to the continued use of BT, which can be further validated and tested in future research

Adaptive object management for distributed systems

This thesis describes an architecture supporting the management of pluggable software components and evaluates it against the requirement for an enterprise integration platform for the manufacturing and petrochemical industries. In a distributed environment, we need mechanisms to manage objects and their interactions. At the least, we must be able to create objects in different processes on different nodes; we must be able to link them together so that they can pass messages to each other across the network; and we must deliver their messages in a timely and reliable manner. Object based environments which support these services already exist, for example ANSAware(ANSA, 1989), DEC's Objectbroker(ACA,1992), Iona's Orbix(Orbix,1994)Yet such environments provide limited support for composing applications from pluggable components. Pluggability is the ability to install and configure a component into an environment dynamically when the component is used, without specifying static dependencies between components when they are produced. Pluggability is supported to a degree by dynamic binding. Components may be programmed to import references to other components and to explore their interfaces at runtime, without using static type dependencies. Yet thus overloads the component with the responsibility to explore bindings. What is still generally missing is an efficient general-purpose binding model for managing bindings between independently produced components. In addition, existing environments provide no clear strategy for dealing with fine grained objects. The overhead of runtime binding and remote messaging will severely reduce performance where there are a lot of objects with complex patterns of interaction. We need an adaptive approach to managing configurations of pluggable components according to the needs and constraints of the environment. Management is made difficult by embedding bindings in component implementations and by relying on strong typing as the only means of verifying and validating bindings. To solve these problems we have built a set of configuration tools on top of an existing distributed support environment. Specification tools facilitate the construction of independent pluggable components. Visual composition tools facilitate the configuration of components into applications and the verification of composite behaviours. A configuration model is constructed which maintains the environmental state. Adaptive management is made possible by changing the management policy according to this state. Such policy changes affect the location of objects, their bindings, and the choice of messaging system

MegSDF Mega-system development framework

A framework for developing large, complex software systems, called Mega-Systems, is specified. The framework incorporates engineering, managerial, and technological aspects of development, concentrating on an engineering process. MegSDF proposes developing Mega-Systems as open distributed systems, pre-planned to be integrated with other systems, and designed for change. At the management level, MegSDF divides the development of a Mega-System into multiple coordinated projects, distinguishing between a meta-management for the whole development effort, responsible for long-term, global objectives, and local managements for the smaller projects, responsible for local, temporary objectives. At the engineering level, MegSDF defines a process model which specifies the tasks required for developing Mega-Systems, including their deliverables and interrelationships. The engineering process emphasizes the coordination required to develop the constituent systems. The process is active for the life time of the Mega-System and compatible with different approaches for performing its tasks. The engineering process consists of System, Mega-System, Mega-System Synthesis, and Meta-Management tasks. System tasks develop constituent systems. Mega-Systems tasks provide a means for engineering coordination, including Domain Analysis, Mega-System Architecture Design. and Infrastructure Acquisition tasks. Mega-System Synthesis tasks assemble Mega-Systems from the constituent systems. The Meta-Management task plans and controls the entire process. The domain analysis task provides a general, comprehensive, non-constructive domain model, which is used as a common basis for understanding the domain. MegSDF builds the domain model by integrating multiple significant perceptions of the domain. It recommends using a domain modeling schema to facilitate modeling and integrating the multiple perceptions. The Mega-System architecture design task specifies a conceptual architecture and an application architecture. The conceptual architecture specifies common design and implementation concepts and is defined using multiple views. The application architecture maps the domain model into an implementation and defines the overall structure of the Mega-System, its boundaries, components, and interfaces. The infrastructure acquisition task addresses the technological aspects of development. It is responsible for choosing, developing or purchasing, validating, and supporting an infrastructure. The infrastructure integrates the enabling technologies into a unified platform which is used as a common solution for handling technologies. The infrastructure facilitates portability of systems and incorporation of new technologies. It is implemented as a set of services, divided into separate service groups which correspond to the views identified in the conceptual architecture

CaSPiS: A Calculus of Sessions, Pipelines and Services

Service-oriented computing is calling for novel computational models and languages with well disciplined primitives for client-server interaction, structured orchestration and unexpected events handling. We present CaSPiS, a process calculus where the conceptual abstractions of sessioning and pipelining play a central role for modelling service-oriented systems. CaSPiS sessions are two-sided, uniquely named and can be nested. CaSPiS pipelines permit orchestrating the flow of data produced by different sessions. The calculus is also equipped with operators for handling (unexpected) termination of the partner’s side of a session. Several examples are presented to provide evidence of the flexibility of the chosen set of primitives. One key contribution is a fully abstract encoding of Misra et al.’s orchestration language Orc. Another main result shows that in CaSPiS it is possible to program a “graceful termination” of nested sessions, which guarantees that no session is forced to hang forever after the loss of its partner

A study in systems integration architecture

This Thesis studies the two architectures OSCA and ANSA which support the ODPSE principle in the first two parts. In the third part the framework for integrating these two architectures is described. The idea of integration architectures in relation to open architectures is studied using the enabling technologies

An enhancement and improvement of a prototype distributed system based on elements of an integration architecture

The concepts and results presented in this thesis are related to Integrated System Development. It provides introduction to Generic System Integration Framework (GenSIF). And hence its three principal components, Domain Analysis, Integration Architectures and Enabling Technology. It addresses certain issues of distributed processing relating to systems integration. The primary objective of this thesis is to develop/improve a prototype by applying concepts and ideas presented in GenSIF, with an example channel based building block integration architecture as an example. This prototype was developed with the objective of studying the effect of system intregration framework in mind while working on an application. It would help in comparing the traditional software life cycle with the life cycle of software development under the effect of the framework. Sun RPC implementation of Remote Procedure Calling technique has beenused to realize the integration of physically distributed prototypes of a system/subsystem(s). Advantages and disadvantages of using RPCs have also been presented. This work also looks into another communication fabric, viz. ANSA, to analyze its feasibility for use in systems integration

Introducing Possible Revenue Models of Review Sites in the School Industry in Egypt

Businesses use different marketing communication tools to promote their company, product or services. Alongside the traditional tools, new Internet-based tools e.g. social media networks and review sites, are emerging thanks to technological breakthroughs. Review sites such as TripAdvisor, Yelp and IMDb have enabled creating large source of information on the web i.e. user generated contents in the form of blogs, comments, reviews etc. Academically, these sites have attracted considerable attention to study their business models and implications; however, critical elements such as revenue models have been overlooked, particularly for school review sites. The objective of this thesis is to introduce possible revenue models that school review sites can utilize to derive revenue and to discuss the key requirements of these models. The theory framework has been developed bringing together the concepts of marketing communication tools, word-of-mouth communication, review sites and revenue models. The empirical data have been collected through three methods: semi-structured interviews with key persons in school reviews sites, survey a sample of education stakeholders in Egypt and process benchmarking the best practices of review sites. The research revealed that no platform relies on a single revenue model. Nevertheless, review sites agreed to utilize a mixed model that consists of a combination of revenue models in order to explore the value appropriation advantages of each model. The study suggests that commercial-driven school review sites can adopt advertising, transaction and subscription models. However, non-profit platforms can better adopt philanthropy or corporate sponsorship models to derive revenues

A Blockchain-based prototype for car registration

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of a Master of Science Degree in Mobile Telecommunication and Innovation (MSc. MTI)Vehicle registration is an important exercise as it assists various departments including motor vehicle authorities, the police and tax authorities to make use of vehicle registration details for purposes of determining legitimate vehicle owners. Various methods including mobile and web technologies have been adopted in the registration of motor vehicles. However, inconsistencies have always emerged in the vehicle ownership details. Current vehicle registration systems have not been able to mitigate against the threat of tampering with vehicle owners’ details or at least keep track of the fraudulent transactions in the system. This has informed the need to review the current motor vehicle registration systems as well as the challenges faced in the registration of vehicle ownership details. Based on the weaknesses of the current systems this research focused on developing a prototype based on the blockchain technology that ensured there was proper trail of all the transactions that were performed in the system including vehicle registration, transfer of vehicle ownership as well as confirmation of ownership transfer. The proposed development of the product adopted agile methodology in its software development lifecycle. With known participants needed in a vehicle registration system, the study established that a permissioned blockchain was best suited to create the blockchain network. Hyper ledger Fabric framework was therefore used to create the blockchain network, the reason being it is an enterprise grade, permissioned, distributed ledger technology platform for use in enterprise contexts. This means Hyper ledger Fabric offers features that are required or essential in enterprise applications. Android platform was used for development of the mobile application and Angular JS used for the web portal. The tests done on the prototype were functional testing with 70% of the test cases indicating satisfied. Usability testing with 85% of the responses indicating that the system was user friendly. Finally, compatibility testing with the mobile application running efficiently on most of the Android versions and the web application was compatible with the major web browsers, Internet Explorer version 4 and above, Mozilla Firefox version 4 and above and Google chrome on all versions

Inter-organisational systems: a personal history

The observations reported in this paper are based on an auto-ethnography of a participative engagement in the emergence of the globalised automation, media, information, and communications technology environment in Europe, over the last four decades. The conclusion is that, in the often disruptive and un co-ordinated coalescence of the publication and mass communication, telecommunications and information systems sectors, which has been a characteristic of the emergence of the global information economy, key aspects of centuries old learning about the nature of the roles and responsibilities associated with information and communications have been lost