Leveraging legacy codes to distributed problem solving environments: A web service approach

This paper describes techniques used to leverage high performance legacy codes as CORBA components to a distributed problem solving environment. It first briefly introduces the software architecture adopted by the environment. Then it presents a CORBA oriented wrapper generator (COWG) which can be used to automatically wrap high performance legacy codes as CORBA components. Two legacy codes have been wrapped with COWG. One is an MPI-based molecular dynamic simulation (MDS) code, the other is a finite element based computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code for simulating incompressible Navier-Stokes flows. Performance comparisons between runs of the MDS CORBA component and the original MDS legacy code on a cluster of workstations and on a parallel computer are also presented. Wrapped as CORBA components, these legacy codes can be reused in a distributed computing environment. The first case shows that high performance can be maintained with the wrapped MDS component. The second case shows that a Web user can submit a task to the wrapped CFD component through a Web page without knowing the exact implementation of the component. In this way, a user’s desktop computing environment can be extended to a high performance computing environment using a cluster of workstations or a parallel computer

SPIN-ning Software Architectures: A Method for Exploring Complex Systems

When designing complex software systems that provide multiple non-functional properties, it is usual to try to reuse (and finally compose) simpler existing designs, which deal with each of these properties in solitude. The paper describes a method for automatically and quickly identifying all the different ways one can compose such designs, with the aid of a model checke

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

A service-oriented approach to embedded component-based manufacturing automation

This thesis is focused on the application of Component-Based (CB) technology to shop oor devices using a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web Services (WS) for the purpose of realising future generation agile manufacturing systems. The environment of manufacturing enterprises is now characterised by frequently changing market demands, time-to-market pressure, continuously emerging new technologies and global competition. Under these circumstances, manufacturing systems need to be agile and automation systems need to support this agility. More speci cally, an open, exible automation environment with plug and play connectivity is needed. Technically, this requires the easy connectivity of hardware devices and software components from di erent vendors. Functionally, there is a need of interoperability and integration of control functions on di erent hierarchical levels ranging from eld level to various higher level applications such as process control and operations management services. [Continues.

Towards a design-by-contract based approach for realizable connector-centric software architectures

Despite being a widely-used language for specifying software systems, UML remains less than ideal for software architectures. Architecture description languages (ADLs) were developed to provide more comprehensive support. However, so far the application of ADLs in practice has been impeded by at least one of the following problems: (i) advanced formal notations, (ii) lack of support for complex connectors, and (iii) potentially unrealizable designs. In this paper we propose a new ADL that is based on Design-by-Contract (DbC) for specifying software architectures. While DbC promotes a formal and precise way of specifying system behaviours, it is more familiar to practising developers, thus allowing for a more comfortable way of specifying architectures than using process algebras. Furthermore, by granting connectors a first-class status, our ADL allows designers to specify not only simple interaction mechanisms as connectors but also complex interaction protocols. Finally, in order to ensure that architectural designs are always realizable we eliminate potentially unrealizable constructs in connector specifications (the connector “glue”)

Constructing a reproducible testing environment for distributed Java applications.

The emergence of the global Internet, wireless data communications, and the availability of powerful computers is enabling a new generation of distributed and concurrent systems. However, the inherent complexity of such systems introduces many new challenges in system testing and maintenance. One of the major problems in testing such systems is that executions with internal non-deterministic choices make the testing procedure non-repeatable. A natural solution is to artificially force the execution of a program to take desired paths so that a test can be reproduced. However, with geographically distributed processes and heterogeneous platform architectures, distributed systems have imposed new challenges in developing effective techniques for reproducible testing. The goal of this research is to build an environment to automate testing for distributed and concurrent Java applications. We will focus on controlling the order of occurrences of input and remote call events according to a user-specified test scenario, which is composed of input data, a constraint expressed as a partial order over the input and remote call events, and expected output. The testing environment is by itself distributed and does not require source code intrusion into the application under test. With minor changes, the testing components can also be reused in CORBA-based applications implemented in Java.Dept. of Computer Science. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2003 .W35. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 42-05, page: 1769. Adviser: Jessica Chen. Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2003

A Generative Programming Framework for Adaptive Middleware

Historically, many distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems were developed manually from scratch, leading to stove-piped solutions that while correct in both functional and QoS properties were very expensive to develop and difficult to maintain and extend. First-generation middleware technologies such as CORBA 2.x [1], XML [2], and SOAP [3], served to shield application developers from low-level platform details, thus raising the level of abstraction at which distributed systems are developed and supporting reuse of infrastructure to amortize development costs over the lifetime of a system. However, interdependencies between services and object interfaces resulting from these programming models significantly limited the degree of reuse that could be achieved in practice. Component middleware technologies such as the CORBA Component Model (CCM) [4], J2EE [5], and .NET [6], were developed to address many of these limitations. In CCM, for example, standardization of component containers, ports, and homes offered a framework within which reuse of server as well as client infrastructure was facilitated. Component-oriented middleware has addressed a wide range of application domains, but unfortunately for DRE systems, the focus of these technologies has been primarily on functional and not QoS properties. For example, although CCM supports configuration of functional component attributes like their interconnections, key QoS attributes for DRE systems, such as execution times and invocation rates are inadequately configurable through conventional CCM [7]. Research on QoS-aware component models such as the CIAO project [8, 7] is showing significant promise in making QoS configuration a first-class part of the component pro-gramming model, thus further reducing accidental complex-ities of building DRE systems. However, it is important to note a fundamental difference between configuration of functional and QoS properties even within such a unified compo-nent model: the dominant decomposition of functional properties is essentially object-oriented, while the dominant decomposition of QoS properties is essentially aspect-oriented. That is, functional properties tend to be stable with respect to component boundaries and configuration lifecycle stages, while QoS properties tend to cross-cut component boundaries, and may be revised as more information is known in later configuration stages [7]. In this paper, we describe how a focus on aspect frameworks for configuring QoS properties both com-plements and extends QoS-aware component models. This paper makes three main contributions to the state of the art in DRE systems middleware. First, it describes a simple but representative problem for configuring QoS aspects that cross-cut both architectural layers and system lifecycle boundaries, which motivates our focus on aspect frameworks. Second, it provides a formalization of that problem using first order logic, which both guides the design of aspect configuration infrastructure, and offers a way to connect these techniques with model-integrated computing [9] approaches to further reduce the programming burden on DRE system developers. Third, it describes alternative mechanisms to ensure correct configuration of the aspects involved, and notes the phases of the DRE system lifecycle at which each such configuration mechanism is most appropriate

Formal verification of enterprise integration architectures

This is a near-finished paper to be presented in an international research conference. Weak Bisimulation is a process calculus equivalence relation, applied for the verification of communicating concurrent systems [Miln 99]. In this paper we propose the application of Weak Bisimulation for Enterprise Application Integration verification. Formal verification is carried out by taking the system specification and design models of an integrated system and converting them into value passing CCS (Calculus of Communicating Systems) processes. If a Weak Bisimulation relation is found between the two models, then it could be concluded that the EI Architecture is a valid one. The formal verification of an EI Architecture would give value to an EI project framework, allowing the challenge of cumbersome and complex testing typically faced by EI projects [Khan 05], to be alleviated, and thus increasing the possibility of a successful EI project, delivered on time and within the stipulated budgeted costs. This paper shows the applicability of value passing CCS (or equivalent) formal notation to model the EI systems characteristics, as well as investigates into the computation complexity of available weak bisimulation algorithms, in order to analyze the applicability of this proposition in real life.peer-reviewe