A TOSCA-Based Conceptual Architecture to Support the Federation of Heterogeneous MSaaS Infrastructures †

Modeling and simulation (M&S) techniques are effectively used in many application domains to support various operational tasks ranging from system analyses to innovative training activities. Any (M&S) effort might strongly benefit from the adoption of service orientation and cloud computing to ease the development and provision of M&S applications. Such an emerging paradigm is commonly referred to as M&S-as-a-Service (MSaaS). The need for orchestrating M&S services provided by different partners in a heterogeneous cloud infrastructure introduces new challenges. In this respect, the adoption of an effective architectural approach might significantly help the design and development of MSaaS infrastructure implementations that cooperate in a federated environment. In this context, this work introduces a MSaaS reference architecture (RA) that aims to investigate innovative approaches to ease the building of inter-cloud MSaaS applications. Moreover, this work presents ArTIC-MS, a conceptual architecture that refines the proposed RA for introducing the TOSCA (topology and orchestration specification for cloud applications) standard. ArTIC-MS’s main objective is to enable effective portability and interoperability among M&S services provided by different partners in heterogeneous federations of cloud-based MSaaS infrastructure. To show the validity of the proposed architectural approach, the results of concrete experimentation are provided

A Model Based Framework for IoT-Aware Business Process Management

IoT-aware Business Processes (BPs) that exchange data with Internet of Things (IoT) devices, briefly referred to as IoT-aware BPs, are gaining momentum in the BPM field. Introducing IoT technologies from the early stages of the BP development process requires dealing with the complexity and heterogeneity of such technologies at design and analysis time. This paper analyzes widely used IoT frameworks and ontologies to introduce a BPMN extension that improves the expressiveness of relevant BP modeling notations and allows an appropriate representation of IoT devices from both an architectural and a behavioral perspective. In the BP management field, the use of simulation-based approaches is recognized as an effective technology for analyzing BPs. Simulation models need to be parameterized according to relevant properties of the process under study. Unfortunately, such parameters may change during the process operational life, thus making the simulation model invalid with respect to the actual process behavior. To ease the analysis of IoT-aware BPs, this paper introduces a model-driven method for the automated development of digital twins of actual business processes. The proposed method also exploits data retrieved by IoT sensors to automatically reconfigure the simulation model, to make the digital twin continuously coherent and compliant with its actual counterpart

E-MDAV: A Framework for Developing Data-Intensive Web Applications

The ever-increasing adoption of innovative technologies, such as big data and cloud computing, provides significant opportunities for organizations operating in the IT domain, but also introduces considerable challenges. Such innovations call for development processes that better align with stakeholders needs and expectations. In this respect, this paper introduces a development framework based on the OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA) that aims to support the development lifecycle of data-intensive web applications. The proposed framework, named E-MDAV (Extended MDA-VIEW), defines a methodology that exploits a chain of model transformations to effectively cope with both forward- and reverse-engineering aspects. In addition, E-MDAV includes the specification of a reference architecture for driving the implementation of a tool that supports the various professional roles involved in the development and maintenance of data-intensive web applications. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed E-MDAV framework, a tool prototype has been developed. E-MDAV has then been applied to two different application scenarios and the obtained results have been compared with historical data related to the implementation of similar development projects, in order to measure and discuss the benefits of the proposed approach

FATIGUE BEHAVIOR OF CFRP-CONCRETE JOINTS UNDER VARYING LOAD FREQUENCY

Reinforced concrete structures are frequently subjected to fatigue loadings. At the interface between FRP and concrete, cyclic loading may induce the formation and coalescence of micro-cracks that result in the interface debonding. The stress transfer mechanism of the FRP-concrete bonded interface is critical to the performance of strengthened elements. This paper reports the preliminary results of an experimental investigation into the static and fatigue behavior of the interfacial bond between carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite and a concrete substrate. Fatigue and post-fatigue loading curves were obtained to investigate the effect of the load frequency on the specimen response

A BPMN extension to support discrete-event simulation for healthcare applications:an explicit representation of queues, attributes and data-driven decision points

Stakeholder engagement in simulation projects is important, especially in healthcare where there is a plurality of stakeholder opinions, objectives and power. One promising approach for increasing engagement is facilitated modelling. Currently, the complexity of producing a simulation model means that the ‘model coding’ stage is performed without the involvement of stakeholders, interrupting the possibility of a fully-facilitated project. Early work demonstrated that with currently-available software tools we can represent a simple healthcare process using Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) and generate a simulation model automatically. However, for more complex processes, BPMN currently has a number of limitations, namely the ability to represent queues and data-driven decision points. To address these limitations, we propose a conceptual design for an extension to BPMN (BPMN4SIM) using Model Driven Architecture. Application to an elderly emergency care pathway in a UK hospital shows that BPMN4SIM is able to represent a more-complex business process

A Model-driven approach to describe and predict the performance of composite services

Distributed applications are rapidly converging towards the adoption of a computing paradigm based on service-oriented architectures (SOA), according to which an application results from the composition of a set of services in execution on networked server hosts. In a SOA context, service providers are strategically interested both to describe the performance characteristics of offered services, to better qualify their offer and gain a significant advantage in the global marketplace, and to predict the level of performance that can be offered to service consumers when building composite web services that make use of services managed by various service providers. This paper introduces a model-driven approach for integrating performance prediction into service composition processes carried out by use of BPEL (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services). The proposed approach is founded on P-WSDL (Performance-enabled WSDL), a performance-oriented extension of WSDL, the language for describing the information about service capabilities and invocation mechanisms. P-WSDL is a lightweight WSDL extension for the description of performance characteristics of a web service. The approach is illustrated by use of an example application to a composite web service for travel planning

A low-code approach for simulation-based analysis of process collaborations

The simulation-based analysis of process collaborations introduces significant challenges, such as the ability to focus on the interchange of information and data without disclosing any internal details of collaboration participants' processes. The use of distributed simulation (DS) provides good opportunities to face these challenges. However, properly using DS standards and technologies requires significant technical know-how and effort. This paper introduces a largely automated approach to carry out distributed simulations of process collaborations. The DS standard addressed by the paper is the High Level Architecture (HLA), which is used to analyze process collaborations specified by using the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). The degree of automation is obtained by using a low-code development paradigm based on automated model transformations that reduce the amount of manual effort required to code the HLA-based simulation. An example application is also discussed to underline the pros and cons of the proposed approach

Patrones de actividad cotidiana en personas mayores: ¿es lo que dicen hacer lo que desearían hacer?

El objetivo del presente artículo es explorar el patrón de actividades cotidianas y deseadas en una muestra de personas mayores, así como algunos factores que las condicionan y sus implicaciones para la satisfacción con la vida. Una muestra de 154 personas jubiladas de más de 60 años y que vivían en un entorno urbano participó en el estudio. Los datos sobre las actividades se recogieron mediante entrevistas individuales, mientras que para la satisfacción con la vida se utilizó la escala LSI. Nuestros resultados muestran que el patrón de actividades manifestadas para el día de ayer es muy similar al que se realizaría en un día ideal, aunque en éste se desearía pasar mucho más tiempo en compañía de otras personas. Factores como el sexo y el nivel educativo y económico afectan a las actividades realizadas, especialmente a las instrumentales y al tiempo dedicado al ocio. La diferencia entre el día de ayer y el día ideal se relacionó negativamente y de manera significativa, aunque modesta, con la satisfacción con la vida

A Measurement framework for the parameterization of performance models of SOA-based systems

Distributed applications are rapidly converging towards the adoption of a computing paradigm based on service-oriented architectures, according to which an application can be seen as a composite web service that is built by assembling a set of existing services, executed on internetworked server hosts. In such a context, service providers are strategically interested both to describe the performance characteristics of offered services, to better qualify their offer and gain a significant advantage in the global marketplace; and to predict the level of performance that can be offered to service consumers. To this purpose, the paper introduces a framework for the management of performance parameters, defining the architecture that enables service providers to measure and make available performance information about the offered services. On the other hand the proposed approach allows the service consumers to automatically retrieve the performance data and then use such data to apply model-driven approaches for the performance analysis of composite web services