Transparent Dynamic reconfiguration for CORBA

Distributed systems with high availability requirements have to support some form of dynamic reconfiguration. This means that they must provide the ability to be maintained or upgraded without being taken off-line. Building a distributed system that allows dynamic reconfiguration is very intrusive to the overall design of the system, and generally requires special skills from both the client and server side application developers. There is an opportunity to provide support for dynamic reconfiguration at the object middleware level of distributed systems, and create a dynamic reconfiguration transparency to application developers. We propose a Dynamic Reconfiguration Service for CORBA that allows the reconfiguration of a running system with maximum transparency for both client and server side developers. We describe the architecture, a prototype implementation, and some preliminary test result

Different perspectives on management systems integration

Increasingly competitive economies and the market globalisation process have led many organisations to implement management systems as a differential against competition. However, with the variety of standards available, they felt the need to integrate management subsystems aiming at resources and skills optimisation, in order to achieve performance maximisation of the resulting integrated management system (IMS). Added to this, it is known that the value of a single certificate is inversely proportional to the overall increase in certificate numbers. This paper intends to report the study results focusing on critical success factors (CSFs) assessment, difficulties faced by organisations when implementing an IMS, and the resulting benefits. Additionally, the quantitative evolution of IMS in Portuguese companies until 2011 is reported, showing how IMS typologies evolved and increased their relative ‘weight’ among Portuguese certified companies. Related to the study, the sample was composed of four Portuguese IMS ruled organisations based on quality, environment and occupational health and safety certified management subsystems. The data collection methodology was based on semistructured interviews with the management system manager, through which it was sought to analyse the entire integration process. Results suggest that management subsystems integration contributes positively to the studied organisations. Top management involvement, human and financial resources availability and training were identified as subsystems integration CSF. Among the difficulties faced by organisations they pointed out the non existence of a previous organisational structure and the employees’ behaviour changes

On the Notion of Abstract Platform in MDA Development

Although platform-independence is a central property in MDA models, the study of platform-independence has been largely overlooked in MDA. As a consequence, there is a lack of guidelines to select abstraction criteria and modelling concepts for platform-independent design. In addition, there is little methodological support to distinguish between platform-independent and platform-specific concerns, which could be detrimental to the beneficial exploitation of the PIM-PSM separation-of-concerns adopted by MDA. This work is an attempt towards clarifying the notion of platform-independent modelling in MDA development. We argue that each level of platform-independence must be accompanied by the identification of an abstract platform. An abstract platform is determined by the platform characteristics that are relevant for applications at a certain level of platform-independence, and must be established by balancing various design goals. We present some methodological principles for abstract platform design, which forms a basis for defining requirements for design languages intended to support platform-independent design. Since our methodological framework is based on the notion of abstract platform, we pay particular attention to the definition of abstract platforms and the language requirements to specify abstract platforms. We discuss how the concept of abstract platform relates to UML

Integrated management systems – quality, environment and health and safety: motivations, benefits, difficulties and critical success factors

Following the process of economic globalization and increasingly competitive markets, many organizations have implemented wider management systems, as distinctive factor against competition. However, with the increasing standards organizations found themselves needing to integrate management systems aiming the expertise and resources optimization. As a result of that integration a maximum performance of the management system can be achieved. It was defined as this study aim the assessment of critical success factors for implementing an integrated management system, and what were the difficulties felt by organizations during the integration process. The type of sampling was nonprobabilistic by convenience. The sample was composed with four organizations with certified management system of quality, environment and occupational health and safety. The type of study was descriptive and exploratory level I. To collect data semi-structured interviews were conducted with management system managers, where the entire integration process was examined. It can be concluded that the integrated management system contributes positively to the studied organizations, leading to benefits at the organizational processes, cost reduction, efficiency gains, among others. It can also be concluded that the involvement of top management, the existence of human and financial resources, training, as well as the employee motivation involvement, clear goals and meeting deadlines, are factors that can lead to successful systems integration. The change on both organization structure and behavior of employees was the most outline difficulty felted by organizations

Sistemas integrados de gestão: factores críticos de sucesso

Face ao processo de globalização das economias e mercados cada vez mais competitivos, muitas organizações implementaram sistemas de gestão mais abrangentes como diferencial diante da concorrência. No entanto, com o aumento de referenciais, viram-se na necessidade de integrar os sistemas de gestão tendo por objectivo a optimização de recursos e de competências, com vista a alcançar a maximiza- ção do desempenho do sistema de gestão resultante. Neste sentido, definiram-se como objectivos do estudo avaliar quais os factores críticos de sucesso para a implementação de um sistema integrado de gestão e quais as dificuldades encontradas pelas organizações aquando da integração dos sistemas de gestão. A amostragem foi do tipo não probabilística e quanto à técnica, a mesma foi por conveniência. A amostra foi composta por quatro organizações com sistemas de gestão da qualidade, ambiente e segurança e saúde do trabalho certificad

Seller-buyer supply chain: a game theory framework

We present a game theoretical framework to study competition and collaboration scenarios in seller-buyer supply chains, representing a manufacturer that wholesales a product to a retailer who, in turn, retails to the final consumer. We study cooperative and non-cooperative scenarios, by considering in the first case a Stackelberg game under both the situations where one of the players, either the buyer or the seller, plays the leading role by taking the initiative and forcing the strategy of the other player, the follower. In the cooperative game, we analyse scenarios where the pro t of both players are increased when applying joint cooperative strategies. We also compute the Nash equilibria. This is undergoing work.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A framework for modular and customizable software analysis

This paper presents a framework for the analysis of software artifacts. We revise and propose techniques that aid in the manipulation and combination of target-language specific tools, and in handling and controlling the results of such tools. We also propose to integrate under our framework techniques that are capable of performing language independent analyses. The final result of our work is an analysis environment that is modular and flexible and that allows easy and elegant implementations of complex analysis suites. We finally conduct a proof of concept for our framework by analyzing a well-known, widely used open-source software package.This work is partly funded by ERDF - European Regional Development Fund through the COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) and by National Funds through the FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within projects FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-010049, and FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-022701

Dimensionamento de estruturas de transição

A transfer structure is a structure that alters the load path of the gravity loads, shifting the line of thrust laterally to a different vertical alignment. Transfer structures are introduced in buildings that feature discontinuities in vertical elements and where a direct load path to the foundations is not possible. This paper presents an overview of existing transfer systems and provides guidance on their design and construction. Extensive research on buildings with transfer structures was carried out with the aim of developing a rational typology of these structures. The results can be broken down into five main types: BEAM, TRUSS, INCLINED STRUT, PLATE, and ARC H & CABLE. In addition, transfer structures’ design is often outside the scope of normal code guidance and may require a degree of engineering judgment. This paper also highlights the key aspects that determine the structural design of transfer structures, as well as typical construction methods.Uma estrutura de transição (ET) é uma estrutura que altera o caminho-de-carga das forças gravíticas. ETs são inseridas em edifícios que exibem descontinuidades em pilares ou paredes resistentes, e onde um caminho-de-carga direto para as fundações não é possível. Estas estruturas constituem elementos condicionantes do edifício onde se inserem, e o seu impacto no custo e no tempo de construção pode ser significativo. Este documento apresenta uma perspetiva geral das estruturas de transição existentes em edifícios e reúne princípios orientadores para o seu dimensionamento e construção. Foi realizada uma extensa pesquisa sobre edifícios com ETs em todo o mundo com o objetivo de desenvolver uma tipificação adequada destas estruturas. O resultado consiste em cinco tipos principais: Viga, Treliça, Escora inclinada, Placa e Arco & Cabo.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Abstract Interactions and Interaction Refinement in Model-Driven Design

In a model-driven design process the interaction between application parts can be described at various levels of platform-independence. At the lowest level of platform-independence, interaction is realized by interaction mechanisms provided by specific middleware platforms. At higher levels of platform-independence, interaction must be described in such a way that it can be further refined and realized onto a number of different middleware platforms, each with its particular interaction mechanisms and implementation constraints. In this paper, we investigate concepts that support interaction design at various levels of middleware-platform-independence. Also, we propose design operations for interaction refinement. The application of these operations to source designs results in target designs that take into account implementation constraints imposed by platforms, while preserving characteristics prescribed in source designs

The impact of wind turbine noise on health

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio