An approach to integrating and creating flexible software environments

Engineers and scientists are attempting to represent, analyze, and reason about increasingly complex systems. Many researchers have been developing new ways of creating increasingly open environments. In this research on VEHICLES, a conceptual design environment for space systems, an approach was developed, called 'wrapping', to flexibility and integration based on the collection and then processing of explicit qualitative descriptions of all the software resources in the environment. Currently, a simulation is available, VSIM, used to study both the types of wrapping descriptions and the processes necessary to use the metaknowledge to combine, select, adapt, and explain some of the software resources used in VEHICLES. What was learned about the types of knowledge necessary for the wrapping approach is described along with the implications of wrapping for several key software engineering issues

VIP: A knowledge-based design aid for the engineering of space systems

The Vehicles Implementation Project (VIP), a knowledge-based design aid for the engineering of space systems is described. VIP combines qualitative knowledge in the form of rules, quantitative knowledge in the form of equations, and other mathematical modeling tools. The system allows users rapidly to develop and experiment with models of spacecraft system designs. As information becomes available to the system, appropriate equations are solved symbolically and the results are displayed. Users may browse through the system, observing dependencies and the effects of altering specific parameters. The system can also suggest approaches to the derivation of specific parameter values. In addition to providing a tool for the development of specific designs, VIP aims at increasing the user's understanding of the design process. Users may rapidly examine the sensitivity of a given parameter to others in the system and perform tradeoffs or optimizations of specific parameters. A second major goal of VIP is to integrate the existing corporate knowledge base of models and rules into a central, symbolic form

Active Loop Programming for Adaptive Systems

We describe a new approach to adaptive system construction, based on our belief that there are no one-way functions in biology. For example, no sensor is a one-way input device, and no effector is a one-way output device. We choose to mimic the fact that all biological systems have many active processing loops running at all times, at various different time and space scales, and all of them both produce and consume data. We wanted to see how far this notion can carry us towards highly adaptive computational systems, in combination with computational reflection and certain other biological principles of organization. We show that it carries us surprisingly far, by describing a system architecture that uses it as a fundamental organizing principle. We define what active loop programming is, show how it provides enormous flexibility in a software-intensive system, and show how it can be implemented with Wrappings, our integration infrastructure for self-modeling systems

08141 Abstracts Collection -- Organic Computing - Controlled Self-organization

From March 30th to April 4th 2008, the Dagstuhl Seminar 08141 "Organic Computing - Controlled Self-organization"\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

06031 Abstracts Collection -- Organic Computing -- Controlled Emergence

Organic Computing has emerged recently as a challenging vision for future information processing systems, based on the insight that we will soon be surrounded by large collections of autonomous systems equipped with sensors and actuators to be aware of their environment, to communicate freely, and to organize themselves in order to perform the actions and services required. Organic Computing Systems will adapt dynamically to the current conditions of its environment, they will be self-organizing, self-configuring, self-healing, self-protecting, self-explaining, and context-aware. From 15.01.06 to 20.01.06, the Dagstuhl Seminar 06031 ``Organic Computing -- Controlled Emergence\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. The seminar was characterized by the very constructive search for common ground between engineering and natural sciences, between informatics on the one hand and biology, neuroscience, and chemistry on the other. The common denominator was the objective to build practically usable self-organizing and emergent systems or their components. An indicator for the practical orientation of the seminar was the large number of OC application systems, envisioned or already under implementation, such as the Internet, robotics, wireless sensor networks, traffic control, computer vision, organic systems on chip, an adaptive and self-organizing room with intelligent sensors or reconfigurable guiding systems for smart office buildings. The application orientation was also apparent by the large number of methods and tools presented during the seminar, which might be used as building blocks for OC systems, such as an evolutionary design methodology, OC architectures, especially several implementations of observer/controller structures, measures and measurement tools for emergence and complexity, assertion-based methods to control self-organization, wrappings, a software methodology to build reflective systems, and components for OC middleware. Organic Computing is clearly oriented towards applications but is augmented at the same time by more theoretical bio-inspired and nature-inspired work, such as chemical computing, theory of complex systems and non-linear dynamics, control mechanisms in insect swarms, homeostatic mechanisms in the brain, a quantitative approach to robustness, abstraction and instantiation as a central metaphor for understanding complex systems. Compared to its beginnings, Organic Computing is coming of age. The OC vision is increasingly padded with meaningful applications and usable tools, but the path towards full OC systems is still complex. There is progress in a more scientific understanding of emergent processes. In the future, we must understand more clearly how to open the configuration space of technical systems for on-line modification. Finally, we must make sure that the human user remains in full control while allowing the systems to optimize

Summary of the 11th international workshop on [email protected]

After last years anniversary, this year the 11th edition of the workshop [email protected] was held at the 19th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems. The workshop took place in the city of Saint Malo, France, on the 4th of October 2016. The workshop was organized by Sebastian Götz, Nelly Bencomo, Kirstie Bellman and Gordon Blair. Here, we present a summary of the discussions at the workshop and a synopsis of the topics discussed and highlighted during the workshop

Socially-Sensitive Systems Design:Exploring Social Potential

In human society, individuals have long voluntarily organized themselves in groups, which embody, provide and/or facilitate a range of different social concepts, such as governance, justice, or mutual aid. These social groups vary in form, size, and permanence, but in different ways provide benefits to their members. In turn, members of these groups use their understanding and awareness of group expectations to help determine their own actions, to the benefit of themselves, each other, and the health of the group

PENGARUH KUALITAS PRODUK DAN HARGA TERHADAP KEPUASAN KONSUMEN PADA PT. MARGA TIRTA KENCANA (Survei Pada Penghuni Perumahan Permata Buah Batu 1)

ABSTRAK Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh Kualitas Produk dan Harga terhadap Kepuasan Konsumen pada PT. Marga Tirta Kencana (Survei Pada Perumahan Permata Buah Batu 1 Bandung). Rumusan masalah dalam penelitian ini adalah bagaimana tanggapan konsumen mengenai kualitas produk yang ditawarkan, bagaimana tanggapan konsumen mengenai harga yang ditawarkan, bagaimana kepuasan konsumen, dan seberapa besar pengaruh kualitas produk dan harga terhadap kepuasan konsumen di PT. Marga Tirta Kencana Bandung secara simultan dan parsial. Metode yang digunakan penulis dalam penelitian ini adalah penelitian deskriptif dan verifikatif dengan tehnik pengumpulan data dengan interview (wawancara), kuesioner (angket) dan observasi (pengamatan). Adapun ukuran populasinya 619 orang dengan sampel 87 orang. Sedangkan tehnik sampling yang digunakan untuk menghitung besarnya ukuran sampel dalam non-probability sampling. Sesuai dengan perhitungan statistik, Kualitas Produk berada dalam kategori baik dan Harga berada dalam kategori baik terhadap Kepuasan Konsumen pada PT. Marga Tirta Kencana yang berada dalam kategori puas. Kata Kunci : Kualitas Produk, Harga, Kepuasan Konsume