Describing Dynamism in Service Dependencies: Industrial Experience and Feedbacks

International audienceThe rise of dynamic applications is coming with new development challenges. Indeed, dynamism is a complex concern, difficult to perceive and manage by developers. In the context of a large industrial project dealing with fleet management, we had to deal with important environmental and evolutionary dynamism. To make it easier for the development team, we have used and extended the iPOJO service component model. This paper presents how the dynamism is described in component metadata and how it is managed at runtime. The extensions have been integrated into the Apache Felix iPOJO source code

Modèle à Composant pour Plate-forme Autonomique

In the last decades, computing environments have been getting more and more complex, filled with miniaturized and sophisticated devices that can handle mobility and wireless communications. Ubiquitous computing, as envisioned by Mark Weiser in 1991, promote the seamless integration of those computing environments with the real world in order to offer new kinds of applications. However, writing software for ubiquitous environments raises numerous challenges, mainly the problem of how to make an application adapt itself in an ever changing context. From another perspective, as classical softwares were growing in size and complexity, IBM proposed the concept of autonomic computing to help to contain the burden of administering massive and numerous systems. This PhD thesis is based on an approach where applications are designed in terms of components using and providing services. A development model based on a reference architecture for the conception of ubiquitous applications is proposed, greatly inspired by researches in the autonomic computing field. In this model, the application is managed by a hierarchy of autonomic managers, that base their decisions on a central representation of the system. The fulfilment of this contribution requires to make the underlying middleware more reflexive, in order to support new kinds of runtime adaptations. We also provide a model that depicts the running system and its dynamics in a uniform way, based on REST principles. Applications relying on this reflexive middleware and represented by this model are what we called Autonomic-Ready. Implementations of our proposals have been integrated in the Apache Felix iPOJO service-oriented component model. The system representation, named Everest, is provided as a OW2 Chameleon subproject. Validation is based on the iCASA pervasive environment development and simulation environment.Ces dernières décennies, les environnements informatiques sont devenus de plus en plus complexes, parsemés de dispositifs miniatures et sophistiqués gérant la mobilité et communiquant sans fil. L'informatique ubiquitaire, telle qu'imaginée par Mark Weiser en 1991, favorise l'intégration transparente de ces environnements avec le monde réel pour offrir de nouveaux types d'applications. La conception de programmes pour environnements ubiquitaires soulève cependant de nombreux défis, en particulier le problème de rendre une application auto-adaptable dans un contexte en constante évolution. Parallèlement, alors que la taille et la complexité de systèmes plus classiques ont explosé, IBM a proposé le concept d'informatique autonomique afin de réduire le fardeau de l'administration de systèmes imposants et largement disséminés. Cette thèse se base sur une approche où les applications sont conçues sous la forme de composants utilisant et fournissant des services. Un modèle de développement fondé sur une architecture de référence pour la conception d'applications ubiquitaires est proposée, fortement inspiré des recherches dans le domaine de l'informatique autonomique. Dans ce modèle, les applications sont prises en charge par une hiérarchie de gestionnaires autonomiques, qui appuient leurs décisions sur une représentation centrale du système. La mise en œuvre de cette contribution requiert de rendre la couche d'exécution sous-jacente plus réflexive, en vue de supporter de nouveaux types d'adaptations à l'exécution. Nous proposons également un modèle qui décrit le système à l'exécution et reflète sa dynamique de manière uniforme, suivant les principes du style d'architecture REST. Les applications reposant sur ce cette couche d'exécution réflexive et représentées par ce modèle sont qualifiées d'Autonomic-Ready. L'implantation de nos propositions ont été intégrées dans le modèle à composant orienté service Apache Felix iPOJO. Le modèle de représentation du système, nommé Everest, est publié en tant que sous-projet d'OW2 Chameleon. Ces propositions ont été évaluées et validées par la conception et l'exécution d'une application ubiquitaire sur iCASA, un environnement de développement et de simulation

Phase diagram of the random frequency oscillator: The case of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck noise

We study the stability of a stochastic oscillator whose frequency is a random process with finite time memory represented by an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck noise. This system undergoes a noise-induced bifurcation when the amplitude of the noise grows. The critical curve, that separates the absorbing phase from an extended non-equilibrium steady state, corresponds to the vanishing of the Lyapunov exponent that measures the asymptotic logarithmic growth rate of the energy. We derive various expressions for this Lyapunov exponent by using different approximation schemes. This allows us to determine quantitatively the phase diagram of the random parametric oscillator.Comment: to appear in Physica

Thermal conductivity of porous materials

Incorporation of porosity into a monolithic material decreases the effective thermal conductivity. Porous ceramics were prepared by different methods to achieve pore volume fractions from 4 to 95%. A toolbox of analytical relations is proposed to describe the effective thermal conductivity as a function of solid phase thermal conductivity, pore thermal conductivity, and pore volume fraction (νp). For νp 0.65, the thermal conductivity of kaolin-based foams and calcium aluminate foams was well described by the Hashin Shtrikman upper bound and Russell's relation. Finally, numerical simulation on artificially generated microstructures yields accurate predictions of thermal conductivity when fine detail of the spatial distribution of the phases needs to be accounted for, as demonstrated with a bio-aggregate materia

<i>In situ</i> diagnostics of the crystal-growth process through neutron imaging:application to scintillators

Neutrons are known to be unique probes in situations where other types of radiation fail to penetrate samples and their surrounding structures. In this paper it is demonstrated how thermal and cold neutron radiography can provide time-resolved imaging of materials while they are being processed (e.g. while growing single crystals). The processing equipment, in this case furnaces, and the scintillator materials are opaque to conventional X-ray interrogation techniques. The distribution of the europium activator within a BaBrCl:Eu scintillator (0.1 and 0.5% nominal doping concentrations per mole) is studied in situ during the melting and solidification processes with a temporal resolution of 5-7 s. The strong tendency of the Eu dopant to segregate during the solidification process is observed in repeated cycles, with Eu forming clusters on multiple length scales (only for clusters larger than ∼50 µm, as limited by the resolution of the present experiments). It is also demonstrated that the dopant concentration can be quantified even for very low concentration levels (∼0.1%) in 10 mm thick samples. The interface between the solid and liquid phases can also be imaged, provided there is a sufficient change in concentration of one of the elements with a sufficient neutron attenuation cross section. Tomographic imaging of the BaBrCl:0.1%Eu sample reveals a strong correlation between crystal fractures and Eu-deficient clusters. The results of these experiments demonstrate the unique capabilities of neutron imaging for in situ diagnostics and the optimization of crystal-growth procedures