A framework for adaptive monitoring and performance management of component-based enterprise applications

Most large-scale enterprise applications are currently built using component-based middleware platforms such as J2EE or .NET. Developers leverage enterprise services provided by such platforms to speed up development and increase the robustness of their applications. In addition, using a component-oriented development model brings benefits such as increased reusability and flexibility in integrating with third-party systems. In order to provide the required services, the application servers implementing the corresponding middleware specifications employ a complex run-time infrastructure that integrates with developer-written business logic. The resulting complexity of the execution environment in such systems makes it difficult for architects and developers to understand completely the implications of alternative design options over the resulting performance of the running system. They often make incorrect assumptions about the behaviour of the middleware, which may lead to design decisions that cause severe performance problems after the system has been deployed. This situation is aggravated by the fact that although application servers vary greatly in performance and capabilities, many advertise a similar set of features, making it difficult to choose the one that is the most appropriate for their task. The thesis presents a methodology and tool for approaching performance management in enterprise component-based systems. By leveraging the component platform infrastructure, the described solution can nonintrusively instrument running applications and extract performance statistics. The use of component meta-data for target analysis, together with standards-based implementation strategies, ensures the complete portability of the instrumentation solution across different application servers. Based on this instrumentation infrastructure, a complete performance management framework including modelling and performance prediction is proposed. Most instrumentation solutions exhibit static behaviour by targeting a specified set of components. For long running applications, a constant overhead profile is undesirable and typically, such a solution would only be used for the duration of a performance audit, sacrificing the benefits of constantly observing a production system in favour of a reduced performance impact. This is addressed in this thesis by proposing an adaptive approach to monitoring which uses execution models to target profiling operations dynamically on components that exhibit performance degradation; this ensures a negligible overhead when the target application performs as expected and a minimum impact when certain components under-perform. Experimental results obtained with the prototype tool demonstrate the feasibility of the approach in terms of induced overhead. The portable and extensible architecture yields a versatile and adaptive basic instrumentation facility for a variety of potential applications that need a flexible solution for monitoring long running enterprise applications

Codeless App Development: Evaluating A Cloud-Native Domain-Specific Functions Approach

Mobile applications play an important role in the economy today and there is an increasing trend for app enablement on multiple platforms. However, creating, distributing, and maintaining an application remain expert tasks. Even for software developers, the process can be error-prone and resource-consuming, especially when targeting different platforms simultaneously. Researchers have proposed several frameworks to facilitate cross-platform app development, but little attention has been paid to non-technical users. In this paper, we described the Flow framework, which takes the advantage of domain-specific languages to enable no-code specification for app modeling. The cloud-native coordination mechanism further supports non-technical users to execute, monitor, and maintain apps for any target platforms. User evaluations were conducted to assess the usability and user experience with the system. The results indicated that users can develop apps in Flow with ease, but the prototype could be optimized to reduce learning time and workload

Codeless App Development: Evaluating A Cloud-Native Domain-Specific Functions Approach

Mobile applications play an important role in the economy today and there is an increasing trend for app enablement on multiple platforms. However, creating, distributing, and maintaining an application remain expert tasks. Even for software developers, the process can be error-prone and resource-consuming, especially when targeting different platforms simultaneously. Researchers have proposed several frameworks to facilitate cross-platform app development, but little attention has been paid to non-technical users. In this paper, we described the Flow framework, which takes the advantage of domain-specific languages to enable no-code specification for app modeling. The cloud-native coordination mechanism further supports non-technical users to execute, monitor, and maintain apps for any target platforms. User evaluations were conducted to assess the usability and user experience with the system. The results indicated that users can develop apps in Flow with ease, but the prototype could be optimized to reduce learning time and workload

A Model-Driven Framework for Domain Specific Process Design and Governance

Current BPM approaches and standards have not sufficiently reduced the Business-IT gap. Indeed, today's solutions are mostly domainindependent and platform-dependent, which limits the ability of business matter experts to express business intent and enact process change. In contrast, the tool presented in this paper supports an approach that focuses on BPM and SOA environments in a domain-dependent and platform-independent way. We propose to add a domain specific-layer on top of current solutions so that business stakeholders can design and understand their processes in a more intuitive way. This significantly improves the agility and governance of processes. The demo shows the appropriateness and the feasibility of the approach.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2015-63502-C3-2-

Usage Analysis & Demonstrators - Version 2.0

This second version of the "Usage Analysis and Demonstrators " document mainly presents four case studies done during the second part of the SCOrWare project: ● (Task 3.1) Component and service-oriented architecture in the Scientific Software field (improvements of works done during the first year) ● (Task 3.2) SCA as a SOA design methodology in the domain of CDE (Collaborative Development Environment). Following the withdraw of one of the partners (eXo Platform, provider of an open-source portal solution) during the first year, some changes have been decided during the second part of the project and an alternative demonstrator has been designed. ● (Task 3.3) How SCA contributes to reusing and enriching software components. Following the first year project's review, this scenario has been reinforced, and is the major demonstrator for the SCOrWare platform in the field of enterprise business applications. ● (Task 3.5) Using the SCOrWare platform and a component-oriented architecture in the context of a network monitoring system. A new partner (Thales Communications, in collaboration with Open Wide and EBM Websourcing) has joined the SCOrWare consortium during the second part of the project, following the withdraw of Amadeus

Expansion cone for the 3-inch PMTs of the KM3NeT optical modules

[EN] Detection of high-energy neutrinos from distant astrophysical sources will open a new window on the Universe. The detection principle exploits the measurement of Cherenkov light emitted by charged particles resulting from neutrino interactions in the matter containing the telescope. A novel multi-PMT digital optical module (DOM) was developed to contain 31 3-inch photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). In order to maximize the detector sensitivity, each PMT will be surrounded by an expansion cone which collects photons that would otherwise miss the photocathode. Results for various angles of incidence with respect to the PMT surface indicate an increase in collection efficiency by 30% on average for angles up to 45 degrees with respect to the perpendicular. Ray-tracing calculations could reproduce the measurements, allowing to estimate an increase in the overall photocathode sensitivity, integrated over all angles of incidence, by 27% (for a single PMT). Prototype DOMs, being built by the KM3NeT consortium, will be equipped with these expansion cones.This work is supported through the EU, FP6 Contract no. 011937, FP7 grant agreement no. 212252, and the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.Adrián Martínez, S.; Ageron, M.; Aguilar, JA.; Aharonian, F.; Aiello, S.; Albert, A.; Alexandri, M.... (2013). Expansion cone for the 3-inch PMTs of the KM3NeT optical modules. Journal of Instrumentation. 8(3):1-19. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-0221/8/03/T03006S1198

A Framework for Performance Monitoring, Modelling and Prediction of Component Oriented Distributed Systems

We present a framework that can be used to identify performance issues in component-oriented distributed systems. The framework consists of a monitoring module, a modelling module and a prediction module, that are interrelated. The monitoring block extracts real-time performance data from a live or under development system. The modelling block generates UML models of the system showing where the performance problems are located and drives the monitoring process. The performance prediction block simulates different system-loads on the generated models and pinpoints possible performance issues. The technological focus is currently on Enterprise Java Beans systems. 1