System Evolution, Feedback and Compliant Architectures

Proceedings, International Workshop on Feedback and Evolution in Software and Business Processes (FEAST 2000), Imperial College, London. Supported by EPSRCPostprintNon peer reviewe

Instances and connectors : issues for a second generation process language

This work is supported by UK EPSRC grants GR/L34433 and GR/L32699Over the past decade a variety of process languages have been defined, used and evaluated. It is now possible to consider second generation languages based on this experience. Rather than develop a second generation wish list this position paper explores two issues: instances and connectors. Instances relate to the relationship between a process model as a description and the, possibly multiple, enacting instances which are created from it. Connectors refers to the issue of concurrency control and achieving a higher level of abstraction in how parts of a model interact. We believe that these issues are key to developing systems which can effectively support business processes, and that they have not received sufficient attention within the process modelling community. Through exploring these issues we also illustrate our approach to designing a second generation process language.Postprin

Reflection and reification in process system evolution : experience and opportunity

Process systems aim to support many people involved in many processes over a long period of time. They provide facilities for storing and manipulating processes in both the representation and enactment domains. This paper argues that process systems should support ongoing transformations between these domains, at any level of granularity. The notion of creating a enactment model instance from a representation is merely one restricted transformation. Especially when process evolution is considered the case for thinking in terms of model instances is weak. This argument is supported by our experience of the ProcessWeb process system facilities for developing and evolving process models. The idea of hyper-code, which supports very general transformations between representation and enactment domains, is described. This offers the prospect of further improvements in this area.Postprin

ArchWARE: Architecting Evolvable Software

This paper gives an overview of the ArchWare European Project(1). The broad scope of ArchWare is to respond to the ever-present demand for software systems that are capable of accommodating change over their lifetime, and therefore are evolvable. In order to achieve this goal, ArchWare develops an integrated set of architecture-centric languages and tools for the model-driven engineering of evolvable software systems based on a persistent run-time framework. The ArchWare Integrated Development Environment comprises: (a) innovative formal architecture description, analysis, and refinement languages for describing the architecture of evolvable software systems, verifying their properties and expressing their refinements; (b) tools to support architecture description, analysis, and refinement as well as code generation; (c) enactable processes for supporting model-driven software engineering; (d) a persistent run-time framework including a virtual machine for process enactment. It has been developed using ArchWare itself and is available as Open 16 Source Software.</p