The role of the RM-ODP computational viewpoint concepts in the MDA approach

An MDA design approach should be able to accommodate designs at different levels of platform-independence. We have proposed a design approach previously (in [2]), which allows these levels to be identified. An important feature of this approach is the notion of 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 considering various design goals. In this paper, we define a framework that makes it possible to use RM-ODP concepts in our MDA design approach. This framework allows a recursive application of the computational viewpoint at different levels of platform-independence. This is obtained by equating the RM-ODP notion of infrastructure to our notion of abstract platform

A model-based approach to service creation

This paper presents a model-based approach to support service creation. In this approach, services are assumed to be created from (available) software components. The creation process may involve multiple design steps in which the requested service is repeatedly decomposed into more detailed functional parts, until these parts can be mapped onto software components. A modelling language is used to express and enable analysis of the resulting designs, in particular the behaviour aspects. Methods are needed to verify the correctness of each design step. A technique called behaviour refinement is introduced to assess the conformance relation between an abstract behaviour and a more concrete (detailed) behaviour. This technique is based on the application of abstraction rules to determine the abstraction of the concrete behaviour such that the obtained abstraction can be compared to the original abstract behaviour. The application of this refinement technique throughout the creation process enforces the correctness of the created servic

Towards a flexible service integration through separation of business rules

Driven by dynamic market demands, enterprises are continuously exploring collaborations with others to add value to their services and seize new market opportunities. Achieving enterprise collaboration is facilitated by Enterprise Application Integration and Business-to-Business approaches that employ architectural paradigms like Service Oriented Architecture and incorporate technological advancements in networking and computing. However, flexibility remains a major challenge related to enterprise collaboration. How can changes in demands and opportunities be reflected in collaboration solutions with minimum time and effort and with maximum reuse of existing applications? This paper proposes an approach towards a more flexible integration of enterprise applications in the context of service mediation. We achieve this by combining goal-based, model-driven and serviceoriented approaches. In particular, we pay special attention to the separation of business rules from the business process of the integration solution. Specifying the requirements as goal models, we separate those parts which are more likely to evolve over time in terms of business rules. These business rules are then made executable by exposing them as Web services and incorporating them into the design of the business process.\ud Thus, should the business rules change, the business process remains unaffected. Finally, this paper also provides an evaluation of the flexibility of our solution in relation to the current work in business process flexibility research

LOTOS specification style for OSI

The architecture of OSI is used to derive guidelines for writing LOTOS specifications of distributed systems. In particular, the architectural concepts that underlie service and protocol designs are examined in detail. For each of these concepts a representation in LOTOS is given. Examples are provided of how the LOTOS representations of the concepts are used in the construction of LOTOS specifications of service and protocol designs. The approach described in this paper is motivated by the need to produce distributed system specifications in a more consistent and productive fashion

Incorporating medical knowledge in the design process of context-aware well-being systems

The concept of self-adapting applications delivering enriched end-user services is highly promising. These context-aware applications can be seen in increasing numbers in a wide range of fields, including that of health and well-being. Using sensors to collect context data and smart reasoning algorithms to deduce higher-level information, they have the potential to adapt their behavior in real time to better suit the context at hand. However, the development process for these types of systems is challenging, as the user needs and preferences in different contexts are not easy to anticipate at design time. If services offered by the application do not align with the user needs in some situations, the user may disregard the application altogether. In order to address this challenge, we propose to use medical knowledge related to well-being in the development process of context-aware well-being systems. We believe that this approach allows for improved identification and design of effective context-aware services for well-being support

Model-driven Development for User-centric Well-being Support: From Dynamic Well-being Domain Models to Context-aware Applications

Applications that can use information obtained through device sensors to alter their behavior are called context-aware. Design and development of such applications is currently done by modeling the application's context or by using novel requirements engineering methods. If the application is to support the user's well-being, these methods fall short due to their technical focus. We propose a model-driven approach that deals with the specifics of the well-being domain by using a DSL that captures the user's personal well-being context. The development method is user-centric, rather than technology focused. Initial user experiments show promising results