We propose a novel methodology for analysing change propagation in software using the domain-level behavioural model of a system. We hypothesize that change propagation analysis is feasible based purely on the information visible and understandable to domain experts, trading some accuracy for productivity. Such a method is independent of formal architectural representations and may be practical for applications with heterogeneous subsystems, or missing or undocumented source code. In this paper we introduce the first phase of the methodology: creating and evaluating a connection graph of conceptual relationships between user interface components. We provide results of case studies on two web-based systems which illustrate how our methodology can be applied, and how discovered conceptual relationships match the architectural dependencies.
Aqueous coating composition comprises (wt.%) an aqueous binder mixture (A1) comprising a secondary, hydroxy-functional polyacrylate dispersion or polyacrylate emulsion (a1) (25-70), aliphatic polyurethane dispersion (a2) (5-50), hydroxy-functional polyester-polyurethane dispersion composed to an extent of at least 75 wt.% of a polyester of molecular weight 500-2500 g/mol (20-70); and at least one cross-linker (A2), necessarily including at least two of the three components (a1)-(a3), and necessarily including one component (a1) and/or (a3) in an amount of at least 35 wt.%. Independent claims are included for the following: (1) anti-chip base coats comprising the aqueous coating composition; and (2) paint system comprising a substrate and at least one coat composed of the aqueous coating composition.
We present a contract-based technique to achieve reuse of known worst-case execution times (WCET) in conjunction with reuse of software components. For resource constrained systems, or systems where high degree of predictability is needed, classical techniques for WCET-estimation will result in unacceptable overestimation of the execution-time of reusable software components with rich behavior. Our technique allows different WCETs to be associated with subsets of the component behavior. The appropriate WCET for any usage context of the component is selected be means of component contracts over the input domain. In a case-study we illustrate our technique and demonstrate its potential in achieving tight WCET-estimates for reusable components with rich behavior.
This paper reports on a multi-method, multi-discipline, five year research project that aims to develop and test a standardised, digital reporting taxonomy that will reduce future reporting burden for Australian firms and enable aggregation of social and environmental sustainability data at an inter-organisational level. By doing so, Government, regulatory bodies and businesses will be better positioned to make decisions that consider critical issues affecting both nation and communities such as climate change and environmental degradation hence driving more sustainable approaches to business enterprise.
Enterprise Architecture deals with the structure of an enterprise, relationships and interactions of its units. It provides a holistic approach to reconcile IT and Business concerns in an enterprise. Virtual Enterprises are collaborative ad-hoc alliances of multiple enterprises for a specific business opportunity. First we discuss both paradigms and then the Enterprise Architecture viewpoint of Virtual Enterprise and provide a definition of Virtual Enterprise, Enterprise Architecture and Virtual Enterprise Architecture. This paper surveys research into formal models of Virtual Enterprise Architecture (modelling languages, reference models, architecture frameworks) and identifies current gaps in this research.
Enterprise Architecture deals with the structure of an enterprise, relationships and interactions of its units. It provides a holistic approach to reconcile IT and Business concerns in an enterprise. Virtual Enterprises are collaborative ad-hoc alliances of multiple enterprises for a specific business opportunity. This paper looks into both the paradigms and Enterprise Architecture viewpoint of Virtual Enterprise. Service Oriented Architecture as a style of Enterprise Architecture proves to be an enabler of Virtual Enterprises at Business and Technology Levels. The three major challenges with Virtual Enterprise are flexibility, adaptability, and agility. This paper discusses Virtual Enterprise Architecture as a solution to these challenges, surveys research into formal models of Virtual Enterprise Architecture and identifies current gaps in this research.
Academic institutions and campuses in Australia have witnessed an increase in academic and research activities. This has increased the resource consumption and contributes to impact on environment. The growth in consumption of information technology through various initiatives such as research data repositories (ARROW, ANDS), eResearch and eLearning has contributed to the environmental impact. There is a need for universities and academic institutions to think strategically and holistically about Green Enterprise Architecture of their educational and research enterprises. We introduce a strategic approach for implementing Green Enterprise Architecture (EA) based on Total Sustainability Framework (TSF) and Total sustainability Indicator (TSI) using a case study. Application of TSI and TSF in achieving Green EA would assist universities in meeting their goals and objectives of sustainability in a holistic and balanced manner.
Systems according to Claim 1, characterized in that the compounds of vanadium are compounds selected from the group consisting of ammonium, lithium, sodium and potassium vanadate, lithium, sodium and potassium orthovanadate, magnesium vanadate, calcium vanadate, vanadyl (IV) acetylacetonate (VO(C 5 H 7 O 5 ) 2 ), vanadyl bistetramethylheptadionate VO(TMHD) 2 and vanadic acid. ... 3. Systems according to Claim 1, characterized in that the compounds of vanadium are compounds selected from the group consisting of lithium vanadate Li 3 VO ...
Customer Life Cycle Management (CLCM) is concerned with the advancement of contractual relationships between customers and service providers through different stages. The aim is to eventually reach a stage where a customer is loyal to a product or an institution. To this end, CLCM involves the monitoring of contractual relationships, including the monitoring of activities that are agreed contractually. Changing objectives and uncertain environmental conditions are disruptions that can make the management of a customer life cycle difficult. Our approach aims to prevent behaviour that can jeopardise a contractual relationship. The Belief-Desire-Intention paradigm is used to describe "deficits" in a mental state model of customer and provider agents. We offer a conceptual approach that supports agents with mental deficits to adhere to agreed activities. The approach detects off-track behaviour of agents, identifies the deficit that has caused this behaviour, and applies tailored interventions to move execution back on-track. This paper shows examples of three mental state deficits of agents, and how our approach detects, monitors, and intervenes off-track behaviour.
Abstract Cloud computing presents a unique opportunity for science and engineering with benefits compared to traditional high-performance computing, especially for smaller compute jobs and entry-level users to parallel computing. However, doubts remain for production high-performance computing in the cloud, the so-called science cloud, as predictable performance, reliability and therefore costs remain elusive for many applications.
Failure in long running grid applications is arguably inevitable and costly. Therefore, fault tolerance (FT) support for grid applications is needed. This paper evaluates an extension of our prior work on Recovery Aware Components (RAC), a component based FT approach. Our extension utilizes the grid application architecture according to a small number of architectural classes. In this paper, we evaluate the MapReduce architecture only and analyze the reliability improvement MapReduce applications would gain by adopting ...
Failure in grids is costly and inevitable. Existing fault tolerance (FT) mechanisms are typically defensive and reactive, thus unnecessarily costly. In this paper we propose a hybrid FT approach, recovery aware component (RAC), combining reactive and proactive FT, with failure recovery or aversion of user-defined granularity, by component-orientation and architecture-level reasoning about FT, to increase reliability and availability without needless performance sacrifices. We model and analyse a parameterised RAC implementation combining prediction, proactive rejuvenation and reactive restarting to varying extents, calculating cost savings, reliability improvements and cost-benefit, under parameters such as prediction frequency and accuracy.
Two human pathogenic bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus CIP 68.5 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 9025, were adsorbed onto surfaces containing Ti. thin films of varying thickness to determine the extent to which nanoscale surface roughness influences the extent of bacterial attachment. A magnetron sputter thin film system was used to deposit titanium films with thicknesses of 3,12, and 150 nm on glass substrata with corresponding surface roughness parameters of Rq 1.6, 1.2, and 0.7 nm (on a 4 μm x 4 μm scanning area). The chemical composition, wettability, and surface architecture of titanium thin films were characterized using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, contact angle measurements, atomic force microscopy, three-dimensional interactive visualization, and statistical approximation of the topographic profiles. Investigation of the dynamic evolution of the Ti. thin film, topographic parameters indicated that three commonly used parameters, Ra. Rq, and Rmax, were insufficient to effectively characterize the nanoscale rough/smooth surfaces. Two additional parameters, Rskw and Rkur: which describe the statistical distributions of roughness character, were found to be useful for evaluating the surface architecture. Analysis of bacterial retention profiles indicated that bacteria responded, differently to the surfaces on a scale of less than 1 nm change in the Ra and Rq Ti thin film surface roughness parameters by (i) an increased, number of retained cells by a factor of 2-3, and (ii) an elevated level of secretion of extracellular polymeric substances.
A Galois connection is stated between a knowledge base and queries over this knowledge. Queries are stated as conjunctions. Both the knowledge and queries are represented by certain graphs. This Galois connection gives rise to lattices of pattern concepts implicitly contained in the theory (all derivable facts) over the knowledge base. The formal foundation for browsing such lattices and a realisation in terms of a prototype tool is outlined. Data types may be assigned to individual columns of tables in the database
The article introduces a representation of a formal context by an undirected graph called a context graph with the formal objects being the nodes of the graph. We use as a defining property for this graph that it contains every concept extent as a connected subgraph. The graph is not uniquely defined by this property - we focus on those graphs that are edge-minimal and present a result with respect to the number of their edges. We then study how the structure of an edge-minimal context graph can be updated to adjust to the subsequent addition of an object to the context. This leads to an incremental construction algorithm that does not require the explicit computation of formal concepts.
Redundancy can improve the availability of components in service-oriented systems. However, predicting and quantifying the effects of different redundancy strategies can be a complex task. In our work, we have taken an architecture based approach to the modeling, predicting and monitoring of properties in distributed software systems. This paper proposes redundancy strategies for service-oriented systems and models services with their associated protocols. We derive formal models from these high-level descriptions that are embedded in our fault-tolerance testing framework. We describe the general framework of our approach, develop two service redundancy strategies and report about the preliminary evaluation results in measuring performance and availability of such services. While the assumptions for the chosen case study are limiting, our evaluation is promising and encourages the extension of our testing framework to cater for more complex, hybrid, fault-tolerance strategies and architectural compositions.
Contract models underlying architecture-level verification methods must suit a range of different accuracy vs analytical complexity tradeoffs depending on domain. For example, trustworthiness in safety-critical systems is enabled by representational simplicity leading to comprehensible proofs while real-time systems require precise characterisation of execution time. A family of mutually-compatible parameterised contract models enabling such tradeoffs is needed, supporting reasoning about consistency and conformance ( ...
Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) is an emerging paradigm for developing software systems that employ services. Presently there is already much research effort in the areas of service discovery and orchestration, business process modelling, and the semantic web. While these are all important aspects for moving towards the pervasive adoption of SOC, most existing work assumes the existence of black box services, with little attention given to how such services might be developed in a systematic manner. Furthermore, a precise description of what constitutes a service-oriented system is yet to be formally defined, and the overall impact of service-orientation on the software design process is not well understood. Therefore, this work presents a formal model covering design artefacts in service-oriented systems and their structural and behavioural properties. The model promotes a better understanding of service-oriented design concepts, and in particular, enables the definition of software metrics in an unambiguous, formal manner. Defining such a model and metrics is an initial step towards deriving a comprehensive service-oriented software design methodology.
Embedded systems design, configuration, deployment and runtime management are extremely challenging. The pervasiveness of embedded systems, and their increasing parallelism and scale in number of networked and interacting hardwaresoftware components, has been coupled with increases in the number of functions and the variation in behaviour and characteristics of these functions. Adoption of new international safety standards and higher best practice levels in large manufacturer subcontracting policies however mandates strict quality and at times even stricter dependability and sustainability (in particular energy efficiency) requirements. In recent work we have extended our rich architecture definition language (RADL) and underlying theory to meet such industrial requirements. In this paper we describe a new approach and design model targeting hybrid designer- and operator-defined performance budgets for timing and energy consumption. We give a running example designing a sample embedded multi-media system, a modern digital camera. The model caters for true parallelism, probabilistic performance characterisation, parameterised architectural variation, compositionality, and runtime reconfiguration. The theory is based on hybrid, hierarchical, performance-annotated parallel automata and Petri nets. We also briefly summarise our tool set used to derive the example.
Service selection is the first step in customer life cycle management where services are selected to meet a customer's goals or objectives, personalised to the circumstances of the customer. The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) to develop concepts and algorithms for goal-directed service selection; and (2) to compare and reconcile our goal-directed approach with a service-oriented approach. The proposed goal-directed service selection algorithm is based on a goal-directed domain description that represents the customer objectives and the business processes. We use service component architectures with formalised contractual service process definitions as a software engineering approach to architectural design and realisation of service-oriented architectures (SOA). The comparison aims to understand the relationship between and benefits of a goal-directed approach and a service oriented approach . We use case studies from two complex customer care management domains to demonstrate the concepts. The implemented algorithms are tested in a health care case study.
The aim of our research is to provide a unified model for the composition and management of consumer care services. We identify design, composition, distribution and management as key stages of this model and propose an Intelligent Collaborative Care Management (ICCM) System as its realisation. The distribution and management stages are implemented as multi-agent systems. Agents in the distribution stage carry out domain-specific negotiation and distribution processes for the assignment of tasks in the care plan. Through the agents in the management stage, we introduce the notion of 'failure prevention' and 'adherence support' in contrast to 'failure recovery' in planning. The key to failure prevention is to identify what has to be carried out to prevent care plan failures. The healthcare domain is used to demonstrate the ICCM system.
We present a semi-automated approach and framework for cost-aware recovery from service inconsistency arising due to unreliable service actions. A range of costs such as time are parameterised and modelled generically using cost algebras. With respect to a user-provided business specification, we distinguish end-state consistency, which must be achieved at service completion, from strong consistency, which may be momentarily violated. Our approach ensures optimal end-state consistency for services where action failure may lead to temporary violations of strong consistency or end-state consistency. Enterprises could not otherwise optimally and dynamically handle strong consistency violation, especially with respect to a variety of costs. Our approach provides quantitative analysis by defining a service model as an high-level message sequence chart (hMSC), annotating service actions with costs, then interpreting the model as a weighted (Mazurkiewicz) trace language, catering for costs in the presence of true concurrency. We devise a framework and method which checks such a model and ensures service end-state consistency optimally by concatenating the traces of recovery strategies (expressed by MSCs) from an enterprise service repository. We evaluate our approach using a popular online shop case study.