11560314
Distributed systems design using function-class decomposition with aspects
Object-oriented methods are known for their capabilities to encapsulate and manage core concerns of complex software systems. However, they are inadequate in discerning and separating a variety of other cross-cutting concerns. In particular, for distributed systems, a number of important concerns such as synchronization, logging, and security, should be sufficiently treated in the design phase of the software lifecycle in order to ensure high system quality. Often these concerns tend to be overlooked at the design level and consequently scattered across multiple system modules during implementation. Consequently it becomes difficult to connect the set of requirements with the system structure, thus system traceability is reduced. This paper proposes an extension to the function-class decomposition (FCD) method, that is a hybrid method of structured analysis and OO approach, by integrating the concepts of "aspect". "Aspect" is an abstraction mechanism that emerged in recent years from the aspect-oriented programming (AOP) community. This extended method supports separation of functional and non-functional concerns by maintaining two primary views (function-class view and aspect view) at the design stage, and demonstrates the iterative process by applying it to the development of an example system called M-Net that is an Internet-based real-time distributed conferencing system.
32612296
Automating performance-related impact analysis through event based traceability
Current impact analysis techniques tend to focus on assessing the impact of change upon the system's functionality, whilst a consideration of performance related requirements is often deferred until after implementation. This tendency can lead to costly and time-consuming mistakes that frustrate customers and require frantic last-minute efforts to fix. This paper proposes a method for supporting performance-related impact analysis in a heterogeneous software engineering environment. An event-based approach is taken to establish dynamic traceability links, capable of propagating data values and commands between requirements and performance models. Quantitative values in performance related requirements are adjusted to reflect proposed changes, and impacted models are re-executed to measure the impact of the change. The resulting outputs are then automatically compared to relevant performance requirements and a system-wide report showing the impact of the proposed change upon performance is generated.
10317156
A research on Collaboration Net
We present research on computer-supported cooperative work by introducing an approach to the multimedia based net-centric conference environment-Collaboration Net. Some basic definitions of the distributed Web-based meeting are provided, and the properties of this kind of collaboration are given. We explain problems associated with the well-known yet old-fashioned parliamentary procedure, Robert's Rules of Order, which must be formally modeled and adapted to the modern net-centric virtual conference where time synchronism is hard to enforce. A prototype of our Web-browser based approach to developing the Collaboration Net is also briefly presented. Finally, research challenges in this area are highlighted.
15614662
Towards increasing web application productivity
In this paper we present and discuss a template/meta-data based partial code generation system supporting web application development. Seamlessly incorporating the recent top-notch technologies, the framework maximally exploits the capabilities of the underlying implementation technologies. Our approach primarily benefits the framework and code developers. In addition, the complete separation of data model, navigation model, and presentation model reflects on a more general conceptual process that would decouple the technique and methodology from its underlying technology choices. The decoupling between the generated code and the code that is necessarily added later on through other development pathways than the generator deals with the incremental changes and adaptations of the models in the face of an operational system, therefore further enhances the extensibility, maintainability, and reusability of the generated applications.
18643244
An Empirical Performance Study on PSIM
It is well known that errors caught in the early stages of system development life cycle greatly helped reduce the expense for later error fixing and mitigate risks and complications. Performance analysis is one of the methods to ensure satisfactory system performance that can avoid redesign and patch in the later stage of system development when performance problems emerge. Much work has been done to address such concerns collectively known as the 'performance engineering' problem. However, a comprehensive method is still needed to provide an end-to-end support for performance evaluation on software architecture design. Automated tools to support the method must be developed, and its validation must be carefully planned and conducted. In response to this need, we propose our approach, PSIM (performance simulation and modeling). PSIM is a performance simulation and modeling tool that integrated performance properties into software architecture specifications expressed in several major UML diagrams. PSIM models can be transformed into Colored GSPN (colored generalized stochastic Petri nets) via an automated tool. As a result, the Colored GSPN models can be simulated to perform model-based performance evaluation. In this paper PSIM is first briefly reviewed and illustrated through modeling a web-based electronic conferencing system, called M-Net, to derive performance metrics. We then conduct runtime performance testing to the implementation of M-Net and compare the simulation results against the runtime testing data. PSIM is shown to be effective in predicting system performance and in identifying system performance bottlenecks through this experimentation.
215862843
Genetic Algorithms for Project Management
The scheduling of tasks and the allocation of resource in medium to large-scale development projects is an extremely hard problem and is one of the principal challenges of project management due to...
43825190
Temporal Relations and Synchronization Agents
Temporal relationships, inevitable among distributed multimedia objects, require synchronization of multiple data streams in time. We propose using synchronization agents as "smart" distributed objects to deal with scheduling, integrating, and synchronizing distributed multimedia streams. A formal specification model, interoperable Petri nets, describes the agents' behavior and captures the temporal semantics existing among distributed multimedia objects.
14948724
Joint software research between industry and academia
A model for industry-sponsored academic software research tha helps the sponsor gain tangible results quickly but respects the university's research mission is presented. Central to the model is joint effort to achieve a win-win situation for all participants. The key is the relationship between the university's principal investigator and the company's visiting scholar. The principal investigator initiates research contracts and is responsible for research results but, because he or she is an academic, may not have an industrial perspective. The company dispatches a technical representative, called the visiting scholar, to participate directly in the daily research. A research structure, relations with the sponsoring company, issues regarding environmental compatibility and funding amount and duration, and a reporting structure are all spelled out in the model. Legal recommendations are made with respect to confidentiality, copyrights and patents, export controls, and other issues. Other considerations that arise when writing a research contract are discussed.<<ETX>>
553852
Creating a distributed environment using object oriented technology
The paper gives a detailed description of the development of a distributed environment. A brief description of an object oriented technology used in the development of the environment is also presented. The environment described is suitable for rapid prototyping of distributed applications and complete development of distributed software systems. This environment was used in the development of client/server applications and the simulation of a cellular system. The cellular system featured Call-Handoff Cell-spitting and the dynamic allocation of cellular phones in the system.
2457108
An object-oriented real-time distributed simulation of cellular phone switching system
The cellular phone network is a distributed system which is composed of three kinds of subsystems, a mobile phone unit, a base site station and a MSC (mobile switching center). A class of cellular phone switching systems, was chosen as the system to be studied. SUN workstations and the UNIX operating system with X windows have been employed as the core of the development environment. The object-oriented (OO) paradigm and C++ were chosen to develop the simulation. UICCELL was developed as an object-oriented system for cellular phone switching real-time multitasking simulation. UICCELL has been fully implemented and is currently running on an Ethernet LAN. A central monitor is created on the screen to manipulate and monitor the simulator. The graphical user interface displays the configuration of UICCELL and the status of processors, channels, etc. The current implementation contains 60 classes and about 20,000 lines of C++ code.<<ETX>>
45899286
Computer Supported Cooperative Work Oriented Architecture