7717458
From requirements negotiation to software architecture decisions
Architecture design and requirements negotiations are conceptually tightly related but often performed separately in real-world software development projects. As our prior case studies have revealed, this separation causes uncertainty in requirements negotiation that hinders progress, limits the success of architecture design, and often leads to wasted effort and substantial re-work later in the development life-cycle. Explicit requirements elicitation and negotiation is needed to be able to appropriately consider and evaluate architecture alternatives and the architecture alternatives need be understood during requirements negotiation. This paper propose the WinCBAM framework, extending an architecture design method, called cost benefit analysis method (CBAM) framework to include an explicit requirements negotiation component based on the WinWin methodology. We then provide a retrospective case study that demonstrates the use of the WinCBAM. We show that the integrated method is substantially more powerful than the WinWin and CBAM methods performed separately. The integrated method can assist stakeholders to elicit, explore, evaluate, negotiate, and agree upon software architecture alternatives based on each of their requirement Win conditions. By understanding the architectural implication of requirements they can be negotiated more successfully: potential requirements conflicts can be discovered or alleviated relatively early in the development life-cycle.
26701472
Interface descriptions for enterprise architecture
This paper describes our experiences in implementing a repository-based system that records and manages architectural information for an organization-wide set of enterprise information systems. The system is called Interface Descriptions for Enterprise Architecture (IDEA). The IDEA system business case and system creation are discussed, and the use of the system is exemplified by applying it to a set of information systems within a large corporation. We show how the existence of a managed enterprise architecture description enables an important set of analyses: risk analyses, architecture analyses, and change management analyses. Finally, we discuss how the IDEA system has the potential to catalyze even more profound change by changing how the various systems' stakeholders interact.
44852271
Managing Misalignments between Business and IT Architectures: A BITAM Case Study
38635731
Optimal Resource Allocation with Mixed Use of M/M/1/K and /M/M/m/K Queueing Systems in Video-on-Demand Systems
9860639
Analysis of parallel algorithms for finding a maximal independent set in a random hypergraph
It is well known 9] that nding a maximal independent set in a graph is in class N C, and 10] that nding a maximal independent set in a hypergraph with xed dimension is in RN C. It is not known whether this latter problem remains in N C when the dimension is part of the input. We will study the problem when the problem instances are randomly chosen. It was shown in 6] that the expected running time of a simple parallel algorithm for nding the lexicographically rst maximal independent set (lfmis) in a random simple graph is logarithmic in the input size. In this paper, we will prove a generalization of this result. We show that if a random k-uniform hypergraph has vertex set f1; 2; : : : ; ng and its edges are chosen independently with probability p from the set of ? n k possible edges, then our algorithm nds the lfmis
9507980
Using build-integrated static checking to preserve correctness invariants
A key missing link in the creation of secure and robust systems is finding a ost effective way to demonstrate and preserve correspondence between a software design and its implementation. This paper explores the use of software model checking techniques to validate selected design invariants in the EROS operating system kernel. Several global consistency policies in the EROS kernel can be expressed as finite state automata. Using the MOPS static hecker, we have been able to validate the EROS kernel implementation against these automata. In the process, we have confirmed the practical utility of the basic verification technique, identified a number of desirable enhancements in MOPS, and located bugs in the EROS implementation.
 A key contribution of this paper is establishing that it is practical to integrate software model checking into normal development lifestyle. Model hecking is efficient enough that it does not add noticeably to our build times. This allows us to view it as a tool for error prevention rather than <i>detection</i>. Our work with EROS and MOPS suggests that domain specific application of software model hecking is a practical and powerful technique for software assurance and maintenance.
14347517
A Tiered System for Serving Differentiated Content
Contemporary Web sites typically consist of front–end Web servers, application servers, and back-end information systems such as database servers. There has been limited research on how to provide overload control and service differentiation for the back-end systems. In this paper we propose an architecture called tiered service (TS) for these purposes. In TS, there are several heterogeneous back-end systems to serve the Web applications. The Web applications communicate with a routing intermediary to intelligently route the queries to the appropriate back-end servers based on various policies such as client profiles and server load. In our system the back ends may store different qualities of data; lower quality data typically requires less overhead to serve. The main contributions of this paper include (i) a tiered content replication scheme that replicates tiered qualities of data on heterogeneous back ends with different capacity to satisfy clients with diverse requirements for latency and quality of data, and (ii) an application-transparent query routing architecture that automatically routes the queries to the appropriate back ends. The architecture was implemented in our test bed, and its performance was benchmarked. The experimental results demonstrate that TS offers significant performance improvement.
7988497
Matching of dental X-ray images for human identification
Forensic dentistry involves the identification of people based on their dental records, mainly available as radiograph images. Our goal is to automate this process using image processing and pattern recognition techniques. Given a postmortem radiograph, we search a database of antemortem radiographs in order to retrieve the closest match with respect to some salient features. In this paper, we use the contours of the teeth as the feature for matching. A semi-automatic contour extraction method is used to address the problem of fuzzy tooth contours caused by the poor image quality. The proposed method involves three stages: radiograph segmentation, pixel classification and contour matching. A probabilistic model is used to describe the distribution of object pixels in the image. Results of retrievals on a database of over 100 images are encouraging.