Shared service recommendations from requirement specifications: A hybrid syntactic and semantic toolkit

ContextSoftware Requirement Specifications (SRSs) are central to software lifecycles. An SRS defines the functionalities and constraints of a desired software system, hence it often serves as reference for further development. Software lifecycles concerned with the conversion of traditional systems into more service-oriented infrastructures can benefit from understanding potential shared capabilities through the analysis of SRSs.ObjectiveIn this paper, we propose an automated approach capable of recommending shared software services from multiple text-based SRSs created by different organizations. Our goal is to facilitate the identification of overlapping requirements in these specifications and subsequently recommend shared components, which promotes software reuse. The shared components can be implemented as services that are invoked across different systems.MethodOur approach leverages the syntactic similarity of the SRS text augmented with semantic information derived from the WordNet database. This work extends our earlier studies by introducing an algorithm that utilizes noun, verb, and predicate relations to enhance the discovery of equivalent requirements and the recommendation of reusable services. A prototype system is implemented to evaluate the approach and experimental results have shown effective recommendation of requirements and their realized shared services.ResultsOur automatic recommendation approach generates recommendations in few minutes compared to 9 h when services are manually inspected by developers. Our approach is also able to recommend services that are overlooked by the same developers, and to identify similarity between requirements even if these requirements are reworded.ConclusionWe show through experimentation that we can efficiently recommend services by leveraging both the syntactical structure and the semantic information of a requirements document and that our approach is more effective than the manual selection of services by experts. We also show that our approach is effective in detecting similar requirements for a single system and hence discovering opportunities for software reuse.     

Context Management for Adaptive Information Systems

Modern technologies enable users accessing services using multiple channels. In the service design phase, this poses additional requirements for high software adaptivity along different technical requirements and different user expectations. During execution, services are usually dynamically selected; this service selection phase requires the identification of the most suitable service along the context that characterizes the users in the time instant in which they send the service request. This paper focuses on the selection phase and it aims at providing a framework to define and manage the context in a general environment characterized by adaptivity and multichannel access. An example to demonstrate the suitability and feasibility of the framework is provided referring to the MAIS (Multichannel Adaptive Information Systems) architecture and considering services related to the tourism domain. The MAIS architecture aims at providing automatically and efficiently services with the appropriate features by choosing among many provider offerings.     

A user centric service-oriented modeling approach

With rapid development of service-oriented architecture and cloud computing, web services have been widely employed on the Internet. Quality of Service (QoS) is a very important criterion for service consumers to measure and select services. The selection of web services with respect to non-functional QoS criteria can be considered as a Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problem when multiple consumers need to share a number of services. This paper describes a new user centric service-oriented modeling approach which is featured by integrating fuzzy Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and Service Component Architecture (SCA) to facilitate web service selection and composition and to effectively satisfy a group of service consumers’ subjective requirements and preferences in the dynamic environment. The main contribution of this method is able to translate a group of users’ fuzzy requirements to services as well as model different levels of hardware and software as services to meet the requirements. We also design a simulated environment that includes 8*8 LED matrix on a circuit board that corresponds to an office with different appliances to demonstrate the dynamic service selection and binding. The simulation is used to assess the computational efficiency of the fuzzy TOPSIS method and the effectiveness of the proposed system.     

Forming telecommunications software specifications from a service-driven model using enhanced software tools

Increasing diversity and sophistication among telecommunications customers has led to pressure on the telecommunications industry to give customer groups the capability to customize aspects of offered telecommunications services for their own particular needs. To offer such user-customizable services correctly, quickly, and cheaply, the telecommunications industry needs adequate techniques for transforming user requirements into software specifications and for realizing these software specifications with application code. In today's environment, several well-known software development life cycle processes exist for realizing software specifications; however, analogous techniques for transforming user requirements into explicit software specifications do not. This paper proposes a technique for transforming user requirements and then demonstrates its use on a sample telecommunications application. The technique creates a simulation environment that lets simulation users describe their application requirements and then determine the appropriate software specifications needed. The technique builds on aspects of a service-driven specification model and simulation software tools published earlier. Because the simulation environment derives from user requirements and produces software specifications, the proposed technique could represent the first phase of a service-driven software development life cycle process, eventually evolving from the nonservice-driven “requirements analysis” phase commonly used in practice today.     

一种节能的无线传感器网络QoS路由算法

针对无线传感器网络中不同业务对QoS的不同要求,提出了一种新的QoS路由算法—EBQoS算法。算法通过记录邻居节点到Sink节点的最小跳数信息建立到Sink节点的多条路径,并根据信息包的QoS要求和节点剩余能量选择合适的路径进行路由。通过仿真实验与顺序分配路由（SAR）算法的比较,结果表明该路由算法在提供差别服务和提高网络生存期方面具有明显的优势。     

基于全数字的航空机载软件验证平台研究

为解决机载软件验证与开发环境冲突、软件验证独立性及软件联合仿真验证的问题,提出了一套基于全数字仿真技术的航空机载软件验证平台设计方案。即基于企业内各专业已有的全数字仿真系统、多学科仿真模型,设计了一套以数据分发服务为基础的架构,实现系统之间的互联互通;考虑软件测试要求及测试用例的可读性、可维护性需求,提出了基于测试场景的测试用例设计方法,实现测试场景与测试用例数据的分离,对验证工作的分工安排、工作交接维护具有较大的意义;对已有的企业级测试管理系统进行扩展,打通软件需求、设计、测试项、测试场景、测试用例之间的关联关系,实现软件开发验证的协同管理。     

Integrated CAD development for building services engineering

The potential benefits of CAD in building design are well established. In reality most production CAD systems are developed in response to the particular requirements of users who are architects or building engineers. These requirements are often fragmented. They relate to different aspects of the complete building engineering design cycle and are often specified by different users at different moments in time. The role of the CAD systems developer is to design a coherent software system and to establish a consistent set of user interface conventions with which an integrated solution of these different requirements can be provided. This paper describes how this methodology has been successfully applied to an important aspect of CAD relating to building services engineering.     

国产平台下可靠文件传输软件的设计及实现

在国产自主可控平台加速推广的当下,为实现文件在测控数据传输网不同软硬件平台之间的可靠、快速传输,本文根据相关技术规范,基于文件交换协议(File Exchange Protocol,简称FXP协议),设计并实现功能完备、运行稳定的可靠文件传输软件。软件具备模块化、可移植、基于TCP协议满足用户可靠性需求、基于UDP协议满足用户传输效率需求、兼容不同软硬件平台等的功能特点,并具备满足安全编程需求的软件特性,立足核心代码设计、验证,对软件功能和稳定运行两个方面做了进一步的改良和提升,以满足跨不同软硬件平台稳定运行、恶劣网络环境中可靠传输、畅通网络环境中尽力快速传输的新要求。     

基于SDN的网络带宽保障系统

传统的数据中心网络难以为指定业务的网络带宽需求提供保障.基于SDN(Software Defined Network)的网络带宽保障系统通过在Floodlight控制器中开发网络带宽保障服务,并采用MVC(Model View Controller)模式设计出一个客户端软件,能够实现用户对网络状态的实时监控和对带宽保障策略的灵活调度.在Mininet搭建的虚拟网络环境中进行测试的结果显示,该系统能够实时监控网络状态、灵活调度带宽保障策略,进而准确有效地保障网络中指定业务的带宽需求.     

一种业务驱动的多媒体传感器网络路由算法

针对多媒体传感器网络承载业务（视频图像业务、音频业务以及数据业务）的差异性和不同业务对QoS的差异性,基于蚁群算法和混沌理论,抽象业务驱动的QoS路由模型,提出了一种业务驱动的路由算法SDR（Service-Driver Routing）。依据各类业务对QoS的差异性选择相应路由策略,达到充分利用网络资源、提高网络承载业务性能的目标。采用NS2对该算法进行实验仿真,实验结果表明,与其他路由算法相比,该算法可提供区分业务的QoS保障。     

Synthy: A system for end to end composition of web services

The demand for quickly delivering new applications is increasingly becoming a business imperative today. However, application development is often done in an ad hoc manner resulting in poor reuse of software assets and longer time-to-delivery. Web services have received much interest due to their potential in facilitating seamless business-to-business or enterprise application integration. A web service composition system can help automate the process, from specifying business process functionalities, to developing executable workflows that capture non-functional (e.g. Quality of Service (QoS)) requirements, to deploying them on a runtime infrastructure. Intuitively, web services can be viewed as software components and the process of web service composition similar to software synthesis. In addition, service composition needs to address the build-time and runtime issues of the integrated application, thereby making it a more challenging and practical problem than software synthesis. However, current solutions based on business web services (using WSDL, BPEL, SOAP, etc.) or semantic web services (using ontologies, goal-directed reasoning, etc.) are both piecemeal and insufficient. We formulate the web service composition problem and describe the first integrated system for composing web services end to end, i.e., from specification to deployment. The proposed solution is based on a novel two-staged composition approach that addresses the information modeling aspects of web services, provides support for contextual information while composing services, employs efficient decoupling of functional and non-functional requirements, and leads to improved scalability and failure handling. We also present Synthy, a prototype of the service composition system, and demonstrate its effectiveness with the help of an application scenario from the telecom domain.     

Business Object Modeling, Validation, and Mediation for Integrating Heterogeneous Application Systems

When different business organizations come together to conduct a joint business in a virtual enterprise environment, their application systems need to have a convenient way to specify the services needed from other systems and to transfer data needed by these services. The transferred data needs to be validated and, in some cases, mediated to meet the constraints and data representation requirements of both the source and target application systems. Ideally, the validation and mediation tasks should be done outside of the legacy application systems so that these systems do not have to be modified. In this work, the Business Object Documents (BODs) introduced by the Open Applications Group (OAG) are used for specifying business operations and transferring data among application systems. We use an active object model to model BODs. The model captures not only the data attributes and methods associated with these business objects, but also events and rules for specifying and triggering the enforcement of attribute constraints and inter-attribute constraints and the activation of data mediation operations. The conceptual models of these BODs with their added semantics are used to generate entity classes, converters and skeletal programs needed for enforcing constraints and for converting data. These generated object classes and software components in Java constitute the platform-independent adapters through which heterogeneous application systems inter-operate over CORBA and RMI communication infrastructures. A distributed approach to data validation and mediation is used. It allows the generated code for validation and mediation to be distributed and processed at different sites, thus avoiding the potential network bottleneck of a centralized approach to the validation and mediation of business object documents.     

一种面向服务的权限管理模型

面向服务的体系结构(Service-Oriented Architecture,SOA)是设计和构建松耦合软件系统的方法,它可将基于中间件开发的分布式应用共享为Internet环境下的软件服务．传统中间件的用户权限系统具有较好的灵活性,基本满足封闭系统的安全需求．但在SOA模式下,难以满足不同节点和系统互相请求服务和共享资源过程中的授权．该文提出了一个面向服务的权限管理模型,通过支持用户之间的代理和提供一定的推理能力,为应用开发者提供了更完善的权限管理机制,并扩展了中间件跨越组织共享资源和服务的能力．该模型在一个J2EE应用服务器上被实现和验证．实验证明,该模型具有良好的灵活性和可扩展性,并且性能影响在合理的范围．     

基于DM3730和W5300的嵌入式视频流传输系统的设计与实现

针对传输视频流业务的应用需求,设计并实现了以达芬奇技术系列芯片DM3730处理器和以太网处理芯片W5300为组成核心的嵌入式视频传输系统。深入分析了基于W5300的以太网卡驱动程序设计方法,分别实现了W5300彝定／硬件协议栈在Linux环境下的移植,并通过实验以FTP传输方式测试了视频流业务的传输性能。实测表明该系统达到了2．6Mbps的传输速率,可以满足传输视频流业务的性能要求。     

支持多类终端与服务定制的SaaS软件服务架构

由软件即服务(SaaS)模式中软件服务的概念与特点分析,可知现有的面向服务架构(SOA)不能完全支持软件服务的实现。此外,为了拓展软件服务的应用范围,实现多样化的服务,SaaS模式的软件服务必然要满足用户定制服务的需求,以及对多类用户终端的支持。通过对SOA的扩展,在其中引入了软件服务终端、软件服务端口、软件服务注册等模块,提出了一种支持多类终端与服务定制的SaaS软件服务架构,给出了该架构的结构与工作流程,并通过实验证明了该架构可以实现SaaS模式的软件服务,而且能够实现对上述功能需求的支持。     

PICO: A platform independent communications middleware for heterogeneous devices in smart grids

This paper presents a data-centric middleware responsible for real-time communication and data storage in smart grids. The middleware offers a high level programming model that provides ways of storing/getting information from/to the grid and encrypts messages thus providing a secure message exchange. The design has taken into account the heterogeneity of devices, software platforms and stakeholders involved in this kind of Cyber-physical System (CPS). A modular vision is followed in such a way that middleware components can be easily adapted to different platforms and a simple data interface is provided by using REST (Representational State Transfer) web services and a high level asynchronous API. The middleware has been used in the context of a European project (e-balance) where soft real-time requirements, security and low capacity devices were some of the requirements. The demonstration scenarios are detailed in this paper together with the validation tests that show that the use of this programming abstraction is feasible.     

Telerobotic systems design based on real‐time CORBA

A new class of telerobotic applications is making its way into research laboratories, fine arts or science museums, and industrial installations. Virtual laboratories and remote equipment maintenance are examples of these applications, which are built exploiting distributed computing systems and Internet technologies. Distributed computing technologies provide several advantages to telerobotic applications, such as dynamic and multiuser access to remote resources and arbitrary user locations. Nonetheless, building these applications remains a substantial endeavor, especially when performance requirements must be met. The aim of this paper is to investigate how mainstream and advanced features of the CORBA object‐oriented middleware can be put to work to meet the requirements of novel telerobotic applications. We show that Real‐Time CORBA extensions and asynchronous method invocation of CORBA services can be relied upon to meet performance and functional requirements, thereby enabling teleoperation on local area networks. Furthermore, CORBA services for concurrency control and large‐scale data distribution enable geographic‐scale access for robot teleprogramming. Limitations in the currently available implementations of the CORBA standard are also discussed, along with their implications. The effectiveness and suitability for telerobotic applications of several CORBA mechanisms are tested first individually and then by means of a software framework exploiting CORBA services and ensuring component‐based development, software reuse, low development cost, fully portable real‐time and communication support. A comprehensive telerobotic application built based on the framework is described in the paper and evaluated on both local and wide area networks. The application includes a robot manipulator and several sensory subsystems under concurrent access by multiple competing or collaborating operators, one of which is equipped with a multimodal user interface acting as the master device. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.