Generic support for distributed applications

In the late 1980s, software designers introduced middleware platforms to support distributed computing systems. Since then, the rapid evolution of technology has caused an explosion of distributed-processing requirements. Application developers now routinely expect to support multimedia systems and mobile users and computers. Timely response to asynchronous events is crucial to such applications, but current platforms do not adequately meet this need. Another need of existing and emerging applications is the secure interoperability of independent services in large-scale, widely distributed systems. Information systems serving organizations such as universities, hospitals, and government agencies require cross-domain interaction. To meet the needs of these applications, Cambridge University researchers developed middleware extensions that provide a flexible, scalable approach to distributed-application development. This article details the extensions they developed, explaining their distributed software approach and the support it has provided for emerging applications     

An architecture-driven software mobility framework

Software architecture has been shown to provide an appropriate level of granularity for assessing a software system’s quality attributes (e.g., performance and dependability). Similarly, previous research has adopted an architecture-centric approach to reasoning about and managing the run-time adaptation of software systems. For mobile and pervasive software systems, which are known to be innately dynamic and unpredictable, the ability to assess a system’s quality attributes and manage its dynamic run-time behavior is especially important. In the past, researchers have argued that a software architecture-based approach can be instrumental in facilitating mobile computing. In this paper, we present an integrated architecture-driven framework for modeling, analysis, implementation, deployment, and run-time migration of software systems executing on distributed, mobile, heterogeneous computing platforms. In particular, we describe the framework’s support for dealing with the challenges posed by both logical and physical mobility. We also provide an overview of our experience with applying the framework to a family of distributed mobile robotics systems. This experience has verified our envisioned benefits of the approach, and has helped us to identify several avenues of future work.     

Software architecture and mobility: A roadmap

Modern software-intensive systems are characterized not only by the movement of data, as has been the case in traditional distributed systems, but also by the movement of users, devices, and code. Developing effective, efficient, and dependable systems in the mobile setting is challenging. Existing architectural principles need to be adapted and novel architectural paradigms devised. In this paper, we give an overview of the intersection of the areas of software architecture and mobility. We consider mobility from two related perspectives: (1) mobile software, which represents the computing functionality designed to migrate across hardware devices at runtime and execute on mobile hardware platforms, and (2) mobile systems, which are computing applications that include mobile software and hardware elements. We study the advances in both these areas, highlight representative existing solutions, and identify several remaining research challenges.     

Architecting cloud‐enabled systems: a systematic survey of challenges and solutions

The literature on the challenges of and potential solutions to architecting cloud‐based systems is rapidly growing but is scattered. It is important to systematically analyze and synthesize the existing research on architecting cloud‐based software systems in order to build a cohesive body of knowledge of the reported challenges and solutions. We have systematically identified and reviewed 133 papers that report architecture‐related challenges and solutions for cloud‐based software systems. This paper reports the methodological details, findings, and implications of a systematic review that has enabled us to identify 44 unique categories of challenges and associated solutions for architecting cloud‐based software systems. We assert that the identified challenges and solutions classified into the categories form a body of knowledge that can be leveraged for designing or evaluating software architectures for cloud‐based systems. Our key conclusions are that a large number of primary studies focus on middleware services aimed at achieving scalability, performance, response time, and efficient resource optimization. Architecting cloud‐based systems presents unique challenges as the systems to be designed range from pervasive embedded systems and enterprise applications to smart devices with Internet of Things. We also conclude that there is a huge potential of research on architecting cloud‐based systems in areas related to green computing, energy efficient systems, mobile cloud computing, and Internet of Things. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

构建云计算平台的开源软件综述

云计算开源软件的涌现为云计算平台的构建提供了便利,同时也为人们从中选择合适的软件带来了挑战。 为明确如何构建云计算平台,研究现有用于构建云计算平台的开源软件十分必要。考察构建云计算平台的开源软件 的发展状况,从提供服务的角度对各种服务模型的开源软件体系结构进行剖析,通过对比分析当前典型的用于构建云 计算平台的开源软件,来为云计算平台建设者利用此类软件构建符合特定需求的云计算环境提供有效的途径。     

移动中间件：移动无线Internet的将来

移动计算正成为一个迅速发展的领域。然而由于移动环境的种种限制,为开发移动应用带来巨大的挑战。文章讨论解决此问题的一种新兴技术：移动中间件技术,并提出一个移动中间件的实际应用体系结构,为移动终端设备提供一种简单、安全的方法访问已存在的分布式对象系统。     

面向Agent程序设计的研究

面向Agent程序设计(agent-oriented programming,简称AOP)基于多Agent系统的抽象和思想、借助于Agent理论和技术来支持软件系统的构造与实现,其程序设计思想、软件模型、基础理论和语言设施有别于现有主流程序设计技术,如OOP,代表了一种新颖的程序设计范型.由于多Agent系统被视为支持开放环境下复杂软件系统开发的一种新颖、有效的技术手段,因而近年来AOP受到人工智能、软件工程和分布计算等领域研究学者和工程实践人员的高度关注,并在过去20年取得了重要进展.但是,无论在应对复杂多Agent系统开发方面,还是在大规模工业化应用等方面,AOP的研究与实践都面临着严峻的挑战.作为一种程序设计范型,AOP研究需要在交叉其他学科知识(如人工智能)的基础上,充分借鉴软件工程以及已有程序设计范型的原理、原则和成功实践,从而推动技术走向成熟并为广大工程实践人员所接受.通过对AOP研究历程的系统介绍,从软件工程的视点考虑MAS程序设计的不同层次,综述AOP在程序设计抽象与模型、机制与理论、语言与设施和支撑平台这4个方面的研究成果,展示不同时期AOP研究关注点的变化以及发展趋势,分析当前AOP研究与实践存在的问题和面临的挑战,并展望进一步的研究.     

Intelligent software web agents: A gap analysis

Semantic web technologies have shown their effectiveness, especially when it comes to knowledge representation, reasoning, and data integration. However, the original semantic web vision, whereby machine readable web data could be automatically actioned upon by intelligent software web agents, has yet to be realised. In order to better understand the existing technological opportunities and challenges, in this paper we examine the status quo in terms of intelligent software web agents, guided by research with respect to requirements and architectural components, coming from the agents community. We use the identified requirements to both further elaborate on the semantic web agent motivating use case scenario, and to summarise different perspectives on the requirements from the semantic web agent literature. We subsequently propose a hybrid semantic web agent architecture, and use the various components and subcomponents in order to provide a focused discussion in relation to existing semantic web standards and community activities. Finally, we highlight open research opportunities and challenges and take a broader perspective of the research by discussing the potential for intelligent software web agents as an enabling technology for emerging domains, such as digital assistants, cloud computing, and the internet of things.     

Continuous awareness: A visual mobile approach

Facing the challenges of global distribution in software development, Continuous Coordination constitutes a new coordination paradigm that helps break the communication barriers in distributed teams by providing awareness information and integrating heterogeneous tools. Continuous Awareness is an extension of Continuous Coordination emphasizing continuous awareness support across space and time. Traditional desktop-based approaches are insufficient for the requirements of continuous awareness. Team Radar Mobile takes a visual mobile approach to awareness by extending the visualization of awareness information on desktop platforms to mobile platforms. The concept of continuous awareness and its implementation on multiple platforms are discussed. An experiment has evaluated the visual mobile approach to continuous awareness, and found visualization express awareness information more efficiently than the non-visual approach. Our work also provides experience on mobile visualization.     

Middleware for pervasive computing: A survey

The rapidly emerging area of pervasive computing faces many challenging research issues critical to application developers. Wide heterogeneity of hardware, software, and network resources pose veritable coordination problems and demand thorough knowledge of individual elements and technologies. In order to ease this problem and to aid application developers, different middleware platforms have been proposed by researchers. Though the existing middleware solutions are useful, they themselves have varied features and contribute partially, for context, data, or service management related application developments. There is no single middleware solution that can address a majority of pervasive computing application development issues, due to the diverse underlying challenges. In this survey paper, we identify different design dimensions of pervasive computing middleware and investigate their use in providing various system services. In-depth analysis of the system services have been carried out and middleware systems have been carefully studied. With a view to aid future middleware developers, we also identify some challenging open research issues that have received little or no attention in existing middleware solutions.     

Trustworthiness of Internet-based software

Recent years see an increasing concern over the trustworthiness of Inter- net-based software. By analyzing the trustworthiness of Internet-based software and the nature of the Internet applications, we point out that, on the one hand, due to the open- ness and dynamic nature of the Internet, the identity trustworthiness and the capability trustworthiness of the software are facing serious challenges; on the other hand, in order to ensure the trustworthiness of the whole system, emerging computing paradigms based on the collaboration of autonomous software need some impacts on the behavior of the software. Here we put forward a conceptual model for the trustworthiness of Inter- net-based software, and propose a trustworthy assurance framework for Internet-based virtual computing environment (iVCE). This framework deals with the trustworthy proper- ties of software on identity, capability and behavior in a combinated way. The authorization management in inter-domain computing environment, assurance on high availability of service and incentive mechanism for autonomic collaboration are taken as three core mechanisms of iVCE trustworthy assurance.     

Challenges and Research Directions in Agent-Oriented Software Engineering

Agent-based computing is a promising approach for developing applications in complex domains. However, despite the great deal of research in the area, a number of challenges still need to be faced (i) to make agent-based computing a widely accepted paradigm in software engineering practice, and (ii) to turn agent-oriented software abstractions into practical tools for facing the complexity of modern application areas. In this paper, after a short introduction to the key concepts of agent-based computing (as they pertain to software engineering), we characterise the emerging key issues in multiagent systems (MASs) engineering. In particular, we show that such issues can be analysed in terms of three different scales of observation, i.e., in analogy with the scales of observation of physical phenomena, in terms of micro, macro, and meso scales. Based on this characterisation, we discuss, for each scale of observation, what are the peculiar engineering issues arising, the key research challenges to be solved, and the most promising research directions to be explored in the future.     

An embeddable mobile agent platform supporting runtime code mobility,interaction and coordination of mobile agents and host systems

Agent technology is emerging as an important concept for the development of distributed complex systems. A number of mobile agent systems have been developed in the last decade. However, most of them were developed to support only Java mobile agents. In order to provide distributed applications with code mobility, this article presents a library, the Mobile-C library, that allows a mobile agent platform, Mobile-C, to be embeddable in an application to support mobile C/C++ codes carried by mobile agents. Mobile-C uses a C/C++ interpreter as its Agent Execution Engine (AEE). Through the Mobile-C library, Mobile-C can be embedded into an application to support mobile C/C++ codes carried by mobile agents. Using mobile C/C++ codes, it is easy to interface a variety of low-level hardware devices and legacy systems. Through the Mobile-C library, Mobile-C can run on heterogeneous platforms with various operating systems. The Mobile-C library has a small footprint to meet the stringent memory capacity for applications in mechatronic and embedded systems. The Mobile-C library contains different categories of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) in both binary and agent spaces to facilitate the design of mobile agent based applications. In addition, a rich set of existing APIs for the C/C++ interpreter employed as the AEE allows an application to have complete information and control over the mobile C/C++ codes residing in Mobile-C. With the synchronization mechanism provided by the Mobile-C library for both binary and agent spaces, simultaneous processes across both spaces can be coordinated to get correct runtime order and avoid unexpected race condition. The study of performance comparisons indicates that Mobile-C is about two times faster than JADE in agent migration. The application of the Mobile-C library is illustrated by dynamic runtime control of a mobile robot’s behavior using mobile agents.     

Evolutionäre betriebliche Informationssysteme

This article reflects on existing and emerging future challenges arising in the area of “evolutionary business information systems”, a class of systems that demand an evolutionary software development process and which support secondary design of various conceptual layers. We place both existing contributions and future research opportunities in context by referring to an idealized, preliminary system architecture. Finally, we emphasize our pluralistic perspective on the research object and the resulting need for methodological flexibility in the sense of interdisciplinary configurations of research methods.     

Challenges in migrating legacy software systems to the cloud — an empirical study

Moving existing legacy systems to cloud platforms is a difficult and high cost process that may involve technical and non-technical resources and challenges. There is evidence that the lack of understanding and preparedness of cloud computing migration underpin many migration failures in achieving organisations’ goals. The main goal of this article is to identify the most important challenging activities for moving legacy systems to cloud platforms from a perspective of reengineering process. Through a combination of a bottom-up and a top-down analysis, a set of common activities is derived from the extant cloud computing literature. These are expressed as a model and are validated using a population of 104 shortlisted and randomly selected domain experts from different industry sectors. We used a Web-based survey questionnaire to collect data and analysed them using SPSS Sample T-Test. The results of this study highlight the most important and critical challenges that should be addressed by various roles within a legacy to cloud migration endeavour. The study provides an overall understanding of this process including common occurring activities, concerns and recommendations. In addition, the findings of this study constitute a practical guide to conduct this transition. This guide is platform agnostic and independent from any specific migration scenario, cloud platform, or an application domain.     

一种面向异构计算的结构化并行编程框架

随着人工智能时代的到来,异构计算在深度学习、科学计算等领域发挥着越来越重要的作用。目前异构计算系统在应用上的瓶颈之一在于缺少高效的软件开发框架,已有的OpenCL、CUDA等支持GPU、DSP及FPGA的编程框架基于C/C++语言和传统的并行编程方法,导致软件开发效率较低,软件推理和调试困难,难以灵活处理计算设备之间的协作和调度。提出一种面向异构计算平台的基于脚本语言的结构化并行编程框架,提供结构化的并行编程接口,支持计算任务到异构计算设备的映射,便于并行程序的推理和验证。设计并实现了基于遗传算法的结构化调度算法,充分利用异构计算系统的计算能力,提高了异构计算系统的软件开发效率。实验结果表明,提出的编程框架在CPU+GPU平台上实现了相对于单处理器1.5到2.5倍的加速比。     

基于容器技术的水文水动力模型软硬件适配方法

随着国产化软硬件系统的发展和普及,将现行的计算程序适配到国产硬件和操作系统上是科学研究和业务化应用的关键,亟待探索提出专业计算模型的软硬件适配方法。现有关于专业计算模型的软硬件适配方法存在缺乏通用性、硬件依赖性强等问题。鉴于此,系统解析了国产化适配需要解决的关键问题,并对比了现行的软件适配技术,筛选出容器技术作为水文水动力模型的国产适配技术。容器技术可将应用程序打包成独立的运行环境,摆脱对底层架构和操作系统的依赖。以水文水动力模型TELEMAC为例,详细说明了Docker镜像构成原理,并通过Dockerfile文件构建了TELEMAC镜像环境,开展了计算案例的验证。结果表明TELEMAC镜像能够安全运行在以鲲鹏920处理器为核心的openEuler和麒麟V10等国产软硬件平台上,且案例计算结果与标准结果相一致,模型计算效率高,实现了专业科学计算模型的国产化软硬件适配,该研究可为其他软件国产化适配提供参考借鉴。     

移动应用软件测试探索

随着苹果iOS和谷歌Android两大手机操作系统的兴起,强大的开发平台和开发工具帮助开发人员更快的开发出移动应用软件.移动互联网的发展将互联网带入了人们的日常生活,而移动应用软件是最关键的载体;移动设备的操作方式、网络连接方式、较小的存储空间、尺寸不同的屏幕以及移动性等都使得移动应用软件的操作流程和界面设计与传统PC应用完全不同,对用户体验的要求更进一步.将在分析移动应用软件与传统PC应用软件不同之处的基础上探索如何测试移动应用软件,进一步分析移动应用软件项目带给软件测试带来的新挑战并给出解决方案.     

Internet of Things for the Future of Smart Agriculture: A Comprehensive Survey of Emerging Technologies

This paper presents a comprehensive review of emerging technologies for the internet of things (IoT)-based smart agriculture. We begin by summarizing the existing surveys and describing emergent technologies for the agricultural IoT, such as unmanned aerial vehicles, wireless technologies, open-source IoT platforms, software defined networking (SDN), network function virtualization (NFV) technologies, cloud/fog computing, and middleware platforms. We also provide a classification of IoT applications for smart agriculture into seven categories: including smart monitoring, smart water management, agrochemicals applications, disease management, smart harvesting, supply chain management, and smart agricultural practices. Moreover, we provide a taxonomy and a side-by-side comparison of the state-of-the-art methods toward supply chain management based on the blockchain technology for agricultural IoTs. Furthermore, we present real projects that use most of the aforementioned technologies, which demonstrate their great performance in the field of smart agriculture. Finally, we highlight open research challenges and discuss possible future research directions for agricultural IoTs.