On building with reusable software: Democratization of information systems automation through software reuse

Software reuse is an important emerging technology. It allows consumption of reusable information, which, in turn, can contribute to democratization of information systems automation. I introduce software reuse concepts and discuss current reuse approaches, issues of economics of reuse, and currently used metaphors as they apply to the reuse consumer. The discussion should give those who have not yet began to exploit consumption of information reuse a starting point for their considerations.Some sections of this paper were presented, in brief, during the Third International Conference for Systems Integration held in Sao Paulo City, Brazil, July 30 to August 6th, 1994.     

A procedure for building product models

The application of product modeling in manufacturing companies raises the important question of how to model product knowledge in a comprehensible and efficient way. An important challenge is to qualify engineers to model and specify IT-systems (product models) to support their specification activities. A basic assumption is that engineers have to take the responsibility for building product models to be used in their domain. To do that they must be able to carry out the modeling task on their own without any need for support from computer science experts. This paper presents a set of simple, easily adaptable concepts and methods for modeling product knowledge. The concepts and methods are based on well-defined concepts and methods from data modeling (object oriented analysis) and domain modeling (product modeling). The concepts are general and can be used for modeling all types of specifications in the different phases in the product life cycle. The modeling techniques presented have been tested in different companies and have proved to work.     

Collaborative engineering decision-making for building information channels and improving Web visibility of product manufacturers

Product manufacturers have spent the last years improving productivity and process efficiency in order to face increasingly competitive markets. Today, the visibility of technological innovations has become essential to achieve the targeted market. It is now very difficult for a product manufacturer to reach customers without owning a website that is visible on search engine results pages. The goal of this paper is to build information channels between a company and its customers through improving both a company’s content of information on the Web and its website rank on the Internet through search engine results pages. Company information and knowledge are distributed through multiple stakeholders. The problem of building information channels between a company and customers is solved through a collaborative and distributed approach, on the one hand, and is supported by decision-making tools, on the other hand. The paper proposes an engineering model for building information channels and improving the visibility of the company on the Web. Agents are used for the implementation of the approach. The proposed model and its implementation handle the requirements, constraints, functions and solutions for improving Web visibility. The prototype tool, called CAWIS (Computer Aided Web Information Sharing), examines Web visibility in real time and evaluates the performance of the proposed content of information. CAWIS allows an exploratory and open way for building information channels and improving the visibility of product manufacturers on the Web.     

Design information retrieval: a thesauri-based approach for reuse of informal design information

Information is integral to the engineering design process, and gaining access to design knowledge is critical to effective design decision-making. This paper considers the indexing and retrieval of informal, unstructured information captured from electronic design logbooks. One of the key observations of informal design information is its evolutionary nature over time. While this characteristic makes informal information a rich source for reuse, it also makes it difficult to employ traditional information retrieval (IR) approaches. The work described in this paper is based on a framework developed specifically for the information handling requirements of designers. This manual method for indexing information is adapted to meet the evolutionary nature of design through the development of thesauri for design context. Several approaches to building thesauri are examined, including manual and automated methods. It is found that manual methods provide a high level of IR performance, but also have high overhead requirements. Machine methods, however, may provide a viable, low overhead alternative.

Interfacing or models and information systems: A systematic approach

Successful implementation of an OR model within an information system occurs only when the model becomes an integral part of the system. The process of incorporating a model into a system not only necessitates a detailed analysis of the model's informational requirements, which must be satisfied once the model is introduced into the system, but also requires an analysis of the information system with respect to these requirements. Such analyses may reveal that both the model and the system must be perturbed in order to effect a feasible interface. In determining the extent of the modifications to be made to each, the total cost of the various alternatives and the resulting effects on optimality must be established. This paper focuses on the development of informational models and procedures for performing these interface operations and the definition of a basis by which optimal or near optimal modifications and adjustments of the OR model and information system may be determined.     

Facilitating knowledge sharing and reuse in building and construction domain: an ontology-based approach

This paper brings a contribution focused on collaborative engineering projects where knowledge plays a key role in the process. Collaboration is the arena, engineering projects are the target, knowledge is the currency used to provide harmony into the arena since it can potentially support innovation and, hence, a successful collaboration. The building and construction domain is challenged with significant problems for exchanging, sharing and integrating information between actors. For example, semantic gaps or lack of meaning definition at the conceptual and technical level, are problems fundamentally created through the employment of representations to map the ‘world’ into models in an endeavour to anticipate different actors’ views, vocabulary, and objectives. One of the primary research challenges addressed in this work is the process of formalization and representation of document content, where most existing approaches are limited in their capability and only take into account the explicit, word-based information in the document. The research described in this paper explores how traditional knowledge representations can be enriched by incorporation of implicit information derived from the complex relationships (the Semantic Associations) modelled by domain ontologies combined with the information presented in documents, thereby providing a baseline for facilitating knowledge interpretation and sharing between humans and machines. The paper introduces a novel conceptual framework for representation of knowledge sources, where each knowledge source is semantically represented (within its domain of use) by a Semantic Vector. This work contributes to the enrichment of Semantic Vectors, using the classical vector space model approach extended with ontological support, employing ontology concepts and their relations in the enrichment process. The test bed for the assessment of the approach is the Building and Construction industry, using an appropriate B&C domain Ontology. Preliminary results were collected using a clustering algorithm for document classification, which indicates that the proposed approach does improve the precision and recall of classifications. Future work and open issues are also discussed.     

Reduced-order models and controllers for continuous-time stochasticsystems: an information theory approach

Reduced-order models and controllers for continuous-time stochastic systems are described. The reduced-order models are chosen to minimize the Kullback-Leibler information distance (KLID) between the outputs of the actual and reduced systems. An LQG controller based on a reduced-order system model is described. A second reduced-order controller is found to minimize the KLID between the closed-loop system outputs with the full and reduced-order controllers     

Soft systems and systems engineering: on the use of conceptual models in information system development

Abstract. Many recent studies have shown that computer-based systems continue to ‘fail’ at a number of different levels (Romtec, 1988; KPMG, 1990) and it is increasingly apparent (Maclaren et al., 1991) that the most serious failures of information technology (IT) lie in the continuing inability to address those concerns which are central to the successful achievement of individual, organizational and social goals. It is the contention of this paper that this failing is precisely because these are the areas which are ignored or inadequately treated by conventional system development methods. There is, of course, a vast body of literature concerned with the understanding of complex human activity systems. This literature often reflects a mass of contradictions at the epistemological and the ontological level about the behaviour of such systems and has also spawned numerous methods (and methodologies) which seek to guide the individual in making successful interventions into organizational situations (Rosenhead, 1989). Despite this multiplicity of viewpoints many writers have posited a dichotomy between so-called 'soft and ‘hard’ approaches to problem situations and use this dichotomy to inform the choice of an appropriate problem-solving methodology (Checkland, 1985). In this paper we characterize these two approaches as being concerned with either the purpose(s) of the human activity system (i.e. ‘doing the right thing’) or with the design of the efficient means of achieving such purpose(s) (i.e. ‘doing the thing right’). It is our belief that much of the literature and work in either area has not concerned itself with the issues of the other. Writers on ‘hard’ engineering methods often assume the question of purpose to be either straightforward (e.g. given in the project brief) or, paradoxically, too difficult (e.g. it is not our concern as mere systems analysts). Writers on ‘soft’ methods on the other hand rarely have anything to say about the design and implementation of well-engineered computer-based systems, giving the impression that this is a somewhat mundane activity better left to technical experts. This paper, therefore, attempts to set out a rationale for the bringing together of principles from both ‘hard’ engineering and ‘soft’ inquiry methods without doing epistemological damage to either. To illustrate our argument we concentrate on JSD (Jackson system development) as an example of system engineering (Cameron, 1983) and SSM (soft systems methodology) as an example of system inquiry (Checkland, 1981; Checkland & Scholes, 1990). Our general thesis, however, does not depend upon either of these two approaches per se but applies to the overall issue of bringing together insights from two apparently opposed epistemological positions in an effort better to harness the power of IT in pursuit of purposeful human activity.     

Time patterns for process-aware information systems

Companies increasingly adopt process-aware information systems (PAISs) due to their promising perspectives for improved business process support. Although the proper handling of temporal constraints is crucial in this context, existing PAISs vary significantly regarding their support of the temporal perspective of a business process. To make PAISs comparable with respect to their ability to deal with temporal constraints and to facilitate the development of a time-aware PAIS, this paper suggests 10 time patterns. All patterns are based on empirical evidence we gathered in case studies. Additionally, they are validated through a systematic literature review. Based on the time patterns, we then provide an in-depth evaluation of selected PAISs and academic approaches. Altogether, the 10 time patterns will not only facilitate the selection of technologies for realizing time- and process-aware information systems but can also be used as reference for implementing time support in PAISs.     

Bionic knowledge and information reuse methodology for uncertainty minimization in product design

Given two spatial point sets R and B in the plane, with cardinalities m and n, respectively, and stored in two separate R-trees, we propose an efficient algorithm to verify whether R and B are linearly separable. The sets R and B are linearly separable if there exists a line that splits the plane into to halfplanes, one containing all R and the other one containing all B. This is the first algorithm that answers the separability question in the context of the spatial data bases. That is, it considers as input big spatial data stored in secondary storage data structures (e.g., the R-tree) which are not allowed to be completely stored in the main memory of the computer to run a classic algorithm. The algorithms designed in this context aim to minimize as much as possible the number of blocks read from the secondary storage data structures to the main memory. Studied problems in this setting are the k-nearest neighbor problem and the spatial range query problem. Our algorithm explicitly exploits the geometric and spatial properties of the R-trees to access only the nodes relevant to decide the linear separability of the given sets. Our experimental results show the efficiency of the algorithm, since it accesses between the 0.34 and 2.79% of the nodes of the R-trees. We also analyze the asymptotic running time of the algorithm, showing that it runs in \(O(m\log m + n\log n)\) time in the worst case.     

Formalizing an engineering approach to cooperating knowledge-based systems

A theoretical grounding is provided for a cooperating knowledge-based systems (CKBS) model which is based upon agents, cooperation blocks, and cooperation block hierarchies. Our model describes the requirements for task decomposition, negotiation, cooperation and coordination, fault tolerance, and recoverability, these requirements in turn defining a holonic system. The behavioral properties of our model are described using state transition diagrams and properties of correctness and termination are proven.     

Toward an engineering discipline of software reuse

This article stems from a panel session at the 1997 Symposium on Software Reusability, and discusses open research issues, classified by goal and by approach. Software development cannot possibly become an engineering discipline so long as it has not perfected a technology for developing products from reusable assets in a routine manner, on an industrial scale. Software reuse cannot, in turn, achieve this status unless we make the following provisions: a sound scientific foundation that encompasses relevant design principles, widely acceptable engineering standards that compile these principles into working practical solutions, and coherent managerial standards that enable the deployment of these solutions under acceptable conditions of product quality and process maturity. Although successful software reuse experiments are increasingly common, success is not the norm, software reuse is not a matter of routine practice, the promises of software reuse remain for the most part unfulfilled, and a number of issues remain worthy of further research     

A type-2 fuzzy system-based approach for image data fusion to create building information models

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a standard digital process that fuses buildings information from different sources into a 3D model during their lifecycle. For new construction sites using BIM, it is possible to monitor the cost, schedule, and changes throughout the lifecycle; however, existing buildings do not have a BIM model. Manually creating the BIM models for existing buildings is a high-cost task, both in time and money, hence there is a need for extracting information from available paper-based documentation and fuse it into a BIM model. The struggle of facility management and utility companies to fully adopt a BIM process (due to their high volumes of paper-based documentation of existing buildings) has led to the research on creating these 3D BIM models from 2D floor plan images.This paper presents a novel processing pipeline to extract 2D digital information from floorplans, fusing it into a 3D BIM model. The work focuses on fusing the available information to create the structure of the building in BIM format, which is considered the essential step before looking on working with other sources of data. In this process, we introduce a type-2 fuzzy logic based Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) approach for the semantic segmentation step. The approach consists of using the outputs of type-2 fuzzy logic systems to classify a pixel as wall or background, by using information around and from the pixel of interest as the inputs to the system. After the semantic segmentation step, the output of the type-2 fuzzy logic goes through a noise removal process and finally a transformation from 2D to 3D by assigning the corresponding BIM tag to each identified element. The proposed type-2 fuzzy logic semantic segmentation approach produced comparable results (97.3% mean Intersection over Union (IoU) performance metric value) to the opaque box model approach based on Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) (99.3% mean IoU performance metric value). However, the type-2 fuzzy XAI system benefits from being an augmentable and interpretable model, which means that human users can understand the decision process and modify the model using their expert knowledge.     

Application object model for engineering information systems

An object model for application development is introduced in the context of Engineering Information Systems (EIS)¹. The model shares features with several popular models and offers some less common ideas, such as operation-dependent state closure. The model is also unique in its position within the environment: it acts as a portability view independent of the underlying storage servers. The view-mapping is made most efficient however, if the object model of the underlying servers matches the structure of the EIS Application Object Model (AOM).     

An approach for reverse engineering of design patterns

For the maintenance of software systems, developers have to completely understand the existing system. The usage of design patterns leads to benefits for new and young developers by enabling them to reuse the knowledge of their experienced colleagues. Design patterns can support a faster and better understanding of software systems. There are different approaches for supporting pattern recognition in existing systems by tools. They are evaluated by the Information Retrieval criteria precision and recall. An automated search based on structures has a highly positive influence on the manual validation of the results by developers. This validation of graphical structures is the most intuitive technique. In this paper a new approach for automated pattern search based on minimal key structures is presented. It is able to detect all patterns described by the GOF [15]. This approach is based on positive and negative search criteria for structures and is prototypically implemented using Rational Rose and Together.     

Integration of FMS performance evaluation models using patterns for an information system design

The objective of our work is to create an information system able to integrate different view points concerning the design and the control of a Flexible Manufacturing System. Numerous methods based on generic reference frameworks have been proposed for the modeling of all the aspects of production systems. These models have to be instantiated in order to be applied to specific systems. The difficulties are then to integrate pre-existing models of the studied systems with those obtained by the instantiation of the generic reference framework.

The proposed approach tackles the problem from the information system point of view. A meta-modeling bottom-up approach is presented based on the notion of patterns in order to facilitate the integration step.

An example concerned with the performance evaluation and scheduling of a production system is presented to show how the product viewpoint can be built in order to be integrated later with other viewpoints.