A powertype-based metamodelling framework

Software development methodologies may be described in the context of an underpinning metamodel, but the precise mechanisms that permit them to be defined in terms of their metamodels are usually difficult to explain and do not cover all needs. For example, it is difficult to devise a way that allows the definition of properties of the elements that compose the methodology and, at the same time, of the entities (such as work products) created when the methodology is applied. This article introduces a new approach to constructing metamodels and deriving methodologies from them based on the concept of powertype. It combines key advantages of other metamodelling approaches and allows the seamless integration of process, modelling and documentational aspects of methodologies. With this approach, both methodology components and project entities can be described directly by the same metamodel. Cesar Gonzalez-Perez is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Faculty of Information Technology at UTS, where he works in object- and agent- oriented methodologies and metamodelling. Cesar is the author of over 40 publications and has led 12 successful software development projects. Cesar has previously worked in archaeology as well as biology, both in industry and academe. Cesar is the founder and former technical director of Neco, a company based in Spain specialising in software development support services, which include the deployment and use of the OPEN/Metis methodological framework at small and mid-sized organisations. Brian Henderson-Sellers is Director of the Centre for Object Technology Applications and Research and Professor of Information Systems at University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). He is author of eleven books on object technology and is well-known for his work in OO methodologies (MOSES, COMMA, OPEN, OOSPICE) and in OO metrics and, more recently, in agent-oriented methodologies. Brian has been Regional Editor of Object-Oriented Systems, a member of the editorial board of Object Magazine/Component Strategies and Object Expert for many years and is currently on the editorial board of Journal of Object Technology and Software and Systems Modelling. He is Editor of the International Journal on Agent-Oriented Software Engineering. He was the Founder of the Object-Oriented Special Interest Group of the Australian Computer Society (NSW Branch) and Chairman of the Computerworld Object Developers' Awards committee for ObjectWorld 94 and 95 (Sydney). He is a frequent, invited speaker at international OT conferences. In 1999, he was voted number 3 in the Who's Who of Object Technology (Handbook of Object Technology, CRC Press, Appendix N). He is a member of the Review Panel for the OMG's Software Process Engineering Model (SPEM) standards initiative and a member of the UML2.0 review team. In July 2001, Professor Henderson-Sellers was awarded a Doctor of Science (DSc) from the University of London for his research contributions in object-oriented methodologies.     

A comparison of four process metamodels and the creation of a new generic standard

Software development processes and methodologies to date have frequently been described purely textually. However, more recently, a number of metamodels have been constructed to both underpin and begin to formalize these methodologies. We have critically examined four of these: the Object Management Group's Software Process Engineering Metamodel (SPEM), the OPEN Process Framework (OPF), the OOSPICE metamodel for capability assessment and the LiveNet approach for computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW). Based on this analysis, a new, combined metamodel, named Standard Metamodel for Software Development Methodologies (SMSDM) has been constructed which supports not only process but also products and capability assessment in the contexts of both software development and CSCW. As a proof of concept we conclude with a partial example to show how the SMSDM metamodel (and by inference the other metamodels) are used in practice by creating a simple yet usable methodology.     

A metamodel for modeling system features and their refinement, constraint and interaction relationships

This paper presents a metamodel for modeling system features and relationships between features. The underlying idea of this metamodel is to employ features as first-class entities in the problem space of software and to improve the customization of software by explicitly specifying both static and dynamic dependencies between system features. In this metamodel, features are organized as hierarchy structures by the refinement relationships, static dependencies between features are specified by the constraint relationships, and dynamic dependencies between features are captured by the interaction relationships. A first-order logic based method is proposed to formalize constraints and to verify constraints and customization. This paper also presents a framework for interaction classification, and an informal mapping between interactions and constraints through constraint semantics. Hong Mei received the BSc and MSc degrees in computer science from the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA), China, in 1984 and 1987, respectively, and the PhD degree in computer science from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1992. He is currently a professor of Computer Science at the Peking University, China. His current research interests include Software Engineering and Software Engineering Environment, Software Reuse and Software Component Technology, Distributed Object Technology, and Programming Language. He has published more than 100 technical papers. Wei Zhang received the BSc in Engineering Thermophysics and the MSc in Computer Science from the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA), China, in 1999 and 2002, respectively. He is currently a PhD student at the School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science of the Peking University, China. His research interests include feature-oriented requirements modeling, feature-driven software architecture design and feature-oriented software reuse. Haiyan Zhao received both the BSc and the MSc degree in Computer Science from the Peking Univeristy, China, and the Ph.D degree in Information Engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan. She is currently an associate professor of Computer Science at the Peking University, China. Her research interests include Software Reuse, Domain Engineering, Domain Specific Languange and Program Transformation.     

A study of the model and algorithms for handling location-dependent continuous queries

Advances in wireless and mobile computing environments allow a mobile user to access a wide range of applications. For example, mobile users may want to retrieve data about unfamiliar places or local life styles related to their location. These queries are called location-dependent queries. Furthermore, a mobile user may be interested in getting the query results repeatedly, which is called location-dependent continuous querying. This continuous query emanating from a mobile user may retrieve information from a single-zone (single-ZQ) or from multiple neighbouring zones (multiple-ZQ). We consider the problem of handling location-dependent continuous queries with the main emphasis on reducing communication costs and making sure that the user gets correct current-query result. The key contributions of this paper include: (1) Proposing a hierarchical database framework (tree architecture and supporting continuous query algorithm) for handling location-dependent continuous queries. (2) Analysing the flexibility of this framework for handling queries related to single-ZQ or multiple-ZQ and propose intelligent selective placement of location-dependent databases. (3) Proposing an intelligent selective replication algorithm to facilitate time- and space-efficient processing of location-dependent continuous queries retrieving single-ZQ information. (4) Demonstrating, using simulation, the significance of our intelligent selective placement and selective replication model in terms of communication cost and storage constraints, considering various types of queries. Manish Gupta received his B.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from Govindram Sakseria Institute of Technology & Sciences, India, in 1997 and his M.S. degree in Computer Science from University of Texas at Dallas in 2002. He is currently working toward his Ph.D. degree in the Department of Computer Science at University of Texas at Dallas. His current research focuses on AI-based software synthesis and testing. His other research interests include mobile computing, aspect-oriented programming and model checking. Manghui Tu received a Bachelor degree of Science from Wuhan University, P.R. China, in 1996, and a Master's Degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Dallas 2001. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. Mr. Tu's research interests include distributed systems, wireless communications, mobile computing, and reliability and performance analysis. His Ph.D. research work focuses on the dependent and secure data replication and placement issues in network-centric systems. Latifur R. Khan has been an Assistant Professor of Computer Science department at University of Texas at Dallas since September 2000. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from University of Southern California (USC) in August 2000 and December 1996, respectively. He obtained his B.Sc. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh, in November of 1993. Professor Khan is currently supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Texas Instruments, Alcatel, USA, and has been awarded the Sun Equipment Grant. Dr. Khan has more than 50 articles, book chapters and conference papers focusing in the areas of database systems, multimedia information management and data mining in bio-informatics and intrusion detection. Professor Khan has also served as a referee for database journals, conferences (e.g. IEEE TKDE, KAIS, ADL, VLDB) and he is currently serving as a program committee member for the 11th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD2005), ACM 14th Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 2005), International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications DEXA 2005 and International Conference on Cooperative Information Systems (CoopIS 2005), and is program chair of ACM SIGKDD International Workshop on Multimedia Data Mining, 2004. Farokh Bastani received the B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Bastani's research interests include various aspects of the ultrahigh dependable systems, especially automated software synthesis and testing, embedded real-time process-control and telecommunications systems and high-assurance systems engineering. Dr. Bastani was the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (IEEE-TKDE). He is currently an emeritus EIC of IEEE-TKDE and is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence Tools, the International Journal of Knowledge and Information Systems and the Springer-Verlag series on Knowledge and Information Management. He was the program cochair of the 1997 IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems, 1998 IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, 1999 IEEE Knowledge and Data Engineering Workshop, 1999 International Symposium on Autonomous Decentralised Systems, and the program chair of the 1995 IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence. He has been on the program and steering committees of several conferences and workshops and on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering and the Oxford University Press High Integrity Systems Journal. I-Ling Yen received her B.S. degree from Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan, and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Houston. She is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Science at University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Yen's research interests include fault-tolerant computing, security systems and algorithms, distributed systems, Internet technologies, E-commerce and self-stabilising systems. She has published over 100 technical papers in these research areas and received many research awards from NSF, DOD, NASA and several industry companies. She has served as Program Committee member for many conferences and Program Chair/Cochair for the IEEE Symposium on Application-Specific Software and System Engineering & Technology, IEEE High Assurance Systems Engineering Symposium, IEEE International Computer Software and Applications Conference, and IEEE International Symposium on Autonomous Decentralized Systems. She has also served as a guest editor for a theme issue of IEEE Computer devoted to high-assurance systems.     

Block cipher based on reversible cellular automata

We propose a new encryption algorithm relying on reversible cellular automata (CA). The behavior complexity of CA and their parallel nature makes them interesting candidates for cryptography. The proposed algorithm belongs to the class of symmetric key systems. Marcin Seredynski: He is a Ph.D. student at University of Luxembourg and Polish Academy of Sciences. He received his M.S. in 2004 from Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology in Warsaw University of Technology. His research interests include cryptography, cellular automata, nature inspired algorithms and network security. Currently he is working on intrusion detection algorithms for ad-hoc networks. Pascal Bouvry, Ph.D.: He earned his undergraduate degree in Economical & Social Sciences and his Master degree in Computer Science with distinction (’91) from the University of Namur, Belgium. He went on to obtain his Ph.D. degree (’94) in Computer Science with great distinction at the University of Grenoble (INPG), France. His research at the IMAG laboratory focussed on Mapping and scheduling task graphs onto Distributed Memory Parallel Computers. Next, he performed post-doctoral researches on coordination languages and multi-agent evolutionary computing at CWI in Amsterdam. He gained industrial experience as manager of the technology consultant team for FICS in the banking sector (Brussels, Belgium). Next, he worked as CEO and CTO of SDC (Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam) in the telecom, semi-conductor and space industry. After that, He moved to Montreal Canada as VP Production of Lat45 and Development Director for MetaSolv Software in the telecom industry. He is currently serving as Professor in the group of Computer Science and Communications (CSC) of the Faculty of Sciences, Technology and Communications of Luxembourg University and he is heading the Intelligent & Adaptive Systems lab. His current research interests include: ad-hoc networks & grid-computing, evolutionary algorithms and multi-agent systems.     

Preparing a common raster coverage for a territory based on hierarchical compressed presentation of orthoimages

Technology for the quick viewing of georeferenced images has been developed. Principles of the organization and structure of hierarchical HGI format, which is intended to store compressed images with controlled maximal error, are presented. Additionally, a basic method of HGI format compression is described. The advantages of using the HGI format for covering a territory with orthoimages are described. Mikhail Valer’evich Gashnikov. Born in 1975. Graduated from Samara State Aerospace University (SGAU) in 1998. Received Candidate’s degree in 2002 in technical sciences. Associate Professor at the Department of Geoinformatics, Samara State Aerospace University. Scientific interests include image processing, compression of images, and statistical coding. He is the author of 50 scientific publications, including 21 articles and one monograph (as a coauthor). He is a member of the Russian Association for Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis. Nikolai Ivanovich Glumov. Born in 1962. Graduated from Kuibyshev State Aeronautical Institute (currently Samara State Aerospace University) in 1985. Received his Candidate’s degree in 1994 in technical sciences and currently works as a Senior Research Associate at the Image Processing Systems Institute of the Russian Academy of Science. Scientific interests include processing remote sensing data and image recognition, image compression, the formation of modeling systems of digital images. He is the author of more than 90 scientific publications, including 30 articles and one monograph (as a coauthor). He is a member of the Russian Association for Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis. Andrei Vladimirovich Chernov. Born in 1975. Graduated from Samara State Aerospace University in 1998. Received Candidate’s degree in 2004 in technical sciences and currently works as an Associate Professor at the Department of Geoinformatics, Samara State Aerospace University. Scientific interests include processing remote sensing data and image recognition. He is the author of more then 50 scientific publications, including 24 articles and one monograph (as a co-author). He is a member of the Russian Association for Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis.     

Automated support for deriving test requirements from UML statecharts

Many statechart-based testing strategies result in specifying a set of paths to be executed through a (flattened) statechart. These techniques can usually be easily automated so that the tester does not have to go through the tedious procedure of deriving paths manually to comply with a coverage criterion. The next step is then to take each test path individually and derive test requirements leading to fully specified test cases. This requires that we determine the system state required for each event/transition that is part of the path to be tested and the input parameter values for all events and actions associated with the transitions. We propose here a methodology towards the automation of this procedure, which is based on a careful normalization and analysis of operation contracts and transition guards written with the Object Constraint Language (OCL). It is illustrated by one case study that exemplifies the steps of our methodology and provides a first evaluation of its applicability. The scope of the testing activity depends on what is modeled by the statechart. If the statechart models the behavior of a single class, then it can be used to support unit testing. If the behavior of a class-cluster, a subsystem or a component is modeled, then we are concerned with integration testing. If the whole system is modeled, then the focus of statechart-based testing is system testing. Lionel C. Briand is on the faculty of the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, where he founded and leads the Software Quality Engineering Laboratory (http://www.sce.carleton.ca/Squall/ Squall.htm). He has been granted the Canada Research Chair in Software Quality Engineering and is also a visiting professor at the Simula laboratories, University of Oslo, Norway. Before that he was the software quality engineering department head at the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering, Germany. Dr. Lionel also worked as a research scientist for the Software Engineering Laboratory, a consortium of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, CSC, and the University of Maryland. He has been on the program, steering, or organization committees of many international, IEEE conferences such as ICSE, ICSM, ISSRE, and METRICS. He is the coeditor-in-chief of Empirical Software Engineering (Springer) and is a member of the editorial board of Systems and Software Modeling (Springer). He was on the board of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering from 2000 to 2004. His research interests include: object-oriented analysis and design, inspections and testing in the context of object-oriented development, quality assurance and control, project planning and risk analysis, and technology evaluation. Lionel received the BSc and MSc degrees in geophysics and computer systems engineering from the University of Paris VI, France. He received the PhD degree in computer science, with high honors, from the University of Paris XI, France. Yvan Labiche received the BSc in Computer System Engineering, from the graduate school of engineering: CUST (Centre Universitaire des Science et Techniques, Clermont-Ferrand), France. He completed a Master of fundamental computer science and production systems in 1995 (Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont Ferrand, France). While doing his Ph.D. in Software Engineering, completed in 2000 at LAAS/CNRS in Toulouse, France, Yvan worked with Aerospatiale Matra Airbus (now EADS Airbus) on the definition of testing strategies for safety-critical, on-board software, developed using object-oriented technologies. In January 2001, Dr. Yvan Labiche joined the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton University, as an Assistant Professor. His research interests include: object-oriented analysis and design, software testing in the context of object-oriented development, and technology evaluation. He is a member of the IEEE. Jim (Jingfeng) Cui completed his BSc in Industrial Automation Control, from the School of Information and Engineering, Northeastern University, China. He received a Master of Applied Science (specialization in Software Engineering) in 2004 from the Ottawa-Carleton Institute of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ottawa, Canada. While in his graduate study, he was awarded the Ontario Graduate Scholarship of Science and Technology. He is now a senior Software Architect in Sunyard System & Engineering Co.Ltd., China. His interest includes Object-Oriented Software Development, Quality Assurance, and Content Management System.     

Multi economic agent interaction for optimizing the aggregate utility of grid users in computational grid

This paper investigates the interactions between agents representing grid users and the providers of grid resources to maximize the aggregate utilities of all grid users in computational grid. It proposes a price-based resource allocation model to achieve maximized utility of grid users and providers in computational grid. Existing distributed resource allocation schemes assume the resource provider to be capable of measuring user’s resource demand, calculating and communicating price, none of which actually exists in reality. This paper addresses these challenges as follows. First, the grid user utility is defined as a function of the grid user’s the resource units allocated. We formalize resource allocation using nonlinear optimization theory, which incorporates both grid resource capacity constraint and the job complete times. An optimal solution maximizes the aggregate utilities of all grid users. Second, this paper proposes a new optimization-based grid resource pricing algorithm for allocating resources to grid users while maximizing the revenue of grid providers. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm is more efficient than compared allocation scheme. Li Chunlin received the ME in computer science from Wuhan Transportation University in 2000, and PhD degree in Computer Software and Theory from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2003. She now is an associate professor of Computer Science in Wuhan University of Technology. Her research interests include computational grid, distributed computing and mobile agent. She has published over 15 papers in international journals. Li Layuan received the BE degree in Communication Engineering from Harbin Institute of Military Engineering, China in 1970 and the ME degree in Communication and Electrical Systems from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China in 1982. Since 1982, he has been with the Wuhan University of Technology, China, where he is currently a Professor and PhD tutor of Computer Science, and Editor in Chief of the Journal of WUT. He is Director of International Society of High-Technol and Paper Reviewer of IEEE INFOCOM, ICCC and ISRSDC. His research interests include high speed computer networks, protocol engineering and image processing. Professor Li has published over 150 technical papers and is the author of six books. He also was awarded the National Special Prize by the Chinese Government in 1993.     

Preference update for e-commerce applications: Model,language, and processing

It is likely that customers issue requests based on out-of-date information in e-commerce application systems. Hence, the transaction failure rates would increase greatly. In this paper, we present a preference update model to address this problem. A preference update is an extended SQL update statement where a user can request the desired number of target data items by specifying multiple preferences. Moreover, the preference update allows easy extraction of criteria from a set of concurrent requests and, hence, optimal decisions for the data assignments can be made. We propose a group evaluation strategy for preference update processing in a multidatabase environment. The experimental results show that the group evaluation can effectively increase the customer satisfaction level with acceptable cost. Peng Li is the Chief Software Architect of didiom LLC. Before that, he was a visiting assistant professor of computer science department in Western Kentucky University. He received his Ph.D. degree of computer science from the University of Texas at Dallas. He also holds a B.Sc. and M.S. in Computer Science from the Renmin University of China. His research interests include database systems, database security, transaction processing, distributed and Internet computer and E-commerce. Manghui Tu received a Bachelor degree of Science from Wuhan University, P.R. China in 1996, and a Master Degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Dallas 2001. He is currently working toward the PhD degree in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. Mr. Tu’s research interests include distributed systems, grid computing, information security, mobile computing, and scientific computing. His PhD research work focus on the data management in secure and high performance data grid. He is a student member of the IEEE. I-Ling Yen received her BS degree from Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan, and her MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of Houston. She is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Yen’s research interests include fault-tolerant computing, security systems and algorithms, distributed systems, Internet technologies, E-commerce, and self-stabilizing systems. She had published over 100 technical papers in these research areas and received many research awards from NSF, DOD, NASA, and several industry companies. She has served as Program Committee member for many conferences and Program Chair/Co-Chair for the IEEE Symposium on Application-Specific Software and System Engineering & Technology, IEEE High Assurance Systems Engineering Symposium, IEEE International Computer Software and Applications Conference, and IEEE International Symposium on Autonomous Decentralized Systems. She is a member of the IEEE. Zhonghang Xia received the B.S. degree in applied mathematics from Dalian University of Technology in 1990, the M.S. degree in Operations Research from Qufu Normal University in 1993, and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2004. He is now an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY. His research interests are in the area of multimedia computing and networking, distributed systems, and data mining.     

The Use of Context-Aware Policies and Ontologies to Facilitate Business-Aware Network Management

The purpose of autonomic networking is to manage the business and technical complexity of networked components and systems. However, existing network management data has no link to business concepts. This makes it very difficult to ensure that services offered by the network are meeting business objectives. This paper describes a novel context-aware policy model that uses a combination of modeled and ontological data to determine the current context, which policies are applicable to that context, and what services and resources should be offered to which users and applications.

The rise and fall of the competitive local exchange carriers in the U.S.: An institutional perspective

The debacle of the telecommunications industry at the turn of the millennium resulted in significant consequences for investors, workers, financial institutions, telecom companies, and the economy in general worldwide. In the midst of the telecom bubble, the CLECs (competitive local exchange carriers) adopted similar or identical business plans and saturated the market, which resulted in destructive competition. In this study, we investigate the isomorphic business models of the CLECs from the perspectives of the new institutional theory. We argue that the combined coercive, mimetic, and normative institutional forces exerted on the companies by the actors who controlled the funding, managed the business, and provided the information fashioned the isomorphic CLEC business models, which in turn contributed to the demise of these companies and thus the burst of the telecom bubble. Evidence of the institutional influences on CLECs and the actors exerted the influences are presented and their consequences are discussed. Qing Hu is Professor of Information Systems in the Department of Information Technology & Operations Management at Florida Atlantic University. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Information Systems from the University of Miami. His research interests include economics of information technology (IT), IT strategy and management, and information security. His work has been published in leading academic journals including Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Communications of the ACM, Communications of the AIS, California Management Review, and IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. He also serves as associate and guest-editors for a number of IS journals and major conferences. C. Derrick Huang is Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Technology & Operations Management in the College of Business at Florida Atlantic University. Previously, as a practitioner, he held executive-level positions in the area of marketing and strategic planning in a number of high-tech companies. Dr. Huang’s research interest lies in the business value and strategic impact of information technology in organizations, and his current focus is on the economics and management of information security investments. He holds Ph.D. from Harvard University.     

对象技术在电信网络管理中的应用研究与进展

电信网管将走TMN技术路线,TMN重要的技术基础之一是面向对象技术。本文简介了对象技术的两大主要进展:面向对象软件建模技术和分布式对象技术,重点分析了两者在电信网络管理中的最新进展,并探讨了我们进行的相关工作。     

CCMPerf: A Benchmarking Tool for CORBA Component Model Implementations

Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) middleware is now widely used to develop distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems. DRE systems are themselves increasingly combined to form systems of systems that have diverse quality of service (QoS) requirements. Earlier generations of COTS middleware, such as Object Request Brokers (ORBs) based on the CORBA 2.x standard, did not facilitate the separation of QoS policies from application functionality, which made it hard to configure and validate complex DRE applications. The new generation of component middleware, such as the CORBA Component Model (CCM) based on the CORBA 3.0 standard, addresses the limitations of earlier generation middleware by establishing standards for implementing, packaging, assembling, and deploying component implementations.There has been little systematic empirical study of the performance characteristics of component middleware implementations in the context of DRE systems. This paper therefore provides four contributions to the study of CCM for DRE systems. First, we describe the challenges involved in benchmarking different CCM implementations. Second, we describe key criteria for comparing different CCM implementations using key black-box and white-box metrics. Third, we describe the design of our CCMPerf benchmarking suite to illustrate test categories that evaluate aspects of CCM implementation to determine their suitability for the DRE domain. Fourth, we use CCMPerf to benchmark CIAO implementation of CCM and analyze the results. These results show that the CIAO implementation based on the more sophisticated CORBA 3.0 standard has comparable DRE performance to that of the TAO implementation based on the earlier CORBA 2.x standard.Arvind S. Krishna is a PhD student in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at Vanderbilt University and a member of the Institute for Software Integrated Systems. He received his MA in management from the Brila Institute for Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, India and his MS in computer science from University of California, Irvine. His research interests include patterns, real-time Java technologies for Real-Time Corba, model-integrated QA techniques, and tools for partial evaluation and specialization of middleware. He is a student member of the IEEE and ACM. Contact him at the Inst. for Software Integrated Systems, 2015 Terrace Pl., Nashville, TN 37203.Balachandran Natarajan is a senior staff engineer at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems and a PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science at Vanderbilt University. His research focuses on applying patterns, optimization principles, and frameworks to build high-performance, dependable, and real-time distributed systems. He received his MS in computer science from Washington University. Contact him at the Inst. for Software Integrated Systems, 2015 Terrace Pl., Nashville, TN 37203.Aniruddha Gokhale is an assistant professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at Vanderbilt University and a senior research scientist at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems. His research focuses on real-time component middleware optimizations, distributed systems and networks, model-driven software synthesis applied to component middleware-based distributed systems, and distributed resource management. He received his PhD in computer science from Washington University. Contact him at the Inst. for Software Integrated Systems, 2015 Terrace Pl., Nashville, TN 37203.Douglas C. Schmidt is a professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at Vanderbilt University and a senior research scientist at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems. His research interests include patterns, optimization techniques, and empirical analyses of software frameworks and domain-specific modeling environments that facilitate the development of distributed real-time and embedded middleware and applications running over high-speed networks and embedded system interconnects. He received his PhD in information and computer science at the University of California, Irvine. Contact him at the Inst. for Software Integrated Systems, 2015 Terrace Pl., Nashville, TN 37203.Nanbor Wang is a Research Scientist in the Distributed Technologies Group at the Tech-X Corporation in Boulder, Colorado. He received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. While working for his degree, he also worked as a Research Associate in the Center of Distributed Object Computing in the Department of Computer Science where he conducted research on design, implementation and analysis of object-oriented and component-based techniques for development of distributed systems and management of extra-functional concerns. Dr. Wangs work currently focuses on developing and applying middleware techniques, such as CORBA and Grid Computing, for enabling distributed and parallel scientific applications, such as, distributed data analysis, remote visualization and collaboration, and, work-flow management for large-scale scientific applications.Gautam H. Thaker was born in Amdavad, India, in 1955. He holds a BSEE (75) and MSEE (77) from Clemson University, Clemson, SC. He spent the 85-86 academic year at M.I.T. as a visiting researcher. His research interests include analysis, design, construction and validation of real-time, command and control systems. In particular he has focused on interactions between operating systems, networking protocols, and middleware technologies.     

智能抄表管理系统软件模型的建模

提出了一种新的智能抄表数据管理方法。依据该方法的思想建立系统的体系结构。进而将面向对象方法学应用于智能抄表管理系统软件的研究和开发。通过面向对象建模技术(OMT)建立该管理系统的软件模型,即面向对象软件的三个子模型———对象模型、动态模型和功能模型。管理系统软件模型的建模过程分为面向对象分析(OOA)和面向对象设计(OOD)两个阶段进行。     

A Framework for Design Tradeoffs

Designs almost always require tradeoffs between competing design choices to meet system requirements. We present a framework for evaluating design choices with respect to meeting competing requirements. Specifically, we develop a model to estimate the performance of a UML design subject to changing levels of security and fault-tolerance. This analysis gives us a way to identify design solutions that are infeasible. Multi-criteria decision making techniques are applied to evaluate the remaining feasible alternatives. The method is illustrated with two examples: a small sensor network and a system for controlling traffic lights. Dr. Anneliese Amschler Andrews is Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Denver. Before that she was the Huie Rogers Endowed Chair in Software Engineering at Washington State University. Dr. Andrews is the author of a text book and over 130 articles in the area of Software Engineering, particularly software testing and maintenance. Dr. Andrews holds an MS and PhD from Duke University and a Dipl.-Inf. from the Technical University of Karlsruhe. She served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. She has also served on several other editorial boards including the IEEE Transactions on Reliability, the Empirical Software Engineering Journal, the Software Quality Journal, the Journal of Information Science and Technology, and the Journal of Software Maintenance. She was Director of the Colorado Advanced Software Institute from 1995 to 2002. CASI's mission was to support technology transfer research related to software through collaborations between industry and academia. Ed Mancebo studied software engineering at Milwaukee School of Engineering and computer science at Washington State University. His masters thesis explored applying systematic decision making methods to software engineering problems. He is currently a software developer at Amazon.com. Dr. Per Runeson is a professor in software engineering at Lund University, Sweden. His research interests include methods to facilitate, measure and manage aspects of software quality. He received a PhD from Lund University in 1998 and has industrial experience as a consulting expert. He is a member of the editorial board of Empirical Software Engineering and several program committees, and currently has a senior researcher position funded by the Swedish Research Council. Robert France is currently a Full Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Colorado State University. His research interests are in the area of Software Engineering, in particular formal specification techniques, software modeling techniques, design patterns, and domain-specific modeling languages. He is an Editor-in-Chief of the Springer journal on Software and System Modeling (SoSyM), and is a Steering Committee member and past Steering Committee Chair of the MoDELS/UML conference series. He was also a member of the revision task forces for the UML 1.x standards.     

Privacy preservation for data cubes

A range query finds the aggregated values over all selected cells of an online analytical processing (OLAP) data cube where the selection is specified by the ranges of contiguous values for each dimension. An important issue in reality is how to preserve the confidential information in individual data cells while still providing an accurate estimation of the original aggregated values for range queries. In this paper, we propose an effective solution, called the zero-sum method, to this problem. We derive theoretical formulas to analyse the performance of our method. Empirical experiments are also carried out by using analytical processing benchmark (APB) dataset from the OLAP Council. Various parameters, such as the privacy factor and the accuracy factor, have been considered and tested in the experiments. Finally, our experimental results show that there is a trade-off between privacy preservation and range query accuracy, and the zero-sum method has fulfilled three design goals: security, accuracy, and accessibility. Sam Y. Sung is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, School of Computing, National University of Singapore. He received a B.Sc. from the National Taiwan University in 1973, the M.Sc. and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Minnesota in 1977 and 1983, respectively. He was with the University of Oklahoma and University of Memphis in the United States before joining the National University of Singapore. His research interests include information retrieval, data mining, pictorial databases and mobile computing. He has published more than 80 papers in various conferences and journals, including IEEE Transaction on Software Engineering, IEEE Transaction on Knowledge & Data Engineering, etc. Yao Liu received the B.E. degree in computer science and technology from Peking University in 1996 and the MS. degree from the Software Institute of the Chinese Science Academy in 1999. Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include data warehousing, database security, data mining and high-speed networking. Hui Xiong received the B.E. degree in Automation from the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China, in 1995, the M.S. degree in Computer Science from the National University of Singapore, Singapore, in 2000, and the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA, in 2005. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer Information Systems in the Management Science & Information Systems Department at Rutgers University, NJ, USA. His research interests include data mining, databases, and statistical computing with applications in bioinformatics, database security, and self-managing systems. He is a member of the IEEE Computer Society and the ACM. Peter A. Ng is currently the Chairperson and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas—Pan American. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas–Austin in 1974. Previously, he had served as the Vice President at the Fudan International Institute for Information Science and Technology, Shanghai, China, from 1999 to 2002, and the Executive Director for the Global e-Learning Project at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, 2000–2003. He was appointed as an Advisory Professor of Computer Science at Fudan University, Shanghai, China in 1999. His recent research focuses on document and information-based processing, retrieval and management. He has published many journal and conference articles in this area. He had served as the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal on Systems Integration (1991–2001) and as Advisory Editor for the Data and Knowledge Engineering Journal since 1989.     

A framework for designing the enterprise-wide e-commerce portal for evolving organizations

The number of organizations offering e-commerce solutions is growing exponentially each year. Without a doubt, e-commerce will no longer be a choice for organizations rather it will be a competitive necessity to ensure business prosperity. Integral to the success of e-commerce is having good e-commerce software that can enable organizations to offer online products and services as well as integrate their business processes and supply chains within and with their collaborators or partners in a perfect, seamless manner. One of the main obstacles for adoption of e-commerce faced by many organizations; however, has been the lack of such proper integrated e-commerce software. There have been few ready-made software solutions offered by vendors, which can be customized for organizations’ business models and processes, and these solutions are based on “piece meal” approaches and thus lack much of the enterprise capabilities organizations need to adopt. In this paper, we suggest a framework for developing an enterprise-wide integrated e-commerce portal for evolving organizations. Such a framework will help any organization to design a distributed, extensible, cross-platform, collaborative and integrated e-commerce portal. Sushil K. Sharma is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management at Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana. Prior to joining the faculty at Ball State, Dr. Sharma held the Associate Professor position at the Indian Institute of Management in Lucknow (India) and Visiting Research Associate Professor at the Department of Management Science at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He is of two text books (Programming in C, and Understanding Unix), and Co-editor of four edited books. Dr. Sharma has published more than 100 refereed research papers in many peer-reviewed national and international journals and conference proceedings. His contributions have appeared in journals such as; International Journal of Information Management, International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management (IJHTM), Electronic Government Journal, Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations (JECO), Journal of Global Information Technology Management (JGITM), The Journal of Computer Information Systems (CIS), Journal of Logistics Information Management (JLIM), and International Journal of Management. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for International Journal of Cases on Electronic Commerce (IJCEC) and is on Editorial board for the International Journal of Electronic Finance (IJEF) and the Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations (JECO). In the past, he has also been a guest editor for special issue of Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management and Journal of Global Information Technology Management (JGITM). Dr. Sharma’s primary teaching and research interests are in e-commerce, computer and network security, ERP Systems, database management systems, and knowledge management. Jatinder (Jeet) N. D. Gupta is currently Eminent Scholar of Management of Technology, Professor of Management Information Systems, Industrial and Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, Alabama. Most recently, he was Professor of Management, Information and Communication Sciences, and Industry and Technology at Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana. He holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering (with specialization in Production Management and Information Systems) from Texas Tech University. Co-author of a textbook in Operations Research, Dr. Gupta serves on the editorial boards of several national and international journals. Recipient of the Outstanding Faculty and Outstanding Researcher awards from Ball State University, he has published numerous papers in such journals as Journal of Management Information Systems, International Journal of Information Management, Operations Research, INFORMS Journal of Computing, Annals of Operations Research, and Mathematics of Operations Research. More recently, he served as a co-editor of several special issues including the Neural Networks in Business of Computers and Operations Research and books that included Decision Making Support Systems: Achievements and Challenges for the New Decade and Creating Knowledge-based Healthcare Organizations published by Idea Group Publishing. He is also the coeditor of the book: Managing E-Business published by Heidelberg Press, Heidelberg, Australia. His current research interests include e-Commerce, Supply Chain Management, Information and Decision Technologies, Scheduling, Planning and Control, Organizational Learning and Effectiveness, Systems Education, Knowledge Management, Information Security, and Enterprise Integration. Dr. Gupta has held elected and appointed positions in several academic and professional societies including the Association for Information Systems, Production and Operations Management Society (POMS), the Decision Sciences Institute (DSI), and the Information Resources Management Association (IRMA). Nilmini Wickramasinghe, PhD, MBA, GradDipMgtSt, BSc. Amus.A (piano) Amus.A(violin): Currently, Dr Wickramasinghe is an associate professor and the associate director of the Center for the Management of Medical Technologies at Stuart Graduate School of Business, Illinois Institute of Technology. Her teaching interests cover the areas of knowledge management as well as e-commerce and m-commerce, IT for competitive advantage, organizational impacts of technology and healthcare issues. In addition, Dr Wickramasinghe teaches and presents regularly in many universities in Europe and Australiasia. She is currently carrying out research and is well published having written numerous book chapters, refereed journal articles and some books in the areas of management of technology, in the field of healthcare as well as focusing on IS issues especially as they relate to knowledge work and e-business. Dr Wickramasinghe is honored to be able to represent the United States of America for the Health Care Technology Management (HCTM) Association (URL http://www.hctm.net/events/2005/conference_2005.html).     

Trajectory tracking with a 6R serial industrial robot with ordinary and non-ordinary singularities

This work presents a trajectory control for non-redundant serial-link manipulators that is valid for trajectories with ordinary singularities of codimension one and non-ordinary singularities of any codimension. For this purpose, several singularity classifications are considered and a procedure is developed in order to solve the indeterminate motion of non-ordinary singularities. The proposed trajectory control is validated by simulation and by experiments with the six-revolute (6R) industrial robot KUKA KR 15/2. Recommended by Editor Jae-Bok Song. This work was supported by the Spanish Government: Research Project BIA2005-09377-C03-02. The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their time and valuable comments that helped us to improve the quality of this paper. Luis Gracia received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in Control Systems Engineering, from the Technical University of Valencia (UPV), Spain, in 1998, 2000, and 2006, respectively. He is currently an Associate Professor at Department of Systems Engineering and Control (DISA) of the UPV. His research interests include wheeled mobile robots, robotic manipulators, system modeling and control. Javier Andres received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the UPV in 2003 and 2006, respectively. He is currently working on his Ph.D. His research interests include CAD/CAM/Robotics integration and robot post-processing. Josep Tornero received the M.S. Degree in Systems and Control from the University of Manchester in 1982, and the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the UPV in 1985. He is currently a Professor at the DISA of the UPV and responsible for the ‘Automation in Manufacture and Mobile Robotics’ Group and the ‘Design Institute for the Manufacture and Automated Production’, both at the UPV. He is interested in modeling, control and simulation of auto-guided vehicles, robot arms, and multirate sampled data systems.     

Building measure-based prediction models for UML class diagram maintainability

The usefulness of measures for the analysis and design of object oriented (OO) software is increasingly being recognized in the field of software engineering research. In particular, recognition of the need for early indicators of external quality attributes is increasing. We investigate through experimentation whether a collection of UML class diagram measures could be good predictors of two main subcharacteristics of the maintainability of class diagrams: understandability and modifiability. Results obtained from a controlled experiment and a replica support the idea that useful prediction models for class diagrams understandability and modifiability can be built on the basis of early measures, in particular, measures that capture structural complexity through associations and generalizations. Moreover, these measures seem to be correlated with the subjective perception of the subjects about the complexity of the diagrams. This fact shows, to some extent, that the objective measures capture the same aspects as the subjective ones. However, despite our encouraging findings, further empirical studies, especially using data taken from real projects performed in industrial settings, are needed. Such further study will yield a comprehensive body of knowledge and experience about building prediction models for understandability and modifiability.