Requirements monitoring frameworks: A systematic review

ContextSoftware systems today often interoperate with each other, thus forming a system of systems (SoS). Due to the scale, complexity, and heterogeneity of SoS, determining compliance with their requirements is challenging, despite the range of existing monitoring approaches. The fragmented research landscape and the diversity of existing approaches, however, make it hard to understand and analyze existing research regarding its suitability for SoS.ObjectiveThe aims of this paper are thus to systematically identify, describe, and classify existing approaches for requirements-based monitoring of software systems at runtime. Specifically, we (i) analyze the characteristics and application areas of monitoring approaches proposed in different domains, we (ii) systematically identify frameworks supporting requirements monitoring, and finally (iii) analyze their support for requirements monitoring in SoS.MethodWe performed a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify existing monitoring approaches and to classify their key characteristics and application areas. Based on this analysis we selected requirements monitoring frameworks, following a definition by Robinson, and analyzed them regarding their support for requirements monitoring in SoS.ResultsWe identified 330 publications, which we used to produce a comprehensive overview of the landscape of requirements monitoring approaches. We analyzed these publications regarding their support for Robinson’s requirements monitoring layers, resulting in 37 identified frameworks. We investigated how well these frameworks support requirements monitoring in SoS.ConclusionsWe conclude that most existing approaches are restricted to certain kinds of checks, particular types of events and data, and mostly also limited to one particular architectural style and technology. This lack of flexibility makes their application in an SoS context difficult. Also, systematic and automated variability management is still missing. Regarding their evaluation, many existing frameworks focus on measuring the performance overhead, while only few frameworks have been assessed in cases studies with real-world systems.     

A DSL toolkit for deferring architectural decisions in DSL-based software design

A number of mature toolkits and language workbenches for DSL-based design have been proposed, making DSL-based design attractive for many projects. These toolkits preselect many architectural decision options. However, in many cases it would be beneficial for DSL-based design to decide for the DSL’s architecture later on in a DSL project, once the requirements and the domain have been sufficiently understood. We propose a language and a number of DSLs for DSL-based design and development that combine important benefits of different DSL toolkits in a unique way. Our approach specifically targets at deferring architectural decisions in DSL-based design. As a consequence, the architect can choose, even late in a DSL project, for options such as whether to provide the DSL as one or more external or embedded DSLs and whether to use an explicit language model or not .     

Semi-automated architectural abstraction specifications for supporting software evolution

In this paper we present an approach for supporting the semi-automated architectural abstraction of architectural models throughout the software life-cycle. It addresses the problem that the design and implementation of a software system often drift apart as software systems evolve, leading to architectural knowledge evaporation. Our approach provides concepts and tool support for the semi-automatic abstraction of architecture component and connector views from implemented systems and keeping the abstracted architecture models up-to-date during software evolution. In particular, we propose architecture abstraction concepts that are supported through a domain-specific language (DSL). Our main focus is on providing architectural abstraction specifications in the DSL that only need to be changed, if the architecture changes, but can tolerate non-architectural changes in the underlying source code. Once the software architect has defined an architectural abstraction in the DSL, we can automatically generate architectural component views from the source code using model-driven development (MDD) techniques and check whether architectural design constraints are fulfilled by these models. Our approach supports the automatic generation of traceability links between source code elements and architectural abstractions using MDD techniques to enable software architects to easily link between components and the source code elements that realize them. It enables software architects to compare different versions of the generated architectural component view with each other. We evaluate our research results by studying the evolution of architectural abstractions in different consecutive versions of five open source systems and by analyzing the performance of our approach in these cases.     

Towards Software Architecture and Mechanisms for Improving Runtime Variability of Internetware System

As an emerging software paradigm, Internetware is proposed to handle openness, dynamism of software systems in the context of Internet, which implies that such software systems typically have runtime variability that can be improved dynamically to handle various or even unexpected changes of requirements and open environment. Though many progresses of Internetware software technologies have been made to support the adaptation, evolution, context-awareness, etc. of Internetware, how to construct Internetware systems with the ability to improve their runtime variability is still a great challenge in the literature of software engineering. In this paper, we propose software architecture and mechanisms for Internetware systems to support the improvement of their runtime variability by combining software variability and autonomic computing techniques. The Internetware system is organized as three levels that are consist of variable autonomic elements and Internetware entities, and architecture of these software entities is defined and discussed respectively. Moreover, we put forward a series of runtime mechanisms based on these levels, including module selection, intermediator and horizontal management, to realize operations upon the variation points and variants in software architectures and thus achieve the improvement of runtime variability. We develop a sample of Personal Data Resource Network to depict the requirements and scenario of improving runtime variability, and further study the case based on our proposed approach to show its effectiveness and applicability.     

A model-driven development approach for context-aware systems

The widespread usage of various types of computer devices with different platform characteristics created a need for new methods and tools to support the development of context-aware applications capable of dynamically adapting themselves to context changes. In this paper, we present a new model-based approach that addresses the development of context-aware applications from both the theoretical and practical perspectives and that supports all development phases of context-aware systems. On the one hand, we describe how our approach is applied to dynamically capture, observe the change of the context and notify the system at runtime. On the other hand, we show how our approach is used by programmers to develop a context- aware application.     

A robust reconfiguration protocol for the dynamic update of component‐based software systems

This paper focuses on the dynamic reconfiguration of component‐based software systems. From a structural point of view, such systems are made of components linked together through their provided and required services, the code of components being defined by modules (e.g., jar files). Today, the ability to reconfigure component‐based systems at runtime faces limitations. Some component frameworks allow to dynamically reconfigure components – starting or stopping them, or changing how they are wired together for instance – but forbid any dynamic evolution of the modules defining their code. Other frameworks allow to dynamically update modules but at the cost of loosing control on component wires, preventing software architects or tools alike to decide how components are wired together. In this paper, we propose a component framework that addresses these limitations through a unified approach for the management of components and modules. Our approach uniquely enables to reconfigure both components and modules at runtime, without restrictions. We prototyped the proposed framework in Java and exercised various dynamic reconfigurations of component‐based systems. Furthermore, we formalized this framework and proved the correctness of its reconfiguration protocol with the Coq proof assistant. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enforcement of entailment constraints in distributed service-based business processes

ContextA distributed business process is executed in a distributed computing environment. The service-oriented architecture (SOA) paradigm is a popular option for the integration of software services and execution of distributed business processes. Entailment constraints, such as mutual exclusion and binding constraints, are important means to control process execution. Mutually exclusive tasks result from the division of powerful rights and responsibilities to prevent fraud and abuse. In contrast, binding constraints define that a subject who performed one task must also perform the corresponding bound task(s).ObjectiveWe aim to provide a model-driven approach for the specification and enforcement of task-based entailment constraints in distributed service-based business processes.MethodBased on a generic metamodel, we define a domain-specific language (DSL) that maps the different modeling-level artifacts to the implementation-level. The DSL integrates elements from role-based access control (RBAC) with the tasks that are performed in a business process. Process definitions are annotated using the DSL, and our software platform uses automated model transformations to produce executable WS-BPEL specifications which enforce the entailment constraints. We evaluate the impact of constraint enforcement on runtime performance for five selected service-based processes from existing literature.ResultsOur evaluation demonstrates that the approach correctly enforces task-based entailment constraints at runtime. The performance experiments illustrate that the runtime enforcement operates with an overhead that scales well up to the order of several ten thousand logged invocations. Using our DSL annotations, the user-defined process definition remains declarative and clean of security enforcement code.ConclusionOur approach decouples the concerns of (non-technical) domain experts from technical details of entailment constraint enforcement. The developed framework integrates seamlessly with WS-BPEL and the Web services technology stack. Our prototype implementation shows the feasibility of the approach, and the evaluation points to future work and further performance optimizations.     

Enabling run-time composition and support for heterogeneous pervasive multi-agent systems

User needs-driven and computer-supported development of pervasive heterogeneous and dynamic multi-agent systems remains a great challenge for agent research community. This paper presents an innovative approach to composing, validating and supporting multi-agent systems at run-time. Multi-agent systems (MASs) can and should be assembled quasi-automatically and dynamically based on high-level user specifications which are transformed into a shared and common goal–mission. Dynamically generating agents could also be supported as a pervasive service. Heterogeneity of MASs refers to diverse functionality and constituency of the system which include mobile as well as host associated software agents. This paper proposes and demonstrates on-demand and just-in-time agent composition approach which is combined with run-time support for MASs. Run-time support is based on mission cost-efficiency and shared objectives which enable termination, generation, injection and replacement of software agents as the mission evolves at run-time. We present the formal underpinning of our approach and describe the prototype tool – called eHermes, which has been implemented using available agent platforms. Analysis and results of evaluating eHermes are presented and discussed.     

Support for situation awareness in trustworthy ubiquitous computing application software

Due to the dynamic and ephemeral nature of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) environments, it is especially important that the application software in ubicomp environments is trustworthy. In order to have trustworthy application software in ubicomp environments, situation‐awareness (SAW) in the application software is needed to enforce flexible security policies and detect violations of security policies. In this paper, an approach is presented to provide development and runtime support to incorporate SAW in trustworthy ubicomp application software. The development support is to provide SAW requirement specification and automated code generation to achieve SAW in trustworthy ubicomp application software, and the runtime support is for context acquisition, situation analysis and situation‐aware communication. To realize our approach, the improved Reconfigurable Context‐Sensitive Middleware (RCSM) is developed to provide the above development and runtime support. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A simulation methodology for a system of product life cycle systems

To realize environmental sustainability, the flow of natural resources into industrial systems must be reduced and stabilized at a suitable level. One way to reduce resource flows in society is to establish resource-circulating manufacturing systems. To foster the circulation of resources in industry, life cycle simulation (LCS) technologies, which are based on discrete-event modeling, have been developed to dynamically evaluate the life cycles of products from resource extraction to end of life from both environmental and economic aspects. In reality, various industrial products interact with each other in unanticipated ways, and then these interactions affect the material flows in product life cycles. This type of complex system is called a system of systems (SoS). Focusing on this issue, we expand the evaluation's system boundary to include a system of multiple product life cycle systems. To handle an SoS quantitatively, we introduce typical types of interactions between product life cycle systems. The purpose of this study was to propose a new LCS methodology, called “LCS4SoS,” that focuses on an SoS consisting of different kinds of product life cycle systems. A prototype system of LCS4SoS was implemented based on this proposed methodology. Through a case study, it was found that the proposed methodology is useful for evaluating an SoS consisting of multi-product life cycle systems.     

Reasons for bottlenecks in very large-scale system of systems development

ContextSystem of systems (SoS) is a set or arrangement of systems that results when independent and useful systems are to be incorporated into a larger system that delivers unique capabilities. Our investigation showed that the development life cycle (i.e. the activities transforming requirements into design, code, test cases, and releases) in SoS is more prone to bottlenecks in comparison to single systems.ObjectiveThe objective of the research is to identify reasons for bottlenecks in SoS, prioritize their significance according to their effect on bottlenecks, and compare them with respect to different roles and different perspectives, i.e. SoS view (concerned with integration of systems), and systems view (concerned with system development and delivery).MethodThe research method used is a case study at Ericsson AB.ResultsResults show that the most significant reasons for bottlenecks are related to requirements engineering. All the different roles agree on the significance of requirements related factors. However, there are also disagreements between the roles, in particular with respect to quality related reasons. Quality related hinders are primarily observed and highly prioritized by quality assurance responsibles. Furthermore, SoS view and system view perceive different hinders, and prioritize them differently.ConclusionWe conclude that solutions for requirements engineering in SoS context are needed, quality awareness in the organization has to be achieved end to end, and views between SoS and system view need to be aligned to avoid sub optimization in improvements.     

Towards the Model Driven Development of context-aware pervasive systems

In this work, we introduce a Model Driven Development method for developing context-aware pervasive systems. This method allows us to specify a context-aware pervasive system at a high level of abstraction by means of a set of models, which describes both the system functionality and the context information. From these models, an automated code generation strategy is applied. This strategy allows us to generate the system Java code that provides the system functionality and as well as an OWL specification that represents the context information and allows us to manage this information without additional burden. Furthermore, this specification is used by a reasoner at runtime to infer context knowledge that is not directly observable, and it is also used by machine learning algorithms to give support to the system adaptation according to the context information.     

Efficient virtual machine support of runtime structural reflection

Increasing trends towards adaptive, distributed, generative and pervasive software have made object-oriented dynamically typed languages become increasingly popular. These languages offer dynamic software evolution by means of reflection, facilitating the development of dynamic systems. Unfortunately, this dynamism commonly imposes a runtime performance penalty. In this paper, we describe how to extend a production JIT-compiler virtual machine to support runtime object-oriented structural reflection offered by many dynamic languages. Our approach improves runtime performance of dynamic languages running on statically typed virtual machines. At the same time, existing statically typed languages are still supported by the virtual machine.We have extended the .Net platform with runtime structural reflection adding prototype-based object-oriented semantics to the statically typed class-based model of .Net, supporting both kinds of programming languages. The assessment of runtime performance and memory consumption has revealed that a direct support of structural reflection in a production JIT-based virtual machine designed for statically typed languages provides a significant performance improvement for dynamically typed languages.     

基于SMT的区域控制器同步反应式模型的形式化验证

在安全关键系统的软件开发过程中,形式化验证是一种经检验的提高软件质量的技术.然而,无论从理论上还是从应用角度来看,软件的验证都必须是完整的,数据流验证应该是对实现层软件模型进行验证的必要体现.因此,环境输入、泛型函数、高阶迭代运算和中间变量对于分析形式化验证的可用性至关重要.为了验证同步反应式模型,工程师很容易验证控制流模型(即安全状态机).现有工作表明,这类工作无法全面地验证安全关键系统的同步反应式模型,尤其是数据流模型,导致这些方法没有达到工业应用的要求,这成为对工业安全软件进行形式化验证的一个挑战.提出了一种自动化验证方法.该方法可以实现对安全状态机和数据流模型的集成进行验证.采用了一种基于程序综合的方法,其中,SCADE模型描述了功能需求、安全性质和环境输入,可以通过对Lustre模型的程序综合,采用基于SMT的模型检查器进行验证.该技术将程序合成作为一种通用原理来提高形式化验证的完整性.在轨道交通的工业级应用(近200万行Lustre代码)上评估了该方法.实验结果表明,该方法在大规模同步反应式模型长期存在的复杂验证问题上是有效的.     

Function call interception techniques

Function call interception (FCI), or method call interception (MCI) in the object‐oriented programming domain, is a technique of intercepting function calls at program runtime. Without directly modifying the original code, FCI enables to undertake certain operations before and/or after the called function or even to replace the intercepted call. Thanks to this capability, FCI has been typically used to profile programs, where functions of interest are dynamically intercepted by instrumentation code so that the execution control is transferred to an external module that performs execution time measurement or logging operations. In addition, FCI allows for manipulating the runtime behavior of program components at the fine‐grained function level, which can be useful in changing an application's original behavior at runtime to meet certain execution requirements such as maintaining performance characteristics for different input problem sets. Due to this capability, however, some FCI techniques can be used as a basis of many security exploits for vulnerable systems. In this paper, we survey a variety of FCI techniques and tools along with their applications to diverse areas in the computing and software domains. We describe static and dynamic FCI techniques at large and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of different implementations in this category. In addition, we also discuss aspect‐oriented programming implementation techniques for intercepting method calls.     

SM@RT: Applying Architecture-Based Runtime Management into Internetware Systems

Architecture-based runtime management (ARM) is a promising approach for Internetware systems. The key enablement of ARM is runtime architecture infrastructure(RAI) that maintains the causal connection between runtime systems and architectural mod-els. An RAI is uneasy to implement and, more importantly, specific to the given system and model. In this paper, we propose a model-driven approach for automated generation of RAI implementation. Developers only need to define three MOF models for their preferred archi-tecture model and the target system (these models are reusable independently for di?erent pairs of the model and system), and one QVT transformation for the causal connection. Our Eclipse-based toolset, called SM@RT, will automatically generate the RAI implementation code without any modification on the source code of the target system, and automatically and properly deploy the generated RAI into the distributed systems. This approach is exper-imented on several runtime systems and architectural models, including ABC architectural models on Eclipse GUI and Android, C2 architectural models on JOnAS, Rainbow C/S style on PLASTIC and UML models on POJO.     

ACSmt: A plugin for eclipse papyrus to model systems of systems

While System of Systems (SoS) architectures for large and complex software projects are gaining momentum, the commonly used modeling and tooling approaches are still general-purpose or oriented towards single systems. Developers could benefit from methods and tools that avoid system-centric details in favor of native SoS modeling support. This paper presents a diagram-centric modeling tool with native SoS modeling support. The tool is implemented as a plugin for the Eclipse Papyrus modeling tool. The tool was showcased as a demo at MODELS'22. The code of the plugin is freely available via Github.