Multi-model driven collaborative development platform for service-oriented e-Business systems

Enterprises need to be responsive to meet dynamic businesses and requirements. Service-oriented architecture and Web services can improve e-Business systems to be integrated and flexible. This paper proposes a multi-model driven collaborative development platform for service-oriented e-Business systems. The platform provides engineers/consultants with three views, i.e., business view, process view, and service view to support service-oriented software engineering, top-down business design and bottom-up service composite and development. The views are kept consistent through model-driven translation mechanisms. The platform employs three models, i.e., service meta-model, process model and business model to implement the translation. On the platform, business and technical consultants/engineers can use the views designated for their roles to collaborate for a service-oriented e-Business system based at the distributed sites of, e.g., IT vendors and their clients. The collaboration is featured with visual development and rapid demonstration. Comparingly, most of the mainstream development environments focus on object-oriented application development other than service-oriented business process modeling. The platform has been developed and deployed in an innovation centre to be evaluated by visiting customers.     

An agent-based service-oriented integration architecture for collaborative intelligent manufacturing

The rapidly changing needs and opportunities of today's global market require unprecedented levels of interoperability to integrate diverse information systems to share knowledge and collaborate among organizations. The combination of Web services and software agents provides a promising computing paradigm for efficient service selection and integration of inter-organizational business processes. This paper proposes an agent-based service-oriented integration architecture to leverage manufacturing scheduling services on a network of virtual enterprises. A unique property of this approach is that the scheduling process of an order is orchestrated on the Internet through the negotiation among agent-based Web services. A software prototype system has been implemented for inter-enterprise manufacturing resource sharing. It demonstrates how the proposed service-oriented integration architecture can be used to establish a collaborative environment that provides dynamic resource scheduling services.     

A model-driven framework for enterprise service management

With a steady pace of adoption of service-oriented architecture, enterprises have made significant progresses in implementing various kinds of Web services and converting existing applications to service-oriented architecture. As a significant number of services have been put into actual use, many service-oriented enterprises are faced with the problem of how to manage these services efficiently. In this paper, we propose a model-driven framework for a more efficient management of these services. In this framework, the creation and maintenance of enterprise integration solutions are modeled by flows, finite state machines (FSMs), role-based access control (RBAC) among other formal systems models as well as appropriate decision models. For instance, each enterprise integration solution would be modeled as composite services that can be described by respective flow, FSM and RBAC models. These solution models can then be stored, and later retrieved for the execution of these composite services. Furthermore, formal systems and decision models are also used to maintain and update these service-oriented solutions to improve the efficiency and quality of service management by taking advantage of the underlying service-oriented architecture.     

A resource-aware framework for resource-constrained service-oriented systems

As embedded systems become increasingly complex, not only are dependability and timeliness critical quality indicators, but also their ability to dynamically adapt to changes in their runtime environment. Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) offers a potential solution to this challenge by allowing services to be dynamically bound at runtime. However, resource contention between services and resource saturation can result in significant Quality of Service (QoS) degradation. To address these issues, this paper proposes a runtime, resource-aware architecture that combines resource monitoring with dynamic workflow orchestration to mediate resource contention within the orchestration environment. The architecture was evaluated on a medium-size service-oriented case study, deployed on a resource-constrained device.     

基于网格服务的协同设计平台的设计

为充分利用产品设计合作企业的资源和个体优势,更好地支持企业产品协同设计,从协同设计平台功能需求出发,研究了基于网格服务的协同设计平台的体系结构、资源集成与共享、网格服务实现、网格门户实现等关键技术,构建了基于网格服务的协同设计平台.该平台通过开放网格服务框架,实现了合作企业软件集成和设计资源共享,提高了资源的利用率和产品设计的质量.最后通过机械产品协同设计表明了该平台的有效性.     

A service-oriented architecture for coupling web service models using the Basic Model Interface (BMI)

Service-oriented approach for model coupling is gradually gaining momentum. By leveraging the World Wide Web, the service-oriented approach lowers the interoperability barrier of integrating models in terms of programming languague and operating system. While such paradigm has been applied to integrate models wrapped with some standard interfaces, this paper considers the Basic Model Interface (BMI) as model interface. The advantages of BMI are that it (1) enrich the semantics of variable names, and (2) is framework-agnostic. We exposed the BMI-enabled models through web services. Then, a smart modeling framework, the Experimental Modeling Environment for Linking and Interoperability (EMELI), was enhanced into a web application (i.e., EMELI-Web) to integrate the BMI-enabled web service models. By implementing the whole orchestration in coupling TopoFlow components, we demonstrate that BMI helps connect web service models by reducing the heterogeneity of variable names, and EMELI-Web makes it convenient to couple BMI-enabled web service models.     

构建数字城市的元数据服务体系

Metadata is one of the six key technologies of Digital Earth,which is also an important aspect in buildingand implementing the Digital City. Based on the technologies and standards of Web Services ,the author came up witha metadata services architecture in the distributed heterogeneous network environment of Digital City. In this paper,the metadata services architecture is described and explained in detail,including the related standards,technologies,and the practical experiences in the ‘Metadata Sharing Network Project of Digital Beijing‘ as well. It also points out that, based on the Web service ,to build the metadata service architecture will be practically meaningful for organizing,managing and sharing the information resources in Digital City.     

Development of service-oriented architectures using model-driven development: A mapping study

ContextModel-Driven Development (MDD) and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) are two challenging research areas in software engineering. MDD is about improving software development whilst SOA is a service-based conceptual development style, therefore investigating the available proposals in the literature to use MDD when developing SOA may be insightful. However, no studies have been found with this purpose.ObjectiveThis work aims at assessing the state of the art in MDD for SOA systems. It mainly focuses on: what are the characteristics of MDD approaches that support SOA; what types of SOA are supported; how do they handle non-functional requirements.MethodWe conducted a mapping study following a rigorous protocol. We identified the representative set of venues that should be included in the study. We applied a search string over the set of selected venues. As result, 129 papers were selected and analysed (both frequency analysis and correlation analysis) with respect to the defined classification criteria derived from the research questions. Threats to validity were identified and mitigated whenever possible.ResultsThe analysis allows us to answer the research questions. We highlight: (1) predominance of papers from Europe and written by researchers only; (2) predominance of top-down transformation in software development activities; (3) inexistence of consolidated methods; (4) significant percentage of works without tool support; (5) SOA systems and service compositions more targeted than single services and SOA enterprise systems; (6) limited use of metamodels; (7) very limited use of NFRs; and (8) limited application in real cases.ConclusionThis mapping study does not just provide the state of the art in the topic, but also identifies several issues that deserve investigation in the future, for instance the need of methods for activities other than software development (e.g., migration) or the need of conducting more real case studies.     

“数字流域”网络门户的研究和设计*

分析和研究了目前国内外河流的信息化平台建设情况, 以“数字流域”建设为背景,为西藏“四江流域”可持续发展,尤其是生态环境保护、监测、评价和规划的研究成果展示,设计开发一套基于Web GIS技术、Java Portal技术的数字流域网络门户系统。描述了实现系统的关键技术、设计思想和系统结构,实现了从数据共享、数据交换层面到基于网络门户的数据服务集成的飞跃,网络门户的建设增强了信息化平台的功能和数据集成,也为生态环境建设的决策支持工作提供了良好环境。     

面向服务的企业应用集成架构研究

对传统的企业应用集成方法进行分析,提出一种基于SOA模型的企业应用集成框架,并讨论了相关的支撑技术;给出了Web Services集成实现模型—传输层、消息层、描述层、保证层和组合层。面向服务的实现企业应用集成框架的方式,能较好地解决企业原有应用系统集成的问题,从而克服了EAI传统解决方案中的缺点,建立了一套独立于语言并且跨平台的系统集成方案,并给出了一个面向服务的企业应用集成系统实例。     

面向服务的多源异构数据整合平台的设计

为了使中小企业租赁的各种在线应用系统间的数据能够进行有效地整合和共享,并且使企业员工和客户有统一的登陆点来访问企业租赁的各类信息化系统,研究了面向服务的体系架构,在此基础上设计了面向服务架构的数据整合平台。该平台使中小企业能够一站式对多个软件提供商提供的软件进行租赁,将平台作为使用这些应用系统的统一入口,中小企业可以在该平台中建立企业门户,自助整合企业所租赁的应用系统,有效地实现企业应用系统的整合。通过实例结果表明了该平台对不同软件提供商的数据整合的有效性。     

基于MDA的Web服务组合的研究及应用

随着已有Web服务数量的不断增加,如何利用这些现有的Web服务创建新的更复杂的Web服务成为一项新的研究课题。特别地,利用MDA进行Web服务合成已经成为研究的热点。提出了一种基于模型驱动架构的Web服务组合方法,将模型驱动软件开发方法学应用到Web服务组合中。针对WSDL语言给出了一个UML Profile for WSDL来建立与WSDL平台相关的静态结构模型,并给出了与WSDL平台相关的静态结构模型和WSDL语言之间的模型转化规则。并通过一个旅行代理服务的实例说明了方法的应用情况,验证了方法的可行性。     

A collaborative and integrated platform to support distributed manufacturing system using a service-oriented approach based on cloud computing paradigm

Today's manufacturing enterprises struggle to adopt cost-effective manufacturing systems. Overview of the recent manufacturing enterprises shows that successful global manufacturing enterprises have distributed their manufacturing capabilities over the globe. The successes of global manufacturing enterprises depend upon the entire worldwide integration of their product development processes and manufacturing operations that are distributed over the globe. Distributed manufacturing agents' collaboration and manufacturing data integrity play a major role in global manufacturing enterprises' success. There are number of works, conducted to enable the distributed manufacturing agents to collaborate with each other. To achieve the manufacturing data integrity through manufacturing processes, numbers of solutions have been proposed which one of the successful solutions is to use ISO 10303 (STEP) standard. However, adopting this standard one can recognize antonym effects of integration and collaboration approaches that weaken both integration and collaboration capabilities of manufacturing agents. In our latest work, we had developed an integrated and collaborative manufacturing platform named LAYMOD. Albeit the platform in question was through enough to be applied in various collaborative and integrated CAx systems, its embedded structure hampers its application for collaboration in distributed manufacturing systems. To achieve an integrated and collaborative platform for distributed manufacturing agents, this paper proposes a service-oriented approach. This approach is originated from cloud computing paradigm known as one of the technologies which enables a major transformation in manufacturing industry. Also, to maintain the product data integration based on the STEP standard, a new service-oriented approach is proposed. This approach is in parallel to the new capability of the STEP standard for supporting XML data structures. The result is a new platform named XMLAYMOD. XMLAYMOD is able to support distributed manufacturing collaboration and data integration based on the STEP standard. The different aspects of this platform to fulfill the requirements of distributed collaboration and also to overcome the lacks of the STEP standard are discussed through a brief case study.     

Applying CIM-to-PIM model transformations for the service-oriented development of information systems

Context

Model-driven approaches deal with the provision of models, transformations between them and code generators to address software development. This approach has the advantage of defining a conceptual structure, where the models used by business managers and analysts can be mapped into more detailed models used by software developers. This alignment between high-level business specifications and the lower-level information technologies (ITs) models is crucial to the field of service-oriented development, where meaningful business services and process specifications are those relevant to real business scenarios.

Objective

This paper presents a model-driven approach which, starting from high-level computational-independent business models (CIMs) - the business view - sets out guidelines for obtaining lower-level platform-independent behavioural models (PIMs) - the information system view. A key advantage of our approach is the use of real high-level business models, not just requirements models, which, by means of model transformations, helps software developers to make the most of the business knowledge for specifying and developing business services.

Method

This proposal is framed in a method for service-oriented development of information systems whose main characteristic is the use of services as first-class objects. The method follows an MDA-based approach, proposing a set of models at different levels of abstraction and model transformations to connect them.

Results

The paper present the complete set of CIM and PIM metamodels and the specification of the mappings between them, which clear advantage is the support for the alignment between high-level business view and ITs. The proposed model-driven process is being implemented in an MDA tool. A first prototype has been used to develop a travel agency case study that illustrates the proposal.

Conclusion

This study shows how a model-driven approach helps to solve the alignment problem between the business view and the information system view that arises when adopting service-oriented approaches for software development.     

Style-based modeling and refinement of service-oriented architectures

Service-oriented architectures (SOA) provide a flexible and dynamic platform for implementing business solutions. In this paper, we address the modeling of such architectures by refining business-oriented architectures, which abstract from technology aspects, into service-oriented ones, focusing on the ability of dynamic reconfiguration (binding to new services at run-time) typical for SOA.The refinement is based on conceptual models of the platforms involved as architectural styles, formalized by graph transformation systems. Based on a refinement relation between abstract and platform-specific styles we investigate how to realize business-specific scenarios on the SOA platform by automatically deriving refined, SOA-specific reconfiguration scenarios.Research partially supported by the European Research Training Network SegraVis (on Syntactic and Semantic Integration of Visual Modelling Techniques)     

A web services framework for distributed model management

Distributed model management aims to support the wide-spread sharing and usage of decision support models. Web services is a promising technology for supporting distributed model management activities such as model creation and delivery, model composition, model execution and model maintenance to fulfill dynamic decision-support and problem solving requests. We propose a web services based framework for model management (called MM-WS) to support various activities of the model management life cycle. The framework is based on the recently proposed Integrated Service Planning and Execution (ISP & E) approach for web services integration. We discuss encoding of domain knowledge (as individual models) and utilize the MM-WS framework to interleave synthesis of composite models with their execution. A prototypical implementation with an example is used to illustrate the utility of the framework to enable distributed model management and knowledge integration. Benefits and issues of using the framework to support model-based decision-making in organizational contexts are outlined.

A model-driven development framework for enterprise Web services

The growing scale and complexity of the enterprise computing systems under distributed and heterogeneous environments present new challenges to system development, integration, and maintenance. In this paper, we present a model driven Web service development framework to combat these challenges. The framework capitalizes on the unified modeling language (UML) profile for enterprise distributed object computing (EDOC), MDA (model-driven architecture) and Web services. Within the framework, firstly, a general PIM (platform independent models) is created using the EDOC CCA structural specification and CCA choreography specification which defines the general functions of a system. Secondly, the general PIM is broken down into sub-PIMs according to functional decomposition, each of which can provide service independently and will be implemented in a Web service. Thirdly, all of the PIMs are transformed to Web service interface models for publication and invoking. Afterward, transform each PIM to a BPEL specified Web service orchestration model. Finally, supported by model transform techniques, the sub EDOC PIMs are implemented into Web services on specific platforms. Automatic model transformation is the key to this framework, therefore, the transformation from EDOC CCA models to WSDL specified Web service interface models and the transformation from EDOC CCA models to BPEL specified Web service orchestration models are deeply discussed, and the detailed transformation rules are proposed. A case study is also provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of these rules and the merits of this framework.

Modelling and simulation of Network Enabled Capability on service-oriented architecture

Network Enabled Capability (NEC) is the UK Ministry of Defence’s response to the quickly changing conflict environment in which its forces must operate. In NEC, systems need to be integrated in context, to assist in human activity and provide dependable inter-operation. In this paper, we present our research work in the NECTISE project with a focus on the modelling and simulation of service-oriented architecture (SOA) for delivering dependable and sustainable military capability. The simulation results indicate that the proposed architectural model can provide a high-level of reliability and sustainability in the provision of capability in a dynamic environment. Moreover, a NEC demonstration system for regional surveillance is introduced in this paper to illustrate the use of SOA to achieve NEC.     

MDA技术在Web服务开发与集成中的应用

模型驱动架构（Model Driven Architecture．MDA）是对象管理集团（OMG）提出的一个新的软件开发框架,它把应用开发的重点由编码转移到更高的抽象层次——模型（元数据）。针对现今Web服务开发模式中存在的问题,讨论了模型驱动架构技术在Web服务开发与集成中的应用,引出开发流程并且提出一个二者结合的模型集成架构,最后使用支持MDA的工具OptimalJ开发与集成了一个Web服务,从实例中分析它们结合的可行性与优势。