Anne Immonen

Survey of reliability and availability prediction methods from the viewpoint of software architecture

Many future software systems will be distributed across a network, extensively providing different kinds of services for their users. These systems must be highly reliable and provide services when required. Reliability and availability must be engineered into software from the onset of its development, and potential problems must be detected in the early stages, when it is easier and less expensive to implement modifications. The software architecture design phase is the first stage of software development in which it is possible to evaluate how well the quality requirements are being met. For this reason, a method is needed for analyzing software architecture with respect to reliability and availability. In this paper, we define a framework for comparing reliability and availability analysis methods from the viewpoint of software architecture. Our contribution is the comparison of the existing analysis methods and techniques that can be used for reliability and availability prediction at the architectural level. The objective is to discover which methods are suitable for the reliability and availability prediction of today’s complex systems, what are the shortcomings of the methods, and which research activities need to be conducted in order to overcome these identified shortcomings. The comparison reveals that none of the existing methods entirely fulfill the requirements that are defined in the framework. The comparison framework also defines the characteristics required of new reliability and availability analysis methods. Additionally, the framework is a valuable tool for selecting the best suitable method for architecture analysis. Furthermore, the framework can be extended and used for other evaluation methods as well.

Capturing quality requirements of product family architecture

Software quality is one of the major issues with software intensive systems. Moreover, quality is a critical success factor in software product families exploiting shared architecture and common components in a set of products. Our contribution is the QRF (Quality Requirements of a software Family) method, which explicitly focuses on how quality requirements have to be defined, represented and transformed to architectural models. The method has been applied to two experiments; one in a laboratory environment and the other in industry. The use of the QRF method is exemplified by the Distribution Service Platform (DiSeP), the laboratory experiment. The lessons learned are also based on our experiences of applying the method in industrial settings.

A survey of methods and approaches for reliable dynamic service compositions

An increasing amount of today’s software systems is developed by dynamically composing available atomic services to form a single service that responds to consumers’ demand. These composite services are distributed across the network, adapted dynamically during run-time, and still required to work correctly and be available on demand. The development of these kinds of modern services requires new modeling and analysis methods and techniques to enable service reliability during run-time. In this paper, we define the required phases of the composite service design and execution to achieve reliable composite service. These phases are described in the form of a framework. We perform a literature survey of existing methods and approaches for reliable composite services to find out how they match with the criteria of our framework. The contribution of the work is to reveal the current status in the research field of reliable composite service engineering.

Evaluating the Quality of Social Media Data in Big Data Architecture

The use of freely available online data is rapidly increasing, as companies have detected the possibilities and the value of these data in their businesses. In particular, data from social media are seen as interesting as they can, when properly treated, assist in achieving customer insight into business decision making. However, the unstructured and uncertain nature of this kind of big data presents a new kind of challenge: how to evaluate the quality of data and manage the value of data within a big data architecture? This paper contributes to addressing this challenge by introducing a new architectural solution to evaluate and manage the quality of social media data in each processing phase of the big data pipeline. The proposed solution improves business decision making by providing real-time, validated data for the user. The solution is validated with an industrial case example, in which the customer insight is extracted from social media data in order to determine the customer satisfaction regarding the quality of a product.

Requirements of an Open Data Based Business Ecosystem

Emerging opportunities for open data based business have been recognized around the world. Open data can provide new business opportunities for actors that provide data, for actors that consume data, and for actors that develop innovative services and applications around the data. Open data based business requires business models and a collaborative environment-called an ecosystem-to support businesses based on open data, services, and applications. This paper outlines the open data ecosystem (ODE) from the business viewpoint and then defines the requirements of such an ecosystem. The outline and requirements are based on the state-of-the-art knowledge explored from the literature and the state of the practice on data-based business in the industry collected through interviews. The interviews revealed several motives and advantages of the ODE. However, there are also obstacles that should be carefully considered and solved. This paper defines the actors of the ODE and their roles in the ecosystem as well as the business model elements and services that are needed in open data based business. According to the interviews, the interest in open data and open data ecosystems is high at this moment. However, further research work is required to establish and validate the ODE in the near future.

Trustworthiness Evaluation and Testing of Open Source Components

The use of Open Source Components (OSCs) is rapidly increasing in software systems. One of the biggest obstacles for the use of OSCs is the fact that the software integrators can not be sure of the quality of the components. Thus, it is the responsibility of the integrators to perform the quality evaluation. When building products using OSCs, the integrators should have a clear method and tools that facilitate and automate the evaluation work. Our contribution is a method and tooling for trustworthiness evaluation and testing of OSCs. The method provides clear guidelines to assist the integrators to perform the evaluation in their own software development environment. The tooling assists in the technical trustworthiness evaluation, containing tools for reliability analysis and testing. The tools are independent, co-operating in the open source context.

A service requirements engineering method for a digital service ecosystem

A digital service ecosystem enables value creation and the co-development of services in a value network under a common ecosystem regulation. The ecosystem members are able to focus on their core competences and can strengthen their forces by co-operating; yet remaining able to act independently. However, due to regulated environment, the ecosystem elements—i.e. ecosystem members, capabilities, infrastructure and the existing ecosystem assets—have an influence on digital service engineering, especially in the service requirements engineering phase. The main contribution of this paper is to describe how to specify the requirements of digital services in a digital service ecosystem. To this aim, this paper introduces the basic definitions and elements of the digital service ecosystem, and a scenario-based service requirement engineering (RE) method for the digital service ecosystem. A practical example is given to illustrate the use of the RE method. The collected feedback from the RE method users highlights the user experiences on the advantages and limitations of the proposed method.

OntoArch Approach for Reliability-Aware Software Architecture Development

Reliability-aware software architecture development has recently been gaining growing attention among software architects. This paper tackles the issue by introducing an ontology-based approach, called OntoArch, which is characterized by: 1) integration of software reliability engineering and software architecture design; 2) targeting reliability-aware software architecture development; and 3) OntoArch ontology in the context of software architecture design and software reliability engineering. The OntoArch approach is validated by applying the OntoArch approach to the development of a PIR (Personal Information Repository) system architecture.

Evaluating the Integrability of COTS Components — Software Product Family Viewpoint

COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) components are increasingly used in product family-based software engineering. Within product families, components are assembled using a disciplined process and a common product family architecture. However, the black-box nature of COTS components and insufficient component documentation make the integration of components difficult. Successful component integration requires that the component match the functional, quality, and system requirements and interoperate with other components of the systems family. Ensuring component integrability is an important task, especially within product families, where the ineffective use of COTS components can cause extensive and long-term problems. This chapter discusses the characteristics of architecture, components, and product families that affect the integrability of COTS components, as well as the evaluation techniques that an integrator can use in the assessment of the integration capability of COTS components.

OntoArch Reliability-Aware Software Architecture Design and Experience

Reliability-aware software architecture design has recently been gaining growing attention among software architects. This chapter tackles the issue by proposing an ontology-based, reliability-aware software architecture design and evaluation approach, called OntoArch, which incorporates quantitative reliability evaluation in software architecture design by the means of the OntoArch ontology and the OntoArch tool. The OntoArch approach is characterized by: (1) integration of software reliability engineering and software architecture design; (2) proposing a reliability-aware software architecture design process model; (3) developing the OntoArch ontology in the context of software architecture design and software reliability engineering; and (4) the OntoArch tool not only enabling software architects to design architectures and model reliabilities, but also functioning as a knowledge management platform relying on reliability-aware software architecture design. The OntoArch approach is validated for a software architecture design; for example, Personal Information Repository (PIR), with the use cases of OntoArch-based software architecture knowledge management, software reliability profiling, and software architecture modeling and evaluation. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-215-4.ch003