Audrey Occello

Experiments in model driven composition of user interfaces

Reusing and composing pieces of software is a common practice in software engineering. However, reusing the user interfaces that come with software systems is still an ongoing work. The Alias framework helps developers to reuse and compose user interfaces according to the way they are composing new systems from smaller units as a mean of speeding up the design process. In this paper we describe how we rely on Model Driven Engineering to operationalize our composition process.

Validation and Verification of an UML/OCL Model with USE and B: Case Study and Lessons Learnt

Runtime adaptations of applications generate new risks of bugs and unpredicted interactions that may lead the application execution to an unsafe state. Although execution supports are enough mature to implement such adaptation mechanisms, there is still a lack of formal foundations to support such a process. Our work consists in adopting a Model Driven Engineering approach to express adaptation safety independently of execution supports. In this paper we present our experiments in using traditional validation and verification techniques to ensure the correctness of an adaptation safety model in a practical and rigorous way.

Application composition driven by UI composition

Ahead of the multiplication of specialized applications, needs for application composition increase. Each application can be described by a pair of a visible part -the User Interface (UI) -and a hidden part -the tasks and the Functional Core (FC). Few works address the problem of application composition by handling both visible and hidden parts at the same time. Our proposition described in this paper is to start from the visible parts of applications, their UIs, to build a new application while using information coming from UIs as well as from tasks. We base upon the semantic description of UIs to help the developer merge parts of former applications. We argue that this approach driven by the composition of UIs helps the user during the composition process and ensures the preservation of a usable UI for the resulting application.

Managing Model Evolution Using the CCBM Approach

With the adoption of MDE, application evolution is facilitated. Instead of modifying each deployed version, the application is modified only once at the model level and then regenerated for each platform. On the other hand, to manage application complexity, models are partitioned and then integrated together to form larger ones. However most of modeling approaches use an integration mechanism based on merging existing models that makes it difficult to manage application evolution in a modular and incremental way. As an alternative, we propose the collaborative component based model approach (CCBM) that leverages software components principles and focuses on the specification of how models collaborate with each other. This paper presents how the proposed approach contributes to integrate and manage change of models incrementally by preserving defined collaborations during the whole life-cycle of an application, from initial, very loosely specified interactions, through step-wise refinements, to the final concretization to a component implementation.

Sûreté de fonctionnement d'applications nomades construites par assemblage de composants

Mobile handheld devices allow mobile users to use application services without taking care of their position. In this context, mobile applications must cope with service continuity during network disconnections. On the other hand, component platforms provide mechanisms to adapt applications by modifying component assemblies and to control these adaptations dynamically. However, these platforms are dedicated to traditional environments and do not take into account assembly breaks resulting from disconnections. In this paper, we propose to handle disconnections as assembly adaptations in order to determine whether work around components are useful. We extend the Satin model, created to control component assembly adaptations, so as to control nomad component disconnections.

Safety as a Service

Application adaptations can involve changing the stucture or the behavior of applications. When performed at runtime, such adaptations may lead application execution to unsafe states. It arises in component and service-oriented platforms as well as aspectoriented frameworks that support run-time adaptation. However such platforms hardly manage adaptation-related errors. In this paper we propose a generic safety service that can be used with different platforms as the need to determine safety of run-time adaptation is independent of the underlying technology.

Implants cochléaires: Réglages et Visualisations

In this article, we present a study on the medical visualizations needs for setting cochlear implants on touch screens. Solutions must ensure that current characteristics setting tools that are: user task-times, confidence in the data manipulated and security operations handled. This study was conducted as part of an academic and industry research project. To show the feasibility of our approach, we propose and evaluate in this paper two prototypes for setting cochlear implants aimed at different types of users which are patients and professionals.

Metamodeling functional and interactive parts of systems for composition considerations

Software Composition techniques improve the reusability of systems built by composing smaller software artifacts. Composition is a challenge for Human Computer Interaction and Software Engineering communities. These communities have proposed metamodeling approaches in order to address composition at a high level and to overcome technological diversity as advocated by the Model Driven paradigm. However, such metamodels cover only one aspect of system composition. This leads to build incomplete systems. To tackle this problem, we propose a global composition approach that takes into account the functional composition choices and that maintains the interaction links between interactive and functional parts of systems. This paper presents the metamodeling on which relies the proposed composition approach.