Clement Escoffier

Dynamically adaptable applications with iPOJO service components

Traditional component models and frameworks simplified software system development by enabling developers to break software systems into independent pieces with well-defined interfaces. This approach led to looser coupling among the system pieces and enhanced possibilities for reuse. While the component-based approach led to advancements in the software development process, it still has its limitations. In particular, after a component-based application is developed and deployed it typically is a monolithic and static configuration of components.The advent of service-oriented component (SOC), the rise in popularity of consumer devices, and the ubiquity of connectivity have fostered a growing interest in applications that react dynamically to changes in the availability of various services. To simplify the creation of such dynamic software systems, it is possible to borrow concepts from SOC and include them into a component model, resulting in a service-oriented component model that specifically supports dynamically adaptable applications. This paper presents iPOJO, a service-oriented component framework to help developers implement dynamically adaptable software systems.

Towards an Automatic Integration of Heterogeneous Services and Devices

The recent evolution of mobile smart devices and their convergence with pervasive computing and software as a service raises new challenges. Developers of applications targeted to these environments have to face at least three major challenges: dynamicity, heterogeneity, and distribution. In this paper, we propose a service oriented component framework which addresses these challenges by automatically reifying available services in a distributed pervasive environment. Therefore, the only thing developers have to focus on is writing the business code. We have implemented and validated our framework by using several real applications developed within collaborative projects (including ITEA ANSO project).

A Dynamic-SOA Home Control Gateway

The convergence of smart field devices and business services stands to profoundly change the way we interact with our environment. This is especially true in the home context. In this paper, we present an open architecture and a dynamic service-oriented gateway running home services. The gateway is based on the OSGi standard and provides mechanisms to integrate different service technologies

Lessons learned in building pervasive platforms

The purpose of pervasive applications is to be invisible and to require a minimal amount of user attention. But invisibility raises lots of hard challenges, blocking the long-awaited pervasive era to emerge. The device heterogeneity and volatility, security enforcement and context-awareness are just some of the issues a developer must tackle inside the application code. To industrialize such development, we propose to use an application server dedicated to the pervasive environment. Thanks to this server, developers focus on the application, delegating to the server most of the pervasive constraint management. However, providing such a platform is a very difficult task. The pervasive environment constraints must be handled by this server in a consistent way, while being flexible enough to support the different applications. This paper describes the requirements of the pervasive applications and how our platform, named iCASA, deals with them.

Implementing Home-Control Applications on Service Platform

The convergence of smart field devices and business services stands to profoundly change the way we interact with our environment. However, implementing and maintaining home-control applications is still far from easy. This paper discusses how service-oriented concepts can facilitate the development of home-control applications. Moreover we present an open architecture to implement these applications. A prototype of service platform for home-control is presented to illustrate the approach and its benefits. define their capabilities, requirements and properties in an agreed (standard) machine-readable format. Based on service descriptions, automated service discovery, selection and binding is made possible in a service-oriented architecture. We believe that service orientation provides the level of flexibility that is required to build advanced applications in the home context. However, a number of challenges still have to be tackled. In particular, mechanisms are needed to build truly dynamic applications that can integrate new conditions at run- time. Most current service-oriented applications are not dynamic after the initial binding phase. Also, the thorny heterogeneity problem remains. Mechanisms are needed to allow applications to transparently use devices or networks based on various technological stacks. This paper addresses the two above-mentioned challenges. It presents an open computing infrastructure for home services and, more specifically, a dynamic home control gateway seamlessly integrating distributed services based on different technologies. The gateway is based on the OSGi™ standard (see www.osgi.org) and currently integrates Jini (6) and DPWS (7) service. This work is carried out in cooperation with Schneider Electric (owner of Square D - see www.squared.com). The rest of the paper is organized as follow. First service-oriented computing is presented. Then the motivation of using service-oriented computing to build home control applications is discussed. This is followed by a description on the design of our home-control applications and how they interact with heterogeneous devices. Then a presentation of the gateways implementation is discussed. Finally, we conclude by pointing out major contributions of this paper and ongoing works.

Developing an OSGi-like service platform for .NET

The OSGi specification defines a Java-based service platform for dynamically deploying services into networked environments. OSGi technology originally targeted home services gateways, but is now used as a general Java application extensibility mechanism. The main abilities contributing to its growing influence are its support of a dynamic service deployment life cycle and its amenability to remote management. Microsofts .NET platform, in some ways, improves upon the Java platform, but it still lacks explicit support for building dynamically extensible systems like those made possible by the OSGi framework for Java. This paper presents the results of an effort to create an OSGi-like service platform for the .NET platform.

Autonomic iPOJO: Towards Self-Managing Middleware for Ubiquitous Systems

The recent proliferation of ever smaller and smarter electronic devices, combined with the introduction of wireless communication and mobile software technologies enables the construction of a large variety of pervasive applications, such as home supervision and alarm systems. The inherent complexity of such applications along with their nonexpert clientele raises the necessity for autonomic management solutions. Nonetheless, such solutions remain difficult to conceive, as they must deal with the increased volatility, heterogeneity and distribution of the pervasive domain, while ensuring stringent performance and dependability requirements. This paper proposes that reusable support for autonomic management solutions be provided by middleware platforms, along with already existing middleware services, such as security and transactions. Following this approach, a service oriented component platform, iPOJO, was extended with elementary autonomic management capabilities. These include monitoring and effector touch points, as well as embedded autonomic management functions, such as service dependency management. IPOJO is an open source Apache project and has been successfully employed to implement several research projects in the pervasive domain. This paper presents iPOJOpsilas extension with reusable autonomic management middleware services.

Autonomic management of edge servers

Delivering innovative Internet services raises numerous business and technical challenges for providers. It actually requires building and managing complex, distributed architectures in order to reach the quality of service that is needed. In this paper, we argue that using edge computing in the domain of Internet services has a number of advantages. However, this approach relies on complex and hard to administrate environments. We believe that autonomic computing techniques constitute a key element for the dynamic management of edge servers. In the paper, we present an autonomic manager that meets the market needs and that has been tested in collaboration with Bull SA.

A Multi-Protocol Service-Oriented Platform for Home Control Applications

The convergence of smart home appliances and business services stands to profoundly change the way we interact with our environment. However, implementing and maintaining home-control applications is still far from easy. This demonstration presents our service-oriented platform to facilitate the development of home-control applications. This prototype is used in the ANSO industrial European project.

Improving user experience by infusing web technologies into desktops

Modern applications are able to adapt their architecture dynamically in order to tackle requirements, correctives and context changes. Such dynamism is often an echo of complexity and is not well supported by traditional client and user software stacks making complex the design, implementation and maintenance of the end user interface. Meanwhile, the web has seen the emergence of user interface technologies (e.g. HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript) widely adopted by developers to create highly flexible user interfaces. However, such clients are intrinsically bound to run on a web browser which is out of the control of the application. In this paper, we present ChameRIA, an application framework where a browser engine is reified as a component within the framework, thus allowing for better control over the rendering engine. We describe how we preserve a clear separation of concerns between the user interface and the application logic while maintaining coherence between them. We discuss how ChameRIA has been successfully used in two projects: a DRM document reader and a valve control application.