Hua Ming

Situ: A Situation-Theoretic Approach to Context-Aware Service Evolution

Evolvability is essential for computer systems to adapt to the dynamic and changing requirements in response to instant or delayed feedback from a service environment that nowadays is becoming more and more context aware; however, current context-aware service-centric models largely lack the capability to continuously explore human intentions that often drive system evolution. To support service requirements analysis of real-world applications for services computing, this paper presents a situation-theoretic approach to human-intention-driven service evolution in context-aware service environments. In this study, we give situation a definition that is rich in semantics and useful for modeling and reasoning human intentions, whereas the definition of intention is based on the observations of situations. A novel computational framework is described that allows us to model and infer human intentions by detecting the desires of an individual as well as capturing the corresponding context values through observations. An inference process based on hidden Markov model makes instant definition of individualized services at runtime possible, and significantly, shortens service evolution cycle. We illustrate the possible applications of this framework through a smart home example aimed at supporting independent living of elderly people.

Human-Intention Driven Self Adaptive Software Evolvability in Distributed Service Environments

Evolvability is essential to adapting to the dynamic and changing requirements in response to the feedback from context awareness systems. However, most of current context models have limited capability in exploring human intentions that often drive system evolution. To support service requirements analysis of real-world applications in distributed service environments, this paper focuses on human-intention driven software evolvability. In our approach, requirements analysis via an evolution cycle provides the means of speculating requirement changes, predicting possible new generations of system behaviors, and assessing the corresponding quality impacts. Furthermore, we also discuss evolvability metrics by observing intentions from user contexts.

Reasoning about Human Intention Change for Individualized Runtime Software Service Evolution

While software evolution has been studied extensively in software engineering, few of these efforts have involved a systematic exploration of human epistemological attitudes, such as human desire and intention, as the driving force of software service evolution. Our work proposes a theoretical framework to monitor and reason about human intention and its changes, which in turn can be used to determine how software and services should evolve to be individualized and better serve each user. Extending the Situ framework, we explore the service satisfiability problem through sub-world coverage following Kripke semantics, which enjoys wide application in AI and other fields related to human epistemic reasoning.

On Distributed Run-Time Software Evolution Driven by Stakeholders of Smart Home Development (Invited Paper)

Stakeholders of smart home development often request personalized requirements based on existing services. Requirements under the environment may change at any time even when services are provided correctly, since the stakeholders eventually change their intentions. Evolvability is essential to adapting to the dynamic and ever-changing requirements in response to contextual feedback. To support software evolution for real-world applications in distributed service environments, this paper introduces architecture for distributed run-time software evolution and discusses issues of software evolution in Smart Home environments. Smart Home environments exist in feature-rich networks, and should be ideally maintained with updates at run-time.

Dimensional Situation Analytics: From Data to Wisdom

In the late 80s, Ackoff first proposed a cognitive category upon the content of human mind, which included Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom, or DIKW. Since then, the DIKW hierarchy has attracted a flurry of further research studies. Its applications include ontology composition, decision making theory, domain specific engineering theory, software design thought process automation, etc., to name a few. Partially based on our previous work on human centric situation studies, we propose a dimensional situation analytics towards a new view on the DIKW hierarchy. By incorporating functional MapReduce computing paradigm, we present in this paper a novel (MR)2 paradigm, which refers to two consecutive MapReduce that cut across the boundaries between Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom. We argue that our (MR)2 paradigm promotes comprehensive decision making and therefore, offers new insights in knowledge transformation from data to wisdom.

Can Situations Help with Reusability of Software

Software reusability is an important concept, as well as a powerful tool, to achieve modular solutions in the design and implementation of modern software systems. There is a wide array of research studies conducted in this area ranging from conceptual level to software construction level. Despite all these good pieces of work, software engineers still need to face the complications that strictly separate design time activities from those carried out at software construction time, to shift their mental gear between high level specification properties and low level implementation details. To bridge this gap, we propose a unified approach to facilitate software reuse. We seek to carry out this enterprise surrounding an abstraction, namely Situation. More specifically, we have created a computing environment and, under its runtime support, a functional programming language called

The Concepts and Ontology of SiSL: A Situation-Centric Specification Language

Situ^f

Situation-Theoretic Analysis of Human Intentions in a Smart Home Environment

Situf in which domain experts can capture the features of a software system in terms of functional expressions. For each