Javier Berrocal

People as a Service: A Mobile-centric Model for Providing Collective Sociological Profiles

Researchers from sociological disciplines could greatly benefit from collective information from the many people who use mobile devices to communicate via various social apps and services. However, processing that information is difficult because its scattered among numerous social platforms. Furthermore, users are becoming increasingly concerned about how and by whom their information is being accessed. A new mobile-centric computing model allows sociological profiles of people to be generated, kept, and securely provided to third parties as a service. With this model, device owners can be fully aware and in control of how their information is accessed, while still contributing to collective sociological information.

Facilitating the selection of architectural patterns by means of a marked requirements model

Architecture definition requires architects who are highly qualified in both the use of architectural patterns and the analysis of the applications requirements. This is because they have to identify what patterns satisfy the applications functional requirements (FR) and quality attributes (QA), and the interrelationships between them. However, since QAs and FRs are usually addressed separately, their interrelationships are not detailed in full. This situation means that the architect has to expend considerable effort on their identification, with the risk of misinterpretations that lead to an inappropriate choice of patterns. We here present a model that allows the FRs to be marked with the constraints imposed by the QAs. The marks are conceived to be re-used during the architecture definition. The model brings knowledge of the requirements and their relationships closer to the architect, allowing patterns aligned with the requirements to be identified with less effort.

Early analysis of resource consumption patterns in mobile applications

Abstract Mobile device capabilities have increased tremendously in recent years, and the complexity of the applications executed in these devices has evolved accordingly. However, despite the efforts made by mobile manufactures, resource consumption, particularly battery and data traffic, are still limiting factors for mobile applications. The most important aspects determining the consumption of a mobile application is its software architecture and its behaviour. Hence, by comparing the resource consumption of different software architectures before an application is built, mobile developers can make decisions that are better informed. This work presents the consumption analysis of two applications, each of them built with two different architectures in order to identify under which situation each architecture is more efficient. In addition, by generalizing the analysis of the two applications, a conceptual framework is created with which to analyse the consumption pattern of applications in their early development phases. This conceptual framework will allow mobile developers to estimate the resource consumption of their applications under different conditions of software architecture and usage scenarios, providing them with information relevant for decision making.

Rich contextual information for monitoring the elderly in an early stage of cognitive impairment

With the increase in the elderly population, there is a concomitant growth in the number of cases of cognitive impairment. The early stages of these disorders can cause the elderly difficulties in performing their daily activities. To improve their independence while keeping their caregivers informed, this paper presents a monitoring system that focuses on the use of rich contextual information to detect a wide variety of a cognitively impaired persons routines and deviations from those routines. A detailed architecture of the system is presented together with an in-depth description of the algorithms for the identification of routines and deviations. In an experimental test with students, the algorithms identified some 91% of the routines and some 96% of the deviations.

Situational-Context: A Unified View of Everything Involved at a Particular Situation

As the interest in the Web of Things increases, specially for the general population, the barriers to entry for the use of these technologies should decrease. Current applications can be developed to adapt their behaviour to predefined conditions and users preferences, facilitating their use. In the future, Web of Things software should be able to automatically adjust its behaviour to non-predefined preferences or context of its users. In this vision paper we define the Situational-Context as the combination of the virtual profiles of the entities (things or people) that concur at a particular place and time. The computation of the Situational-Context allow us to predict the expected system behaviour and the required interaction between devices to meet the entities’ goals, achieving a better adjustment of the system to variable contexts.

Modeling Business and Requirements Relationships to Facilitate the Identification of Architecturally Significant Requirements

In architectural decision making, the architects have to acquire a complete picture of the system. This picture is obtained analysing the business information and the system requirements. The relationships between business elements or between requirements are particularly important to know the impact of each quality requirement on the system. However, due to the focus of each artefact and notation on documenting specific elements, the relationships between elements of different kind are kept implicit. This requires an in-depth analysis of the models generated on the part of the architect in order to make them explicit. Misunderstandings that take place during this stage can lead to an incorrect design. Here, a set of BPMN and UML profiles to explicitly represent these relationships is presented, together with a model for documenting how each non-functional requirement impacts on the system views. Thus, more information is provided to the architect, thereby decreasing the risk of misinterpretation.

A Model-Driven Approach for Documenting Business and Requirements Interdependencies for Architectural Decision Making

In business and system requirements analysis, the characteristics of the elements identified are perfectly documented with specific notations and in specific artifacts. However, since these notations are focused on each specific type of element, the interdependencies between elements of different kinds are usually left implicit. These relationships are particularly important during system design in order to evaluate the impact of each requirement and to select the architectural pattern that better satisfies them. To identify and make them explicit, the architect has to analyze all the artifacts generated in depth. Any misinterpretation of these relationships may lead to patterns being selected that can hinder rather than facilitate the satisfaction of the business goals and the system requirements. This paper presents a set of profiles allowing designers to explicitly model these interdependencies in BPMN 2 and UML 2 Use Case diagrams. In addition, ATL transformations are defined to automatically derive these relationships from the business specification to the requirements models, facilitating their analysis by the architect, and thus reducing the risk of misinterpretation.

Modeling Business and Requirements Relationships for Architectural Pattern Selection

In analysis of the business and the system requirements, the identified elements are modeled using notations that fully describe their characteristics. Nevertheless, implicit relationships often exist between different types of elements that subsequently have to be identified and explicitly represented during the design of the system. This requires an in-depth analysis of the generated models on behalf of the architect in order to interpret their content. Misunderstandings that take place during this stage can lead to an incorrect design and difficult compliance with the business goals. Here we present a series of profiles that explicitly represent these relationships during the initial development phases, and which are derived to the system design. They are reusable by the architect, thereby decreasing the risk of their misinterpretation.

A Pattern-Based and Model-Driven Approach for Deriving IT System Functional Models from Annotated Business Models

Companies increasingly demand IT systems to support (part of) their business. In order to maximize return on investment, these systems need to be perfectly aligned both with the business and with the legacy applications with which they will be integrated. In this vein, this paper presents a pattern-based and model-driven approach for deriving IT system functional models from annotated business models. First, we explain how to annotate the BPMN 2 business models with information useful for deriving the functionalities. Then, we introduce a set of patterns aimed to help identifying the functionalities and the relationships existing among them from the annotated business models. Finally, we present an ATL model transformation that, based on the previous patterns, allows us to obtain UML2 Use Case Diagrams.

Lean management of software processes and factories using business process modeling techniques

The software industry is moving towards a software factory business model, usually involving several centres collaborating on company contracts. The expected benefits of using specialized teams at lower cost locations are increased productivity and reduced costs. The tasks of project and process management have as a consequence become more complex. Managing such large structures requires more collaboration in development processes to enable rapid reaction to project needs, and support for the variety of technologies, methods, and levels of quality required by the different projects. This situation demands new practices and management support tools. This paper presents Zentipede, a tool for software process management. Its focus is on lightening, or even automating, management tasks by using Business Process Management (BPM) techniques. The tool does not force any particular practice on a company, but encourages it to model the practices which will finally be automated. Also, it supports process-to-product traceability.