Juan C. Dueñas

A web-based tool for managing architectural design decisions

Software architectures represent the design for describing the main parts of a software system. In software projects, different stakeholders with different roles may need to share the documentation generated during the project. Also, during the architecture construction phase we need to communicate the architecture to the stakeholders involved in the process, but the lack of tools for documenting, managing and sharing this architectural knowledge constitutes a big barrier. In other cases it can be useful to recreate the design decisions taken because such decisions are frequently lost during the development process. To cover these issues, we outline in this paper a web-based tool able to record and manage architecture design decisions.

Modeling and Documenting the Evolution of Architectural Design Decisions

All software systems are built as a result of a set of design decisions that are made during the architecting phase. At present, there is still a lack of appropriate notations, methods and tools for recording and exploiting these architectural design decisions. In addition, the need for maintaining and evolving the decisions made in the past turns critical for the success of the evolution of the system. In this research paper we extend a previous work to detail those issues related to the evolution of architectural design decisions.

The decision view of software architecture

Documenting software architectures is a key aspect to achieve success when communicating the architecture to different stakeholders. Several architectural views have been used with different purposes during the design process. The traditional view on software architecture defines this in terms of components and connectors. Also, the “4+1” view model proposes several views from the same design to satisfy the interests of the different stakeholders involved in the modelling process. In this position paper we try to go a step beyond previous proposals, to detail the idea of considering the architecture as a composition of architectural design decisions. We will propose a set of elements, information and graphical notation to record the design decisions during the modelling process.

Mobile application stores: success factors, existing approaches, and future developments

The mobile user experience has been significantly altered with the arrival of mobile broadband widespread deployments, massive improvements in available smartphones, and a shift in user habits toward a more participative, communicative role. In this context, mobile application stores have revolutionized software and content delivery. These stores focus on the applications, building around them an ecosystem of developers and consumers. The store greatly lessens the barrier between these agents, providing significant benefits to both developers and consumers. In this article we analyze this phenomenon, describing its originating factors and fundamental characteristics. We also perform a more detailed study on the two most successful application stores, identifying different approaches to implementing the model.

An end-to-end service provisioning scenario for the residential environment

The home of the future is here, or at least the hardware to support it. Home environments are currently characterized by the existence of a wide variety of connected devices. This infrastructure is useful in itself. However, we could get much more from it. We could use it to provide advanced services to the end user. This article presents the experience acquired during the design and implementation of an end-to-end service provisioning platform. We have followed a standards-driven approach to leverage existing middleware with open source assets. The selected middleware-platforms are the OSGi service platform at the residential end, J2EE technologies at the service provider end, and Web services for coarse-grained coordination and interaction between the different actors. In this way we create a suitable environment for all the stakeholders.

A Software Architecture Evaluation Model

The fulfilment of quality requirements is fundamental for the success of software-intensive systems. This fact forces companies to quantify the quality requirements at the moment of their specification, and to evaluate these requirements in all the results of the design process, both the by-products and the end system. The definition of the software architecture is one of the most important and early decisions of the design process, with a strong influence on the final quality of the product; therefore its evaluation should be made as early as possible, before the design is complete. This paper presents a software architecture evaluation model considering the software architecture as a final product itself and also as an intermediate product of the design process.

Light-weight product-lines for evolution and maintenance of Web sites

Software reengineering and maintenance are two classical activities in software engineering. Today, software maintenance is a time consuming task because requirements change and evolve frequently. Moreover, in certain domains, such as the Web domain is, these changes happen very often. In this way, new techniques to engineer Web sites are needed in order to reduce the time to market of Web products. In this work we describe the process of creation of a product-line using reengineering techniques, from already available products, applied to the Web domain. The aims of setting-up this product-line are to ease the maintenance of Web sites, and to accelerate the development of new ones. A product-line captures the common and variable aspects of software systems as key assets, under a common architecture in order to reduce the time to market of new software products; and software companies are increasingly adopting this approach. The reason for this is because Web maintenance operations must be often performed in a very short time, frequently motivated by changes in the customer requirements that usually expect to obtain results in a few days or weeks.

The IPTES environment: Support for incremental, heterogeneous and distributed prototyping

This paper summarizes the support for incremental, heterogeneous and distributed prototyping of real time systems developed as a part of the IPTES environment. After describing the overall architecture of the environment and related approaches, the paper focuses on the internal levels of the environment.IPTES environment supports the incremental development of Real-Time Systems under a spiral life cycle model. The user starts from a SA/RT description enhanced with an executable VDM dialect for minispecifications. Both parts are converted into high level timed Petri nets (HLTPN). The partition of the model at the SA/RT level is reflected at the HLTPN as distributed subnets. A distributed prototype execution implies the joint execution of distributed subnets. Finally, some parts of the prototype could be substituted by actual target code and executed with the rest of the prototype. This is the concept of heterogeneous prototype supported by IPTES tools. A communication protocol to allow the interchange of information while executing has been designed and implemented in the IPTES environment.A detailed description of the Real Time Object Communication Layer (RTOC), its constituent primitives and internal algorithms is presented. This discussion provides the background to understand the behavior of the High Level Timed Petri Net Kernel (HLTPNK) to execute distributed subnets and the Run Time Adaptation Kernel (RTAK) to control the execution of target code as users of the RTOC.Finally, the method used to generate successive versions of the protocol and kernel modules in order to reduce the risks during the implementaton is outlined.

Apache and Eclipse: Comparing Open Source Project Incubators

A two-stage incubation model based on analysis of Apache and Eclipse processes might help other organizations build their own incubation process and better manage risks. The popularity of free and open source software has boosted the creation of several kinds of communities around F/OSS projects. Successful communities such as GNU, Mozilla, the Apache Software Foundation, and the Eclipse Foundation drive innovation while delivering high-quality, enterprise-class software. Yet, because communities are composed of loosely coordinated contributors mainly guided by practice, no shared agreement exists on a single set of methods and processes.

Distributed execution of specifications

The IPTES project is aimed to provide a methodology and an integrated environment to support the development of embedded Real-Time Systems with incremental, distributed and heterogeneous prototyping. IPTES architecture relies on High Level Timed Petri Nets (HLTPN) as the kernel notation for prototype animation and analysis. According to the environment characteristics, a distributed execution of HLTPN is required. First a method for partitioning the nets, reflecting the required functionality of the higher layers of the environment, is provided. Specific problems of the distributed execution of nets are analyzed, and an algorithm that maintains the time semantics of the net is provided, along with a brief description of the necessary support from the communication layer. Other issues addressed are how to provide a realistic animation, in relation with the time notion perceived by the developer, and how to execute heterogeneous prototypes when some subnets are replaced by procedural code.