Pau Giner

Autonomic Computing through Reuse of Variability Models at Runtime: The Case of Smart Homes

Our research shows that autonomic behavior can be achieved by leveraging variability models at runtime. In this way, the modeling effort made at design time is not only useful for producing the system but also provides a richer semantic base for autonomic behavior during execution. The use of variability models at runtime brings new opportunities for autonomic capabilities by reutilizing the efforts invested at design time. Our proposed approach has two aspects: reuse of design knowledge to achieve AC and reuse of existing model-management technologies at runtime. We developed the Model-Based Reconfiguration Engine (MoRE) to implement model-management operations. Our research demonstrates the approachs feasibility for smart homes, especially for self-healing and -configuring capabilities.

Developing Mobile Business Processes for the Internet of Things

En la presente comunicación se describen publicación del artículo “Developing Mobile Workflow support in The Internet of Things” en la revista IEEE Pervasive Computing en 2010.

Test-Driven Development of Model Transformations

Model transformations enable the automated development paradigm proposed by Model Driven Engineering. However, since the requirements for building a model transformation are usually expressed informally, requirements descriptions are difficult to keep updated and synchronized with their corresponding implementations. Therefore, human effort is usually required for validating model transformations. The present work defines a test-driven method for the development process of model-to-model transformations. This method is focused on the capture of requirements for transformations in such a way that guides the development and the documentation of model transformations. Requirements are expressed by means of test cases that can be automatically validated. The proposal has been applied to the MOSKitt open source CASE tool in an industrial scenario.

Using Feature Models for Developing Self-Configuring Smart Homes

Increasingly, Smart Homes should dynamically reconfigure their services at run-time in response to changing conditions in the user actions, and in the surrounding physical environment. Considering the high heterogeneity of technologies and user requirements involved in Smart Homes, these systems become difficult to adjust to the specific user needs. This paper introduces an approach to build selfconfiguring Smart Homes using Features models. We apply Feature modelling to specify the different ways in which the system can evolve from an abstract perspective. We show an infrastructure for transforming these Feature Models to an executable Reconfiguration Plan. In this way, the entire development process is taken into account. Since the models forming the basis for reconfiguration are available at design time, we are able to check the validity of configurations according to context conditions.

Designing and prototyping dynamic software product lines: techniques and guidelines

Dynamic Software Product Lines (DSPL) encompass systems that are capable of modifying their own configuration with respect to changes in their operating environment by using run-time reconfigurations. A failure in these reconfigurations can directly impact the user experience since the reconfigurations are performed when the system is already under the users control. Prototyping DSPLs at an early development stage can help to pinpoint potential issues and optimize design. In this work, we identify and addresses two challenges associated with the involvement of human subjects in DSPL prototyping: enabling DSPL users to (1) trigger the run-time reconfigurations and to (2) understand the effects of the reconfigurations. These techniques have been applied with the participation of human subjects by means of a Smart Hotel case study which was deployed with real devices. The application of these techniques reveals DSPL-design issues with recovering from a failed reconfiguration or a reconfiguration triggered by mistake. To address these issues, we discuss some guidelines learned in the Smart Hotel case study.

Personalization for unobtrusive service interaction

Increasingly, mobile devices play a key role in the communication between users and the services embedded in their environment. With ever greater number of services added to our surroundings, there is a need to personalize services according to the user needs and environmental context avoiding service behavior from becoming overwhelming. In order to prevent this information overload, we present a method for the development of mobile services that can be personalized in terms of obtrusiveness (the degree in which each service intrudes the user’s mind) according to the user needs and preferences. That is, services can be developed to provide their functionality at different obtrusiveness levels depending on the user by minimizing the duplication of efforts. On the one hand, we provide mechanisms for describing the obtrusiveness degree required for a service. On the other hand, we make use of Feature Modeling techniques in order to define the obtrusiveness level adaptation in a declarative manner. An experiment was conducted in order to put in practice the proposal and evaluate the user acceptance for the personalization capabilities provided by our approach.

Prototyping Dynamic Software Product Lines to evaluate run-time reconfigurations

Dynamic Software Product Lines (DSPL) encompass systems that are capable of modifying their own behavior with respect to changes in their operating environment by using run-time reconfigurations. A failure in these reconfigurations can directly impact the user experience since the reconfigurations are performed when the system is already under the users control. In this work, we prototype a Smart Hotel DSPL to evaluate the reliability-based risk of the DSPL reconfigurations, specifically, the probability of malfunctioning (Availability) and the consequences of malfunctioning (Severity). This DSPL prototype was performed with the participation of human subjects by means of a Smart Hotel case study which was deployed with real devices. Moreover, we successfully identified and addressed two challenges associated with the involvement of human subjects in DSPL prototyping: enabling participants to (1) trigger the run-time reconfigurations and to (2) understand the effects of the reconfigurations. The evaluation of the case study reveals positive results regarding both Availability and Severity. However, the participant feedback highlights issues with recovering from a failed reconfiguration or a reconfiguration triggered by mistake. To address these issues, we discuss some guidelines learned in the case study. Finally, although the results achieved by the DSPL may be considered satisfactory for its particular domain, DSPL engineers must provide users with more control over the reconfigurations or the users will not be comfortable with DSPLs.

An Architecture to Automate Ambient Business System Development

Business Processes in organizations usually involve real-world objects. A tight integration of these elements from the physical world into business process can improve process automation. This paper introduces a software architecture that allows this integration. The presented architecture is defined following an architectural process that decouples architectural concepts from technological solutions and stresses the relevance of automating the development process. Several case studies have been developped using the introduced architecture to experiment their benefits. In addition, modelling techniques have been used to automate the development of this kind of systems.

Developing BP-driven web applications through the use of MDE techniques

Model driven engineering (MDE) is a suitable approach for performing the construction of software systems (in particular in the Web application domain). There are different types of Web applications depending on their purpose (i.e., document-centric, interactive, transactional, workflow/business process-based, collaborative, etc). This work focusses on business process-based Web applications in order to be able to understand business processes in a broad sense, from the lightweight business processes already addressed by existing proposals to long-running asynchronous processes. This work presents a MDE method for the construction of systems of this type. The method has been designed in two steps following the MDE principles. In the first step, the system is represented by means of models in a technology-independent manner. These models capture the different aspects of Web-based systems (these aspects refer to behaviour, structure, navigation, and presentation issues). In the second step, the model transformations (both model- to-model and model-to-text) are applied in order to obtain the final system in terms of a specific technology. In addition, a set of Eclipse-based tools has been developed to provide automation in the application of the proposed method in order to validate the proposal.

Implicit interaction design for pervasive workflows

The automatic identification capabilities of mobile devices enable the use of implicit interactions to connect the physical world with digital services. For example, users can be provided with information and services just by approaching to them or pointing to them with a mobile device. This kind of interactions can improve business processes by reducing the gap between physical and digital spaces. This work presents Parkour, a design method for workflows that make use of implicit interactions. Parkour allows designers to indicate how implicit interactions can be orchestrated to support a workflow. Furthermore, reconfiguration techniques have been applied to adapt at run-time the degree in which these interactions intrude the user’s mind. Tool support has been developed to automate the validation of the workflow models and support the system reconfiguration. Finally, the proposal has been applied in the development of several workflows.