Ralf Nagel

Model-driven development with the jABC

We present the jABC, a framework for model driven application development based on Lightweight Process Coordination. With jABC, users (product developers and system/software designers) easily develop services and applications by composing reusable building-blocks into hierarchical (flow-) graph structures that are executable models of the application. This process is supported by an extensible set of plugins providing additional functionalities, so that the jABC models can be animated, analyzed, simulated, verified, executed and compiled. This way of handling the collaborative design of complex software systems has proven to be effective and adequate for the cooperation of non-programmers and technical people, and it is now being rolled out in the operative practice.

Remote integration and coordination of verification tools in jETI

We present jETI, a redesign of the Electronic Tools Integration platform (ETI), that addresses the major issues and concerns accumulated over seven years of experience with tool providers, tool users and students. Most important was here the reduction of the effort for integrating and updating tools. jETI combines Eclipse and Web Services functionality with our Application Building Center (ABC), a framework supporting coordination based application development. This provides (1) lightweight remote component (tool) integration, (2) distributed component (tool) libraries, (3) a graphical coordination environment, and (4) a distributed execution environment. We illustrate these features by discussing their impact on the typical jETI user groups: the Tool Providers, the Standard Tool Users, and the Advanced Tool Users.

jETI: a tool for remote tool integration

We present jETI, a redesign of the Electronic Tools Integration platform (ETI), that addresses the major issues and concerns accumulated over seven years of experience with tool providers, tool users and students. Most important was here the reduction of the effort for integrating and updating tools. jETI combines Eclipse with Web Services functionality in order to provide (1) lightweight remote component (tool) integration, (2) distributed component (tool) libraries, (3) a graphical coordination environment, and (4) a distributed execution environment. These features will be illustrated in the course of building and executing remote heterogeneous tool sequences.

Spatial free-form deformation with scattered data interpolation methods

Abstract The problem of deforming a given spatial shape is treated. There are many examples of applications in visual computing: fitting surfaces to sampled data points in space, correction of distortions in tomographic imaging, modeling of free-form geometric shapes, and animating metamorphoses of geometric objects. Our solution warps the space surrounding the given shape with the effect of deforming the embedded shape, too, with a function derived with scattered data interpolation methods from the displacements of a finite set of control points that can be placed arbitrarily and adaptively. We present algorithms implementing this idea on parametric surfaces and rasterized volume data.

The jABC Approach to Rigorous Collaborative Development of SCM Applications

Our approach to the model-driven collaborative design of IKEAs P3 Delivery Management Process uses the jABC (9) for model driven mediation and choreography to complement a RUP-based (Ra- tional Unified Process) development process. jABC is a framework for service development based on Lightweight Process Coordination. Users (product developers and system/software designers) easily develop ser- vices and applications by composing reusable building-blocks into (flow-) graph structures that can be animated, analyzed, simulated, verified, ex- ecuted, and compiled. This way of handling the collaborative design of complex embedded systems has proven to be effective and adequate for the cooperation of non-programmers and non-technical people ,w hich is the focus of this contribution, and it is now being rolled out in the op- erative practice.

SCA and jABC: Bringing a Service-Oriented Paradigm to Web-Service Construction

Extensibility, flexibility, easy maintainability, and long-term robustness are core requirements for modern, highly distributed infor- mation and computation systems. Such systems in turn show a steady increase in complexity. In pursuit of these goals, software engineering has seen a rapid evolution of architectural paradigms aiming towards increasingly modular, hierarchical, and compositional approaches. Object-orientation, component orientation, middleware components, product-lines, and - recently - service orientation. We compare two approaches towards a service-oriented paradigm, the Service Component Architecture (SCA) and the jABC.