Application Development Environment Research Articles

Stochastic allocation and scheduling for conditional task graphs in multi-processor systems-on-chip

Embedded systems designers are turning to multicore architectures to satisfy the ever-growing computational needs of applications within a reasonable power envelope. One of the most daunting challenges for MultiProcessor System-on-Chip (MPSoC) platforms is the development of tools for efficient mapping multi-task applications onto hardware platforms. Software mapping can be formulated as an optimal allocation and scheduling problem, where the application is modeled as a task graph, the target hardware is modeled as a set of heterogeneous resources, and the objective function represents a design goal ? (e.g. minimum execution time, minimum usage of communication resources, etc.). Conditional task graphs, where inter-task edges represent data as well as control dependencies, are a well-known computational model to describe complex real-life applications where alternative execution paths, guarded by conditionals, can be specified. Each condition has a probability associated with each possible outcome. Mapping conditional task graphs is significantly more challenging than mapping pure data-flow graphs (where edges only represent data dependencies). Approaches based on general-purpose complete solvers (e.g. Integer Linear Programming solvers) are limited both by computational blowup and by the fact that the objective is a stochastic functional. The main contribution of our work is an efficient and complete approach to allocation and scheduling of conditional task graphs, based on (i) an exact analytic formulation of the stochastic objective function exploiting task graph analysis and (ii) an extension of the timetable constraint for conditional activities. Moreover, our solver is integrated in a complete application development environment which produces executable code for target multicore platforms. This integrated framework allows us to validate modeling assumptions and to assess constraint satisfaction and objective function optimization. Extensive validation results demonstrate not only that our approach can handle non-trivial instances efficiently, but also that our models are accurate and lead to optimal and highly predictable execution.

Teaching mobile and wireless information systems development in engineering courses

AbstractMADEE (Mobile Application Development and Execution Environment) is a platform that supports the development of small and middle size mobile and wireless information systems for handheld devices. MADEE allows a student to develop applications faster and easier than using conventional development tools. This study presents the results and experience obtained using MADEE to support the introduction of mobile and wireless information systems development concepts in the context of computer engineering courses. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 18: 261–268, 2010; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com); DOI 10.1002/cae.20251

Auto-Pipe: Streaming Applications on Architecturally Diverse Systems

Architecturally diverse systems can improve streaming application performance by orders of magnitude, albeit with enormous programmer effort. To simplify the programming of such systems, we have constructed the Auto-Pipe application development environment, which supports the flexible mapping of application components onto computational resources and the automatic delivery of data between these computational resources. In addition to the computational finance application, Auto-Pipe has been used to implement applications ranging from cryptography to astrophysics. Auto-Pipe currently supports applications deployed on chip multiprocessors and FPGAs, and we are expanding its scope to include graphics engines.

On the implementation and evaluation of an elliptic curve based cryptosystem for Java enabled Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper considers the impact of the provision of security for a Java enabled wireless sensor networking platform. In 2007, Sun Microsystems, Inc. released a Java programmable platform; namely Sun Small Programmable Object Technology (Sun SPOT). Given the more intuitive application development environment, it is envisaged that real applications will emerge at a more rapid pace, and as such the importance of the provision of security remains to the fore. The only provision of security, to-date, is that of an industry standard TLS (Transport Layer Security) implementation at the Application Layer; rooted from an ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography) based public-key cryptosystem. This work demonstrates that the employment of TLS results in a reduction of 70% of network lifetime; a significant cost to provide security. Given this cost, alternative methods of securing a Sun SPOT based sensor network are considered, culminating in the specification of a cross-layer, hybrid security architecture.

DARTSVIEW, A TOOLKIT FOR DARTS IN LABVIEW

DARTS (Design Approach for Real Time Systems) [4] is a software design method for real time systems. LabVIEW (Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench) is a graphical application development environment developed by National Instruments Corporation based on the dataflow representation of the "G" language [6][2]. LabVIEW is implicitly multithreaded and has high level functions for communication/synchronization, allowing it to be used as a programming language for control/command and soft real-time applications. In order to help a designer to develop a real-time application, we propose the library DARTSVIEW, which simplifies the passage from the conception of a "multitasking" application to the implementation [8). One can use DARTSVIEW in different phases of the life cycle of real-time system software. The last version of DARTSVIEW, allows to define in XML several real-time programming normalized languages, and to generate a part of the code for different specific programming languages (Ada, POSIX 1003.1, VxWorks, OSEK/VDX, etc.). The flexibility introduced by the use of XML allows a designer also to generate some code targeting real-time scheduling analysis tools in order to achieve the temporal validation. The objective of this article is to present an overview of DARTSVIEW, a Toolkit for DARTS in LabVIEW, the role of DARTSVIEW in the software.

Application development environment for event‐driven ubiquitous devices

PurposeIn ubiquitous computing environments, not only programmers but also general users come to develop/customize applications. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to propose a new application development environment for ubiquitous computing environments.Design/methodology/approachThe paper clarifies the requirements for application development environments of ubiquitous computing environments. It then designs and implements a prototype of a development environment that fulfills these requirements.FindingsIt is found that the requirements for application development in ubiquitous computing environments are: easy programming, detection of current status, programming awareness of network connections between multiple ubiquitous devices, and debugging with cooperation among real/virtual environments.Research limitations/implicationsThis prototype of application development environment is designed for event‐driven ubiquitous devices.Practical implicationsA prototype development environment has been implemented to show the effectiveness of this approach, and is presented an example of an application development to show the effectiveness of the approach.Originality/valueThis paper proposes a new style of application development for ubiquitous computing environments

A page‐centric approach to Web application development

AbstractThis paper proposes a page‐centric approach for developing Web applications in which an application is modeled as a state machine of a UML that takes into account the state of a Web page. Application variables are divided into page‐related variables and others. Business logics are also divided into presentation‐related logics and others. In this paper, based on our model, a Web application development environment is also described. Using this environment, we can intuitively define the behavior of a Web application. Examples of applications developed by our method are given. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn, 92(7): 47–56, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecj.10039

Rhinobase: A Comprehensive Database, Facial Analysis, and Picture-Archiving Software for Rhinoplasty

Rhinobase: A Comprehensive Database, Facial Analysis, and Picture-Archiving Software for Rhinoplasty

버전동기화 기반의 센서 네트워크 응용 소프트웨어 변경 관리 시스템의 구축 사례

This paper proposes a change management system of sensor network applications based on version synchronization that supports to effectively manage defect correction of applications, change of functions for applications or improvement of applications without suspending the sensor network. The proposed change management system consists of the NADE which is an application development environment, the Node Management Server, and the Node Agent. NADE is an Eclipse-based development environment for developing applications which are installed into nodes. NADE is also connected with CVSNT which is a version management tool and performs application version management using the CVSNT. Node Management Server manages nodes to maintain latest versions of applications by synchronizing versions of applications which are performed on the nodes with the versions of applications which are developed in the NADE. Node Agent which is loaded into the node periodically sends the version information of the application to the server, and stores and updates the version information of the application. Through the proposed change management system, applications of nodes are automatically updated when versions of applications are changed by correcting defects, changing functions or improving applications. Therefore, the user can effectively manage the execution of sensor network system without suspending or delaying the sensor network. Also, visibility of change management for sensor network applications will be improved.

Automatic Generation of Web Applications from Visual High-Level Functional Web Components

This paper presents high-level functional Web components such as frames, framesets, and pivot tables, which conventional development environments for Web applications have not yet supported. Frameset Web components provide several editing facilities such as adding, deleting, changing, and nesting of framesets to make it easier to develop Web applications that use frame facilities. Pivot table Web components sum up various kinds of data in two dimensions. They reduce the amount of code to be written by developers greatly. The paper also describes the system that implements these high-level functional components as visual Web components. This system assists designers in the development of Web applications based on the page-transition framework that models a Web application as a set of Web page transitions, and by using visual Web components, makes it easier to write processes to be executed when a Web page transfers to another.

Guest Editor Introduction: Special Issue on High Performance Computing for High Productivity Environments

Rapid prototyping and application development environments are often the tool of choice for many developers and users. These environments and languages include MATLAB®, perl, python, R and Ruby. They are popular, in large part, because theymake computing accessible to “accidental programmers” (scientists, statisticians, economists and others not specifically trained as programmers) and because they deliver on their promise of rapid prototyping to more seasoned programmers. Users of these systems often face a dilemma as their problems grow: livewithin the performance and resource constraints of these systems, or leave these comfortable environments behind and take up tools that are traditionally associated with high(er) performance computing (C/C++/FORTRAN, MPI, OpenMP). This special issue presents six projects aimed at resolving this dilemma in favor of remaining in the environment of choice, but augmenting it so that larger problems can be handled with relative ease (although, perhaps, not with absolutely optimal performance). The projects presented cover a good sampling of popular environments: MATLAB, python, R and Ruby, with a touch of Perl on the side. The enhancement strategies span a range of approaches: easy to use interfaces for accessing high performance libraries that were written the “old fashioned” way, parallel versions of apply/map functions, data parallel frameworks, cleanly wrapped RPC systems, and virtual shared memory. Some approaches are specific to one environment; others are applicable to many or most. Taken together, they are indicative of the interest in and the importance of creative responses to the challenge of making HPC accessible to a broad range of users. Sharma and Martin discuss parallel constructs for MATLAB, one of the most popular commercial systems in this area. They address two related challenges: (i) develop parallel functionality that fits well with the MATLAB computational model;

Transparent parallel checkpointing and migration in clusters and ClusterGrids

This paper introduces a novel approach in parallel checkpointing aimed at supporting fault-tolerance and migration among clusters of a ClusterGrid environment with various middleware components. Based on an architectural analysis, compatibility and integrity requirements are identified and corresponding conditions are established. Some of the available checkpointing systems are checked against the conditions in order to examine their conformity. Finally, a novel checkpointing approach is defined and the Parallel Grid Runtime and Application Development Environment (P-GRADE) Grid Programming Tool is adapted.

Creation principals of universal modeling environment for simulation application development

The structure principles of the universal modeling environment and it's means of different simulation application arrangement are described in the report. There are examples of environment usage according to separate application realization. The perspective of it's development is shown.

EventScript

EventScript is a simple but powerful language for programming reactive processes. A stream of incoming events is matched against a regular expression. Actions embedded within the regular expression are executed in response to the matching of patterns of events. These actions include assigning computed values to variables and emitting output events. The definition of EventScript presented a number of novel and interesting language-design choices. EventScript has an efficient implementation, and has been used in a development environment for complex event-based applications. We have used EventScript to program both small examples and large industrial applications. Readers of EventScript programs find them easy to understand, and are comfortable with the familiar model of matching regular expressions.

Parallel programming on a high‐performance application‐runtime

AbstractHigh‐performance application development remains challenging, particularly for scientists making the transition to a heterogeneous grid environment. In general areas of computing, virtual environments such as Java and .Net have proved to be successful in fostering application development, allowing users to target and compile to a single environment, rather than a range of platforms, instruction sets and libraries. However, existing runtime environments are focused on business and desktop computing and they do not support the necessary high‐performance computing (HPC) abstractions required by e‐Scientists. Our work is focused on developing an application‐runtime that can support these services natively. The result is a new approach to the development of an application‐runtime for HPC: the Motor system has been developed by integrating a high‐performance communication library directly within a virtual machine. The Motor message passing library is integrated alongside and in cooperation with other runtime libraries and services while retaining a strong message passing performance. As a result, the application developer is provided with a common environment for HPC application development. This environment supports both procedural languages, such as C, and modern object‐oriented languages, such as C#. This paper describes the unique Motor architecture, presents its implementation and demonstrates its performance and use. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Towards Persistence Framework-Based Rapid Application Development Toolkit for Web Application Development

Software systems must be delivered quickly in order to respond to today's rapid changing business environments. Persistence framework was introduced to overcome the problem of object- relational impedance mismatch, occurred in most enterprise applications that need access to a relational database. However, most of these persistence frameworks are difficult to configure and use, thus do not really contribute much to the improvement of software developers' overall productivity. This study proposes the concept, architecture, design and development of a rapid application development toolkit that will leverage on a persistence framework to subsequently provide an easy-to- use and customizable front-end web application development environment for developers to perform rapid web application development. Unlike prior efforts, the combination of the features of rapid prototyping, code generation and configuration wizard on top of the persistence framework provided by the proposed rapid application development toolkit enables developers not only to deliver their target web applications within a shorter timeframe through an easy-to-use front-end environment, but also to achieve encapsulation of database access from the business objects of a web application.

Hybrid Approach to Collaborative Context-Aware Service Platform for Pervasive Computing

The behavior of pervasive applications depend not only on their internal state and user interactions but also on contexts sensed during their execution. In this work, we present a collaborative context-aware service platform based on hybrid context management model (enhanced CoCA). It performs reasoning and decisions based on context data, context semantics, and related rules and policies. Such data is organized into a hybrid context management model (HCoM). The platform also introduces a neighborhood collaboration mechanism to facilitate peer collaboration in order to share their resources. We have developed an initial prototype of the platform. Our preliminary test shows that the platform is a promising data independent development environment for pervasive context-aware applications and it possesses good standard of scalability.

Page Centric Approach to Web Application Development

This paper proposes a page centric approach for developing Web applications in which an application is modeled as state machine of a UML that considers a Web page a state. Application variables are divided into page related variables and others. Business logics are also divided into presentation related logics and others. In this paper, based on our model a Web application development environment is also described. Using this environment, we can intuitively define the behavior of a Web application. Examples of applications developed by our method are shown.

Improving QPE and Very Short Term QPF: An Initiative for a Community-Wide Integrated Approach

Accurate quantitative precipitation estimates (QPE) and very short term quantitative precipitation forecasts (VSTQPF) are critical to accurate monitoring and prediction of water-related hazards and water resources. While tremendous progress has been made in the last quarter-century in many areas of QPE and VSTQPF, significant gaps continue to exist in both knowledge and capabilities that are necessary to produce accurate high-resolution precipitation estimates at the national scale for a wide spectrum of users. Toward this goal, a national next-generation QPE and VSTQPF (Q2) workshop was held in Norman, Oklahoma, on 28–30 June 2005. Scientists, operational forecasters, water managers, and stakeholders from public and private sectors, including academia, presented and discussed a broad range of precipitation and forecasting topics and issues, and developed a list of science focus areas. To meet the nation's needs for the precipitation information effectively, the authors herein propose a community-wide integrated approach for precipitation information that fully capitalizes on recent advances in science and technology, and leverages the wide range of expertise and experience that exists in the research and operational communities. The concepts and recommendations from the workshop form the Q2 science plan and a suggested path to operations. Implementation of these concepts is expected to improve river forecasts and flood and flash flood watches and warnings, and to enhance various hydrologic and hydrometeorological services for a wide range of users and customers. In support of this initiative, the National Mosaic and Q2 (NMQ) system is being developed at the National Severe Storms Laboratory to serve as a community test bed for QPE and VSTQPF research and to facilitate the transition to operations of research applications. The NMQ system provides a real-time, around-the-clock data infusion and applications development and evaluation environment, and thus offers a community-wide platform for development and testing of advances in the focus areas.

A Domain-Configurable Development Environment for Service-Oriented Applications

Software systems play an increasingly important role in our everyday lives. New application domains regularly appear, bringing with them challenging new requirements. The software engineering community is striving to handle a significant number of new critical demands. Productivity, quality, and runtime flexibility are only a few of them. To satisfy such requirements, the community has proposed new development paradigms, such as service-oriented computing. SOC promotes the use of well-defined composition units (services) to support rapid application development.