Changes In Software Architecture Research Articles

Forward-porting and its limitations in fuzzer evaluation

Forward-porting reintroduces previously detected and patched software bugs from older versions into later ones to create benchmarking workloads for fuzzing. These benchmarks gauge a fuzzer's performance by testing its ability to detect or trigger these bugs during a fuzzing campaign. In this study, we evaluate the reliability of forward porting in establishing dependable fuzzing benchmarks and their suitability for fair and accurate fuzzer evaluation. We utilize online resources, forward porting, fuzzing experiments, and triaging to scrutinize the workloads of a state-of-the-art fuzzing benchmark. We uncover seven factors, including software architecture changes, misconfigurations, supply chain issues, and developer errors, all of which compromise the success of forward porting. We determine that the ‘ground truth’ established through forward porting is only occasionally ‘true’ due to unaccounted-for underlying bugs in all examined software applications undergoing this process. These findings question the reliability of forward porting in generating dependable fuzzing benchmarks. Furthermore, our experimental results suggest that relying on forward porting-based ground truth and verification metrics could lead to misleading evaluations of fuzzer performance. Ultimately, we propose insights into the development of fuzzing benchmarks to ensure more dependable assessments of fuzzers.

Исследование методов построения облачных платформенных сервисов и реализаций стандарта TOSCA

This paper overview and compares various tools for automating resource management in the cloud. Changes in software architecture and development approaches require automation of deployment management processes and further maintenance of software in different environments. Chapter 2 provides a detailed overview of the tools with sample configurations, as well as a breakdown of relevant articles that look at various automation tools and the effectiveness of their implementation. Chapter 3 presents a draft solution for combining orchestrators developed at ISP RAS to obtain a tool with functionality that competitors do not have.

Исследование методов построения облачных платформенных сервисов и реализаций стандарта TOSCA

This paper overview and compares various tools for automating resource management in the cloud. Changes in software architecture and development approaches require automation of deployment management processes and further maintenance of software in different environments. Chapter 2 provides a detailed overview of the tools with sample configurations, as well as a breakdown of relevant articles that look at various automation tools and the effectiveness of their implementation. Chapter 3 presents a draft solution for combining orchestrators developed at ISP RAS to obtain a tool with functionality that competitors do not have.

Updates to a Lab-Developed Bioinformatics Pipeline and Application for Interpretation of Clinical Next-Generation Sequencing Panels

Abstract Objectives Our goal was to enhance our next-generation sequencing (NGS) molecular oncology workflow from sequencing to analysis through improvements to our custom-built and previously described NGS application. Methods Over 1 year, we collected feedback regarding workflow pain-points and feature requests from all end users of our NGS application. The application consists of a series of scripted pipelines, a MySQL database, and a Java Graphic User Interface (GUI); the end users include molecular pathologists (MPs), medical technologist/medical laboratory technologists (MTs/MLTs), and the molecular laboratory manager. These feedback data were used to engineer significant changes to the pipelines and software architecture. These architecture changes provided the backbone to a suite of feature enhancements aimed to improve turnaround time, decrease manual processes, and increase efficiency for the molecular laboratory staff and directors. Summary The key software architecture changes include implementing support for multiple environments, refactoring common code in the different pipelines, migrating from a per-run pipeline model to a per-sample pipeline model, and key updates to the MySQL database. These changes enabled development of many technical and user experience improvements. We eliminated the need for the pipelines to be launched manually from the Linux command line. Multiple pipelines can be executed concurrently. We created a per-sample pipeline status monitor. Sample entry is integrated with our Laboratory Information System (LIS) barcodes, thus reducing the possibility of transcription errors. We developed quality assurance reports. Socket-based integration with Integrated Genomics Viewer (IGV) was enhanced. We enabled rapid loading of key alignment data into IGV over a wireless network. Features to support resident and fellow driven variant and gene annotation reporting were developed. Support for additional clinical databases was implemented. Conclusions The designed feature enhancements to our previously reported NGS application have added significant sophistication and safety to our clinical NGS workflow. For example, our NGS consensus conference can be held in a conference room over a wireless network, and a trainee can prepare and present each case without ever leaving the application. To date, we have analyzed 2,540 samples using three different assays (TruSight Myeloid Sequencing Panel, AmpliSeq Cancer Hotspot Panel, GlioSeq) and four sequencing instruments (NextSeq, MiSeq, Proton, PGM) in this application. The code is freely available on GitHub.

Impact of software architecture on execution time: a power window TACLeBench case study

Timing analysis is used to extract the timing properties of a system. Various timing analysis techniques and tools have been developed over the past decades. However, changes in hardware platform and software architecture introduced new challenges in timing analysis techniques. In our research, we aim to develop a hybrid approach to provide safe and precise timing analysis results. In this approach, we will divide the original code into smaller code blocks, and then construct a timing model based on the information acquired by measuring the execution time of every individual block. This process can introduce changes in the software architecture. In this paper, we use a multi-component benchmark to investigate the impact of software architecture on the timing behaviour of a system.

Impact of software architecture on execution time: a power window TACLeBench case study

Timing analysis is used to extract the timing properties of a system. Various timing analysis techniques and tools have been developed over the past decades. However, changes in hardware platform and software architecture introduced new challenges in timing analysis techniques. In our research, we aim to develop a hybrid approach to provide safe and precise timing analysis results. In this approach, we will divide the original code into smaller code blocks, and then construct a timing model based on the information acquired by measuring the execution time of every individual block. This process can introduce changes in the software architecture. In this paper, we use a multi-component benchmark to investigate the impact of software architecture on the timing behaviour of a system.

Mining Patterns from Change Logs to Support Reuse-Driven Evolution of Software Architectures

Modern software systems are subject to a continuous evolution under frequently varying requirements and changes in systems’ operational environments. Lehman’s law of continuing change demands for long-living and continuously evolving software to prolong its productive life and economic value by accommodating changes in existing software. Reusable knowledge and practices have proven to be successful for continuous development and evolution of the software effectively and efficiently. However, challenges such as empirical acquisition and systematic application of the reusable knowledge and practices must be addressed to enable or enhance software evolution. We investigate architecture change logs — mining histories of architecture-centric software evolution — to discover change patterns that 1) support reusability of architectural changes and 2) enhance the efficiency of the architecture evolution process. We model architecture change logs as a graph and apply graph-based formalism (i.e., graph mining techniques) to discover software architecture change patterns. We have developed a prototype that enables tool-driven automation and user decision support during software evolution. We have used the ISO-IEC-9126 model to qualitatively evaluate the proposed solution. The evaluation results suggest that the proposed solution 1) enables the reusability of frequent architectural changes and 2) enhances the efficiency of architecture-centric software evolution process. The proposed solution promotes research efforts to exploit the history of architectural changes to empirically discover knowledge that can guide architecture-centric software evolution.

Exploring versioned distributed arrays for resilience in scientific applications

Exascale studies project reliability challenges for future HPC systems. We present the Global View Resilience (GVR) system, a library for portable resilience. GVR begins with a subset of the Global Arrays interface, and adds new capabilities to create versions, name versions, and compute on version data. Applications can focus versioning where and when it is most productive, and customize for each application structure independently. This control is portable, and its embedding in application source makes it natural to express and easy to maintain. The ability to name multiple versions and “partially materialize” them efficiently makes ambitious forward-recovery based on “data slices” across versions or data structures both easy to express and efficient. Using several large applications (OpenMC, preconditioned conjugate gradient (PCG) solver, ddcMD, and Chombo), we evaluate the programming effort to add resilience. The required changes are small (< 2% lines of code (LOC)), localized and machine-independent, and perhaps most important, require no software architecture changes. We also measure the overhead of adding GVR versioning and show that overheads < 2% are generally achieved. This overhead suggests that GVR can be implemented in large-scale codes and support portable error recovery with modest investment and runtime impact. Our results are drawn from both IBM BG/Q and Cray XC30 experiments, demonstrating portability. We also present two case studies of flexible error recovery, illustrating how GVR can be used for multi-version rollback recovery, and several different forward-recovery schemes. GVR’s multi-version enables applications to survive latent errors (silent data corruption) with significant detection latency, and forward recovery can make that recovery extremely efficient. Our results suggest that GVR is scalable, portable, and efficient. GVR interfaces are flexible, supporting a variety of recovery schemes, and altogether GVR embodies a gentle-slope path to tolerate growing error rates in future extreme-scale systems.

Versioned Distributed Arrays for Resilience in Scientific Applications: Global View Resilience

Abstract Exascale studies project reliability challenges for future high-performance computing (HPC) systems. We propose the Global View Resilience (GVR) system, a library that enables applications to add resilience in a portable, application-controlled fashion using versioned distributed arrays. We describe GVR's interfaces to distributed arrays, versioning, and cross-layer error recovery. Using several large applications (OpenMC, the preconditioned conjugate gradient solver PCG, ddcMD, and Chombo), we evaluate the programmer effort to add resilience. The required changes are small ( 2% LOC), localized, and machine-independent, requiring no software architecture changes. We also measure the overhead of adding GVR versioning and show that generally overheads 2% are achieved. We conclude that GVR's interfaces and implementation are flexible and portable and create a gentle-slope path to tolerate growing error rates in future systems.

Formal verification of service-oriented adaptive driver assistance systems

Many future Driver-Assistance-Systems (DAS) will use components not permanently mounted to the vehicle. Unlike state-of-the-art DAS with static configurations, the system and software architecture changes at runtime. To handle configuration changes, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and automatic orchestration is a promising approach. Whenever systems are set up automatically, they have to be validated. This paper presents an approach based on formal methods. Existing component models are annotated with Quality-of-Service parameters and transformed automatically to Hybrid Automata. These automata are then composed to an overall system model and model checking is used to check safety properties. The complete transformation-orchestration-validation process is executed without user interaction and thus can be performed at runtime.

Examination of the software architecture change characterization scheme using three empirical studies

Software maintenance is one of the most crucial aspects of software development. Software engineering researchers must develop practical solutions to handle the challenges presented in maintaining mature software systems. Research that addresses practical means of mitigating the risks involved when changing software, reducing the complexity of mature software systems, and eliminating the introduction of preventable bugs is paramount to today's software engineering discipline. The Software Architecture Change Characterization Scheme (SACCS) provides software maintainers with a systematic approach to analyzing and characterizing the impact of a change prior to its implementation. SACCS was designed to help novice developers understand change requests, facilitate discussion among developers, and provide a higher-quality change compared with an ad hoc approach. In addition, this paper describes three controlled experiments designed to assess the viability of using SACCS and its ability to fulfill its goals. The successive studies build upon each other to enable progressive insights into the viability of the scheme. The results indicate that SACCS: 1) provides insight into the difficulty of a change request by assisting novice developers to consider various aspects of the request's potential to impact the system, 2) helps to facilitate discussion among developers by providing a common tool for change assessment, and 3) is a useful tool for supporting change implementation. The three experiments provide insight into the usefulness of SACCS, motivate additional research questions, and serve as a baseline for moving forward with research and further development of the approach.

A Venture Perspective on Cloud Computing

As a result of the impact of the Web, cloud computing, and mobility, technology companies must radically rethink how they build, package, deploy, market, and sell their solutions. Cloud and mobile computing appear to represent yet another software architecture change. These platform shifts have happened almost every decade and take some time to standardize. Recognizing the changes in how customers and developers evaluate and adopt solutions, many start-ups are building new software services that can leverage cost advantages of massive scale while also taking advantage of online marketing to drive highly efficient customer adoption and retention. We're at the very beginning of these platform shifts that will lead to significant opportunities across the entire software landscape.

Automatic Page-Layout Scripts for Gatan Digital Micrograph®

The software DigitalMicrograph (DM) by Gatan, Inc., is a popular software platform for digital imaging in microscopy. in a service-oriented microscopy laboratory, a large number of images from many different samples are generated each day. It is critical that each printed image is properly labeled with sample identification and a description before printing. with DM, a script language is provided: from this, various analyses can be designed or customized and repetitive tasks can be automated. This paper presents the procedures and DM scripts needed to perform these tasks. Due to the major software architecture change between version 2.5x and version 3.5x, each will be discussed separately.DM Version 2.5.8 (on Macintosh®)A “Data Bar” mechanism is provided in this version of DM. Using the “Edit→Data Bar→Define and Add Data Bar...“ menu command specifies data bar items (e.g., scale bar, microscope operator) to be included in the image. in addition, other annotations (text, line, rectangle, and oval) can be included as part of “Data Bar.” This is done by first selecting the desired annotation on the image and then using the “Edit→Data Bar→use AS Default Data Bar...” menu command. After defining data bar items, executing the menu command adds these data bar items to the image.