Component Repository Research Articles

The importance of socio-technical resources for software ecosystems management

Abstract Software Ecosystem (SECO) is often understood as a set of actors interacting among themselves and manipulating artifacts with the support of a common technology platform. Usually, SECO approaches can be designed as an environment whose component repository is gathering stakeholders as well as software products and components. By manipulating software artifacts, a technical network emerges from interactions made over the component repository in order to reuse artifacts, improving code quality, downloading, selling, buying etc. Although technical repositories are essential to store SECO’s artifacts, the interaction among actors in an emerging social network is a key factor to strengthen the SECO’s through increasing actor’s participation, e.g., developing new software, reporting bugs, and communicating with suppliers. In the SECO context, both the internal and external actors keep the platform’s components updated and documented, and even support requirements and suggestions for new releases and bug fixes. However, those repositories often lack resources to support actors’ relationships and consequently to improve the reuse processes by stimulating actors’ interactions, information exchange and better understanding on how artifacts are manipulated by actors. In this paper, we focused on investigating SECO as component repositories that include socio-technical resources. As such, we present a survey that allowed us to identify the relevance of each resource for a SECO based on component repositories, initially focused on the Brazilian scenario. This paper also describes the analysis of the data collected in that survey. Information of other SECO elements extracted from the data is also presented, e.g., the participants’ profile and how they behave within a SECO. As an evolution of our research, a study for evaluating the availability and the use of such resources on top of two platforms was also conducted with experts in collaborative development in order to analyze the usage of the most relevant resources in real SECO’s platforms. We concluded that socio-technical resources have aided collaboration in software development for SECO, coordination of teams based on more knowledge of actor’s tasks and interactions, and monitoring of quality of SECOs’ platforms through the orchestration of the contributions developed by external actors.

Towards The Adoption of Modern Software Development Approach: Component Based Software Engineering

Objectives: This paper discusses about the component based software engineering approach along with its classification of various approaches of CBSE and Component Based Development [CBD] and the life cycle development model of Component Based Software Development [CBSD] has been proposed by the component re-usability concept in lieu of reducing the software cost. Method: The main focus of the software engineering and component based software engineering is the development of the software in such a manner that it might be used again for the development of some other software. Component Based Software Engineering [CBSE] includes the use of components lying in the component repository while software re-engineering focusses relies with using the concept of forward and reverse engineering. This is done for reducing the software development cost by making use of Component Based Software Engineering [CBSE] principles and s/w reengineering techniques. Findings: Now a-days the development of software from the scratch has become less prioritized and is being used very less. Component based software engineering plays a very vital role in developing of the software not from scratch but instead using the existing components for the development of new software. Hence it can be concluded or finded that the cost of the software development from the re-usability concept can be reduced to a large extent in comparison to the software development from the very scratch being a very costly measure. The proposed model will be helpful in reducing the software development cost by using the component based development strategy. Applications / Improvements: The proposed SDLC model for CBSD can be used for the real life applications as well and thereby can be re-used again and again as per the requirements of the industry.

Reusable components for online reputation systems

Reputation systems have been extensively explored in various disciplines and application areas. A problem in this context is that the computation engines applied by most reputation systems available are designed from scratch and rarely consider well established concepts and achievements made by others. Thus, approved models and promising approaches may get lost in the shuffle. In this work, we aim to foster reuse in respect of trust and reputation systems by providing a hierarchical component taxonomy of computation engines which serves as a natural framework for the design of new reputation systems. In order to assist the design process we, furthermore, provide a component repository that contains design knowledge on both a conceptual and an implementation level. To evaluate our approach we conduct a descriptive scenario-based analysis which shows that it has an obvious utility from a practical point of view. Matching the identified components and the properties of trust introduced in literature, we finally show which properties of trust are widely covered by common models and which aspects have only rarely been considered so far.

Model-Based Automated Navigation and Composition of Complex Service Mashups

Service computing promotes a large number of web-delivered services, including web services, APIs and data feeds. Composing data, functionalities and even UI from these web-delivered services into a single web application, usually called service mashup, becomes a popular web development paradigm. The web-delivered services can be modeled as mashup components, while the development of mashup actually yields a set of inter-connected mashup components. The growing popularity of mashup components enriches functionality and user experiences, while the possible connections among components are complex and difficult to mashup developers, who might be non-professional programmers or even end-users, as actions over one component may have potential impacts on another. This paper proposes a novel approach for recommending developers in terms of navigation and completion of mashup components with a large-scale components repository. From data-driven perspective, we model the relationships between mashup components by a generic layered-graph model. Developers are allowed to select some initial components as starting point, while a graph-based algorithm recommends how to navigate to potentially relevant mashup components and complete the relevant mashup application. We experimentally demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of our approach for rapid mashup construction.

A Component Retrieval Tree Matching Algorithm Based on a Faceted Classification Scheme

Abstract An efficient scheme of component retrieval can significantly reduce the cost of software reuse. For this purpose, a method of successfully retrieving of specified components from the component repository is a crucial consideration. However, neither the retrieval efficiency, nor the query-matching rate of the traditional method, which is based on a faceted classification scheme, satisfies the requirements of component retrieval. In this paper a novel component retrieval method combining the features of the faceted classification scheme and the theory of tree matching is proposed. This method not only accurately retrieves components that match queries, but also considers any incomplete descriptions of the retrieval component to completely ensure the relaxation ability of the component retrieval. The experimental results show that the retrieval matching method proposed is highly efficient, and it retrieves feasibly and efficiently the components.

Research on Rapid Design Method for Complex Product Based on General Structure Model and Reusable Parts Resource

Because of a few characteristics of complex product, such as the variety of its components, and the structural complexity and so on, the realization of the rapid design of complex product requires combination of a variety of theories and methods that support product’s rapid design. Therefore, this study assesses complex products and puts forward a new rapid design method based on general structure model and reusable parts resource. First of all, the characteristics and implementation process of this method is summarized. Then, the general structure model of the complex product family is established on the basis of modular thoughts, and the definitions of the four vari-size grained abstract concepts are discussed in this model as well as its semantic relationships. The configuration design of the complex products is based on this general structural model, and with the increase of networked product design information, and more and more manufacturing enterprises have built up their own web-based component repositories to store those detailed design information. On account of those, the rapid design process of the complex product is introduced, with configuration design and reusable parts resource as the core. Lastly, an application example (i.e. the conventional beam pumping unit) is presented to verify the feasibility of which has been discussed above.

The RNA shapes studio.

Motivation : shape analysis, first proposed in 2004, allows one to extract several relevant structures from the folding space of an RNA sequence, preferable to focusing in a single structure of minimal free energy. We report recent extensions to this approach. Results : We have rebuilt the original RNA shapes as a repository of components that allows us to integrate several established tools for RNA structure analysis: RNA shapes , RNA alishapes and pknots RG, including its recent extension p K iss . As a spin-off, we obtain heretofore unavailable functionality: e. g. with p K iss , we can now perform abstract shape analysis for structures holding pseudoknots up to the complexity of kissing hairpin motifs. The new tool p A li K iss can predict kissing hairpin motifs from aligned sequences. Along with the integration, the functionality of the tools was also extended in manifold ways. Availability and implementation : As before, the tool is available on the Bielefeld Bioinformatics server at http://bibiserv.cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de/rnashapesstudio . Contact : bibi-help@cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de

BioJS: an open source standard for biological visualisation – its status in 2014

BioJS is a community-based standard and repository of functional components to represent biological information on the web. The development of BioJS has been prompted by the growing need for bioinformatics visualisation tools to be easily shared, reused and discovered. Its modular architecture makes it easy for users to find a specific functionality without needing to know how it has been built, while components can be extended or created for implementing new functionality. The BioJS community of developers currently provides a range of functionality that is open access and freely available. A registry has been set up that categorises and provides installation instructions and testing facilities at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/tools/biojs/. The source code for all components is available for ready use at https://github.com/biojs/biojs.

BioJS: an open source standard for biological visualisation - its status in 2014.

BioJS is a community-based standard and repository of functional components to represent biological information on the web. The development of BioJS has been prompted by the growing need for bioinformatics visualisation tools to be easily shared, reused and discovered. Its modular architecture makes it easy for users to find a specific functionality without needing to know how it has been built, while components can be extended or created for implementing new functionality. The BioJS community of developers currently provides a range of functionality that is open access and freely available. A registry has been set up that categorises and provides installation instructions and testing facilities at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/tools/biojs/. The source code for all components is available for ready use at https://github.com/biojs/biojs.

Using Inhabitation in Bounded Combinatory Logic with Intersection Types for Composition Synthesis

We describe ongoing work on a framework for automatic composition synthesis from a repository of software components. This work is based on combinatory logic with intersection types. The idea is that components are modeled as typed combinators, and an algorithm for inhabitation {\textemdash} is there a combinatory term e with type tau relative to an environment Gamma? {\textemdash} can be used to synthesize compositions. Here, Gamma represents the repository in the form of typed combinators, tau specifies the synthesis goal, and e is the synthesized program. We illustrate our approach by examples, including an application to synthesis from GUI-components.

Learning from the future of component repositories

An important aspect of the quality assurance of large component repositories is to ensure the logical coherence of component metadata, and to this end one needs to identify incoherences as early as possible. Some relevant classes of problems can be formulated in term of properties of the future repositories into which the current repository may evolve. However, checking such properties on all possible future repositories requires a way to construct a finite representation of the infinite set of all potential futures. A class of properties for which this can be done is presented in this work.We illustrate the practical usefulness of the approach with two quality assurance applications: (i) establishing the amount of “forced upgrades” induced by introducing new versions of existing components in a repository, and (ii) identifying outdated components that are currently not installable and need to be upgraded in order to become installable again. For both applications we provide experience reports obtained on the Debian free software distribution.

MVICS: a Repository and Search Tool towards Holistic Semantic-Based Precise Component Selection

Driven by the continuous expansions of software applications and the increases in component varieties and sizes, the so-called component mismatch problem has become a more severe hurdle for component selection and integration. Although many component repositories and search tools have been proposed, so far there is no satisfactory solution which simultaneously achieves the following goals: automated, semantic-based, and precise. This paper presents a novel component repository and associated search tool which implements holistic semantic-based and adaptation-aware component specification and retrieval. The repository and tool is based on a Multiple-View and Interrelated Component Specification ontology model (MVICS), which has a smooth integration with domain related software system ontologies. The MVICS provides a formally defined and ontology-based architecture to specify components automatically in a spectrum of perspectives. The integration enhances the function and application scope of the MVICS model by bringing domain semantics into component specification and retrieval. The repository and search tool contributes to the current state of the art with four unique features: ontology-based component specification mechanism, semantic-based component retrieval method, adaptive component matching, and a comprehensive result component profile. The repository and tool has been widely tested and evaluated via its online version and follow-on survey reports, which concluded that they are effective for avoiding the component mismatch problem and is promising for industrial use.

An Experiment in Software Component Retrieval based on Metadata and Ontology Repository

components to build a new software system. Effective storage and retrieval of software components is much essential in software components reuse process. The researchers have developed a number of software components reuse techniques for storage and retrieval of software components. No one technique is complete in its own; every technique has its own merits and demerits. This paper presents a meta-data model and faceted classification for storage and retrieval of software components that considers domain semantic information based on ontologies and texonomies. In contrast to most existing repositories, which only retrieve a limited set of components, the proposed meta-data model makes possible the recommendation of interrelated components, as ontology and taxonomies characteristics were incorporated. The software component retrieval based on facet classification is a method which has been widely applied in software component retrieval, but the precision of software component retrieval is poor as a result of subjective factor in faceted classification retrieval. The architecture of software component retrieval system and the model of software component retrieval system were designed, the corresponding match algorithm was provided. According to the relation of facet and term space, meta-data repository was established and abstracted from domain knowledge which formed coherent retrieval in the domain and was applied to software component retrieval process. These terms in the meta-data repository were then used to match software components which described in the software component description repository with facet classification, related software components were retrieved from the software component repository. The results of application show that the new software component retrieval method can evidently improve the component retrieval precision and take care of the full-scale of the searching results.

Iterative plug-and-play methodology for constructing and modifying synthetic gene networks

We present a methodology for the design, construction, and modification of synthetic gene networks. This method emphasizes post-assembly modification of constructs based on network behavior, thus facilitating iterative design strategies and rapid tuning and repurposing of gene networks. The ease of post-construction modifications afforded by this approach and the ever-increasing repository of components within the framework will help to fast-track the development of functional genetic circuits for synthetic biology.

Trade-Off Analysis on QoS-Aware Dynamic Web Services Composition with Evolutionary Optimization

Nowadays web services are a distributed technology that can successfully solve integration problems between heterogeneous systems. The supporting technology for web services has been widely studied mainly focusing on the standardization of service transactions and running a single and multiple web services. In dealing with complex and large-scale web service requests, there is a foreseeable bottleneck of supporting technology. QoS-Aware web service composition is NP-hard problem and one of the most challenging problems in web services. This paper proposes an optimization solution using enhanced evolutionary algorithm (EA) for the dynamic composition of web service components and performs the trade-off analysis on dynamic composition of multi domain with multi objectives. First, we propose the Distance Function Based Evolutionary Algorithm (DFBEA) techniques to automatically select optimal combinations of web service components from available component repositories. Second, using multi domain with multi objectives case study, we demonstrate the trade-off analysis on efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed technique and algorithm through experimental evaluation of component selection, and furthermore a comparison with other optimization techniques will be proposed.

Dependency solving: A separate concern in component evolution management

Maintenance of component-based software platforms often has to face rapid evolution of software components. Component dependencies, conflicts, and package managers with dependency solving capabilities are the key ingredients of prevalent software maintenance technologies that have been proposed to keep software installations synchronized with evolving component repositories. We review state-of-the-art package managers and their ability to keep up with evolution at the current growth rate of popular component-based platforms, and conclude that their dependency solving abilities are not up to the task.We show that the complexity of the underlying upgrade planning problem is NP-complete even for seemingly simple component models, and argue that the principal source of complexity lies in multiple available versions of components. We then discuss the need of expressive languages for user preferences, which makes the problem even more challenging.We propose to establish dependency solving as a separate concern from other upgrade aspects, and present CUDF as a formalism to describe upgrade scenarios. By analyzing the result of an international dependency solving competition, we provide evidence that the proposed approach is viable.

Context-Aware Adaptation of Component-Based Systems: An Active Repository Approach

Context-aware systems are able to monitor and automatically adapt their operation accordingly to the execution context in which they are introduced. Component-based software engineering (CBSE) focuses on the development and reuse of self-contained software assets in order to achieve better productivity and quality. In order to store and retrieve components, CBSE employs component repository systems to provide components to the system developers. This paper presents an active component repository that is able to receive the current configuration from the context-aware system and compute the components and the new architecture that better fit the given context. Since the repository has a wide knowledge of available components, it can better decide which configuration is more suitable to the running system. The repository applies Fuzzy logic algorithm to evaluate the adequacy level of the components and GRASP algorithm to mount the new system architecture. In order to verify the feasibility of our approach, we use a digital TV middleware case study to achieve experimental results.

A knowledge based component/service repository to enhance analysts’ domain knowledge for requirements analysis

Knowledge of the business domain (e.g., insurance claim, human resources) is crucial to analysts’ ability to conduct good requirements analysis (RA). However, current practices afford little assistance to analysts in acquiring domain knowledge. We argue that traditional reuse repositories could be augmented by adding rich faceted information on component/services and artifacts such as business-process templates to help analysts acquire domain knowledge during RA. In this paper, we present the design of a Knowledge Based Component Repository (KBCR) for facilitating RA. Then, we report on the design and development of a KBCR prototype. We illustrate its application in a system that is populated with components and process templates for the auto insurance claim domain. An empirical study was conducted to assess its effectiveness in improving RA. Results showed that KBCR enhanced analysts’ business domain knowledge and helped them better prepare for RA. Our key research contribution is to offer analysts a rich repository (i.e., KBCR) containing domain knowledge that they could utilize to acquire domain knowledge that is crucial for carrying out RA. While repositories of reusable components have been employed for some time, no one has used such repositories to help analysts acquire domain knowledge in order improve the RA of the system.

Special section: software architectures and application development environments for Cloud computing

Special section: software architectures and application development environments for Cloud computing

Aligning component upgrades

Modern software systems, like GNU/Linux distributions or Eclipse-based development environment, are often deployed by selecting components out of large component repositories. Maintaining such software systems by performing component upgrades is a complex task, and the users need to have an expressive preferences language at their disposal to specify the kind of upgrades they are interested in. Recent research has shown that it is possible to develop solvers that handle preferences expressed as a combination of a few basic criteria used in the MISC competition, ranging from the number of new components to the freshness of the final configuration. In this work we introduce a set of new criteria that allow the users to specify their preferences for solutions with components aligned to the same upstream sources, provide an efficient encoding and report on the experimental results that prove that optimising these alignment criteria is a tractable problem in practice.