Cross-cutting Concern Research Articles

Comparative Evaluation of Animated Scatter Plot Transitions.

Scatter plots are popular for displaying 2D data, but in practice, many data sets have more than two dimensions. For the analysis of such multivariate data, it is often necessary to switch between scatter plots of different dimension pairs, e.g., in a scatter plot matrix (SPLOM). Alternative approaches include a "grand tour" for an overview of the entire data set or creating artificial axes from dimensionality reduction (DR). A cross-cutting concern in all techniques is the ability of viewers to find correspondence between data points in different views. Previous work proposed animations to preserve the mental map between view changes and to trace points as well as clusters between scatter plots of the same underlying data set. In this article, we evaluate a variety of spline- and rotation-based view transitions in a crowdsourced user study focusing on ecological validity. Using the study results, we assess each animation's suitability for tracing points and clusters across view changes. We evaluate whether the order of horizontal and vertical rotation is relevant for task accuracy. The results show that rotations with an orthographic camera or staged expansion of a depth axis significantly outperform all other animation techniques for the traceability of individual points. Further, we provide a ranking of the animated transition techniques for traceability of individual points. However, we could not find any significant differences for the traceability of clusters. Furthermore, we identified differences by animation direction that could guide further studies to determine potential confounds for these differences. We publish the study data for reuse and provide the animation framework as a D3.js plug-in.

Using Third-Party Components’ Metadata to Analyze Cross-cutting Concerns

Context: Modularity is a key concept in software development. Well-modularized systems are easier to maintain and evolve, but achieving good modularity is difficult. Concerns that are important, but not central to a systems' main business rules, frequently end up scattered and entangled throughout several software modules. Those so called cross-cutting concerns are a major source of loss of modularity and code decay in software systems. Motivation: Studies on cross-cutting concerns often resort to manual identification of concerns, but manual identification is effort demanding, does not scale, and tends to be imprecise. Automatic approaches are therefore very attractive when the codebase is extensive. In modern systems, developers implement modules to address central business rules, but they tend to add third-party components in the codebase to materialize concerns related to other secondary aspects. Logging, database access, and tests automation are examples of concerns that are usually implemented with the help of imported components and are prone to scatter and tangle throughout the codebase. Aims: This paper proposes a method to track this type of cross-cutting concern. Our work takes advantage of the addition of metadata about components to track them. The method scales by automating the identification and analysis of concerns scattered throughout the software codebase. We define a new metric, Dedication to Concern (DtC), to measure how much source code modules focus on implementing the identified concerns. Working Method: We describe our method to mine cross-cutting concerns from the metadata related to the use of components. The method is instantiated as a tool, architectural knowledge suite (AKS). The tool is used to analyze concerns in a set of large Java projects. The results are used to feed an action research study, during which software development specialists analyze the AKS outputs to evaluate and evolve the method. Conclusion: The semi-automated approach is feasible and scalable, and can be used to analyze secondary concerns that are currently being imported into modern software systems via third-party components.

Completing the design for product circularity toolkit with hierarchical computation of circularity maturity diagram and redesign circular strategies

Circular product design is widely acknowledged as a foundational step for enterprises to implement and establish viable circular business models. To support this objective, it is vital for industrial enterprises to have an easy-to-apply practical design toolkit that can facilitate the assessment and enhancement of product circularity performance. To address this cross-cutting concern, this article proposes a novel framework called the Design for Product Circularity (DfPC) Toolkit which is an extension of our previous "Closing-Slowing Future-Past" (CSFP) quadrant model, the associated fifteen categories of CE-related products, and the associated product circularity index. The present framework aims to provide comprehensive diagnostics and guidelines to enhance product circularity. The original diagnostic approach presented augments the circularity metrics with a hierarchical calculation principle of a product circularity index, from the elementary circularity indexes of components and parts. The DfPC Toolkit design resulted in the presentation of 15 guidelines for design for product circularity, accompanied by 43 strategies and 225 sub-strategies. The findings of this study contribute to product circularity improvement across various industries by offering recommended alternatives for (re)design. In practice, the present DfPC Toolkit has been deployed on an industrial case study and validated through the proposition of valuable circularity-related improvement targets. The DfPC Toolkit provides a practical approach for industrial enterprises to assess and enhance their product circularity performance, ultimately enabling the transition to circular business models.

The 2019 Chilean Social Upheaval: A Descriptive Approach

In 2019, student protests over an increase in subway fare in Chile escalated into violence and a leaderless nationwide social upheaval. This research note takes a descriptive approach that goes beyond the protester/non-protesters dichotomy, because we believe we need a richer understanding of the “what, who, and how” of citizens around this outbreak. Based on a survey fielded amidst the upheaval, we distinguish protesters by intensity, and non-protesters by their position towards the upheaval. As expected, protesters tend to be young and educated. Strong protesters are more left-wing, interested in politics, and more participative, including electorally. They endorse democracy but are critical of its functioning, and more likely to justify illegal/violent actions as a means for social change. Inequality appears as a cross-cutting concern, even among opponents, but strong protesters are more distrustful of its sources and of the rich themselves. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings.

A new random field on lattices

The risk of occurrence of atypical phenomena is a cross-cutting concern in several areas, such as engineering, climatology, finance, actuarial, among others. Extreme value theory is the natural tool to approach this theme. Many of these random phenomena carry variables defined in time and space, usually modeled through random fields. Thus, the study of random fields in the context of extreme values becomes imperative and has been developed especially in the last decade. In this work, we propose a new random field, called pMAX, designed for modeling extremes. We analyze its dependence and pre-asymptotic dependence structure through the corresponding bivariate tail dependence coefficients. Estimators for the model parameters are obtained and their finite sample properties analyzed. Examples with simulations illustrate the results.

VariED: an editor for collaborative, real-time feature modeling

Feature models are a helpful means to document, manage, maintain, and configure the variability of a software system, and thus are a core artifact in software product-line engineering. Due to the various purposes of feature models, they can be a cross-cutting concern in an organization, integrating technical and business aspects. For this reason, various stakeholders (e.g., developers and consultants) may get involved into modeling the features of a software product line. Currently, collaboration in such a scenario can only be done with face-to-face meetings or by combining single-user feature-model editors with additional communication and version-control systems. While face-to-face meetings are often costly and impractical, using version-control systems can cause merge conflicts and inconsistency within a model, due to the different intentions of the involved stakeholders. Advanced tools that solve these problems by enabling collaborative, real-time feature modeling, analogous to Google Docs or Overleaf for text editing, are missing. In this article, we build on a previous paper and describe (1) the extended formal foundations of collaborative, real-time feature modeling, (2) our conflict resolution algorithm in more detail, (3) proofs that our formalization converges and preserves causality as well as user intentions, (4) the implementation of our prototype, and (5) the results of an empirical evaluation to assess the prototype’s usability. Our contributions provide the basis for advancing existing feature-modeling tools and practices to support collaborative feature modeling. The results of our evaluation show that our prototype is considered helpful and valuable by 17 users, also indicating potential for extending our tool and opportunities for new research directions.

On the Interconnection of Cross-cutting Concerns Within Hierarchical Modular Architectures

Modularity is often employed to increase the flexibility and adaptability of a system. A well-known issue during the design of modular systems is the emergence of ripple effects propagating throughout the system when one module is changed, which is dependent on other modules within the system. While several techniques or approaches have been proposed to mitigate these effects, they often neglect the integration and interconnection of cross-cutting concerns (i.e., functionalities that are required across different parts of the main functional dimension) within the system. This article argues that the proper integration of cross-cutting concerns is important in order to avoid ripple effects and preserve the adaptability of a modular system. Based on a set of possible integration architectures that offer different alternatives to integrate cross-cutting concerns within a modular structure, we introduce the integration design matrix (IDM) as an instrument to systematically analyze the cross-cutting concern provisioning within specific modular artifacts. A set of design guidelines is proposed to optimize the integration of the cross-cutting concerns, applicable within the context of the IDM. We illustrate our approach by means of examples in several domains.

Bridging socio-technical and justice aspects of sustainable energy transitions

Sustainable energy transitions necessarily comprise both socio-technical aspects as well as important implications for social justice. However, in existing scholarship, these are mainly treated as distinct phenomena. The purpose of this paper is to outline a comprehensive approach that pulls together critical aspects of both socio-technical development and energy justice in understanding sustainable transitions. Drawing on the strengths of both sets of literature, we argue that a comprehensive approach requires analyses to account for the co-evolution of institutional change, material change and relational change, with a cross-cutting concern for multiple spatialities and normative implications. We then illustrate this approach through three brief case studies of multi-scalar solar uptake in Portugal, bringing out how justice considerations are intricately involved in the practices and politics of these concrete, broadly representative instances of sustainable energy transitions.

A holistic approach to energy-aware design of cyber-physical systems

In this paper we present a new approach to the design of cyber-physical systems (CPSs) with limited energy availability. CPSs are normally composed of subsystems of very different nature, such as electromechanical, computational or communication subsystems. Despite this heterogeneity all of them consume energy, making this a cross-cutting concern. This approach is said to be holistic because it addresses all the subsystems that compose the CPS in a joint design effort, hence allowing tackling the energy consumption challenge effectively. Additionally, modelling is used to support it using different methods and tools depending on the subsystem under consideration. This approach has been applied to two different case studies: the development of a compression stocking to treat leg-venous insufficiency and the development of a wearable heart monitor. In both cases its application has enabled the understanding of the system's energy consumption better and from different angles, providing useful input to the creation of energy efficient realisations.

A holistic approach to energy-aware design of cyber-physical systems

In this paper we present a new approach to the design of cyber-physical systems (CPSs) with limited energy availability. CPSs are normally composed of subsystems of very different nature, such as electromechanical, computational or communication subsystems. Despite this heterogeneity all of them consume energy, making this a cross-cutting concern. This approach is said to be holistic because it addresses all the subsystems that compose the CPS in a joint design effort, hence allowing tackling the energy consumption challenge effectively. Additionally, modelling is used to support it using different methods and tools depending on the subsystem under consideration. This approach has been applied to two different case studies: the development of a compression stocking to treat leg-venous insufficiency and the development of a wearable heart monitor. In both cases its application has enabled the understanding of the system's energy consumption better and from different angles, providing useful input to the creation of energy efficient realisations.

Controlling and Monitoring Specific Hardware Resources

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)1 IntroductionRich Internet Applications (RIAs) is an umbrella term for various that are combining media-rich power of the traditional desktop with the deployment and content-rich nature of web applications [1]. According to Gartner, RIA frameworks can be divided in JavaScript/AJAX-based frameworks and plugin-based frameworks. The first ones are browser-based and more lightweight, the second ones are more heavyweight with a bigger download footprint (Valdez, 2009; Busch & Koch, 2009).Plugin-based frameworks like Adobe Flex, JavaFX and Microsoft Silverlight, offer extended support for media, are highly interactive, cross-platform, cross-device, cross-browser and desktop-like with offline and out-off-browser support [8].A typical RIA application has a multi-tier architecture, based on data integration layer, business logic & services layer and presentation layer. Taking into consideration the new client-side capacities, the new presentation features, and the different communication flows between the client and the server, the following four phases in designing RIA are necessary:* data model design,* business logic & services design,* presentation design, and* communication design [12].Communication is a cross-cutting concern related to data synchronization, business logic & services distribution and presentation. The communication must provide the binding between the presentation and the underlying data/business logic & services layers using synchronous/ asynchronous methods.Best practices in RIA development enrich the general design considerations with specific design issues depending on the requirements and the technologies used for implementation. With respect to the general architecture of a RIA application (Figure 1), a prototype for controlling and monitoring specific hardware resources was developed.The demarche was developed within an Adobe Flex framework, a just-in-time deployment model being employed.2 Agile Approach for Developing the RIA PrototypeBased on the author's results obtained in the agile development of portals [10], [11], the demarche was applied for developing the proposed RIA application. The main functionalities of the RIA application for controlling and monitoring specific hardware resources are described by the use cases diagram (Figure 2).The agile development framework proposed in [10], [11] recommends the use of prototype technique enriched with MDA (Model Driven Architecture) specific attributes and is based on the following phases:* Conception: the PIM model elaboration is targeted, according to the requirements;* Design: targets the elaboration of the PSM model specific for the RIA prototype, i.e. the finalization of the architecture of this model, taking into account all details regarding the IT infrastructure, which must sustain the unitary, integrating vision of the PIM model; the building of the PSM model will take into account the future implementation solution of the RIA, by relating the model to certain developing technologies and frameworks;* I.T.I (Implementing -Testing- Installation) phase has the goal to implement the RIA prototype according to the PSM model, followed by the testing of the prototype; often, as a result of testing its functionality, the prototype invalidation leads to the revision of the PSM model and aims at correcting some aspects related to technologies and implementing frameworks.With respect to the RIA general architecture, the PIM and further the corresponding PSM models have been elaborated: model for data layer; model for business & services layer; model for presentation layer; model for communication schema; model for security schema; model for general management and maintenance of the RIA application.Both PIM and PSM models were described with the help of the UML language, al kind of specific diagrams being developed. …

Security Injections@Towson

Despite the critical societal importance of computer security, security is not well integrated into the undergraduate computing curriculum. Security classes and tracks treat security issues as separable topics as opposed to fundamental issues that pervade all aspects of software development. Recently, there has been an increasing focus on security as a cross-cutting concern across the computer science curriculum. The Security Injections@Towson project provides resources and effective strategies to incorporate secure coding in the early programming classes. We describe the development, assessment, and dissemination of more than 40 lab-based security injection modules designed to be injected into courses with minimal impact on the curriculum. We include assessment results from 1,135 students across five diverse institutions demonstrating that the security injections help students retain, comprehend, and apply secure coding concepts in the introductory programming courses.

A method for rigorous design of reconfigurable systems

Reconfigurability, understood as the ability of a system to behave differently in different modes of operation and commute between them along its lifetime, is a cross-cutting concern in modern Software Engineering. This paper introduces a specification method for reconfigurable software based on a global transition structure to capture the system's reconfiguration space, and a local specification of each operation mode in whatever logic (equational, first-order, partial, fuzzy, probabilistic, etc.) is found expressive enough for handling its requirements.In the method these two levels are not only made explicit and juxtaposed, but formally interrelated. The key to achieve such a goal is a systematic process of hybridisation of logics through which the relationship between the local and global levels of a specification becomes internalised in the logic itself.

TransJ: An Abstract Independent-Framework for Weaving Crosscutting Concern into Distributed Transactions

TransJ: An Abstract Independent-Framework for Weaving Crosscutting Concern into Distributed Transactions

Integration of aspect-oriented approach means in object-oriented programming language

The problem of complexity of developing and supporting the software cross-cutting concern and its solution using the aspect-oriented approach is examined. The complexity of aspect-oriented programming application in object-oriented programming languages is described. The problem of dependency of the declaration syntax of aspects and the method of their integration is investigated. The architecture that will provide the independence of the syntax of declaration and introduction of aspects in object-oriented programs is proposed. For separation, an urban design pattern that unites declaration of the aspect and its integration method is used. The system displays the classical entities of AOP in the object structure, which facilitates syntax mastering. Three methods for declaring aspects are developed, namely declaration using inheritance from a base class, template class generalization and flexible aspect creation at run time. For integration at compile time, a special integration module and the Roslyn compiler modification, which ensures implementation of the aspect configuration system and introduces advice invocation points in a code are developed. For integration at run time without using the dependency injection container, helper methods for creating proxy classes are designed. Also, modules for popular dependency injection containers, which allow integration by means of these containers are developed. Testing of the developed system, which showed a significant reduction in the size of a source code is carried out. The most pronounced reduction was in large enterprise-level systems. When using introduction at compile time, performance drop of programs is not observed. When using integration at run time, performance losses do not exceed those when using a similar proxy class.

Aspect Oriented Re-engineering of Legacy Software Using Cross-Cutting Concern Characterization and Significant Code Smells Detection

Although object-oriented programming (OOP) methodologies immensely promote reusable and well-factored decomposition of complex source code, legacy software systems often show symptoms of deteriorating design over time due to lack of maintenance. Software systems may have different business and application contexts, but most of these systems require similar maintenance mechanism of understanding, analysis and transformation. As a consequence, intensive re-engineering efforts based on the model driven approach can be effective ensuring that best practices are followed during maintenance and eventually reducing the development cost. In this paper, we suggest detailed framework of re-engineering which includes: (i) rigorous and automated source code analysis technique for identification, characterization and prioritization of most prominent and threatening design flaws in legacy software, (ii) migration of existing the code to aspect-oriented programming (AOP) code by exploiting current state of art for aspect mining mechanism and incorporating behavioral knowledge of cross-cutting concerns. To exemplify how the approach works a case study has been conducted to experimentally validate the idea and analyze the effect of process on specific software quality spectrum. An explicit analysis of prevalent work on the subject and their critical reviews are also presented to further enhance the recognition of proposed re-engineering framework.

Automatic Runtime Adaptation for Component-Based Simulation Algorithms

The state and structure of a model may vary during a simulation and, thus, also its computational demands. Adapting simulation algorithms to these demands at runtime can therefore improve their performance. While this is a general and cross-cutting concern, only few simulation systems offer reusable support for this kind of runtime adaptation. We present a flexible and generic mechanism for the runtime adaptation of component-based simulation algorithms. It encapsulates simulation algorithms applicable to a given problem and employs reinforcement learning to explore the algorithms’ performance during a simulation run. We evaluate our approach on a modeling formalism from computational biology and on a benchmark model defined in PDEVS, thereby investigating a broad range of options for improving its learning capabilities.

Analyzing engagement in a web-based intervention platform through visualizing log-data.

BackgroundEngagement has emerged as a significant cross-cutting concern within the development of Web-based interventions. There have been calls to institute a more rigorous approach to the design of Web-based interventions, to increase both the quantity and quality of engagement. One approach would be to use log-data to better understand the process of engagement and patterns of use. However, an important challenge lies in organizing log-data for productive analysis.ObjectiveOur aim was to conduct an initial exploration of the use of visualizations of log-data to enhance understanding of engagement with Web-based interventions.MethodsWe applied exploratory sequential data analysis to highlight sequential aspects of the log data, such as time or module number, to provide insights into engagement. After applying a number of processing steps, a range of visualizations were generated from the log-data. We then examined the usefulness of these visualizations for understanding the engagement of individual users and the engagement of cohorts of users. The visualizations created are illustrated with two datasets drawn from studies using the SilverCloud Platform: (1) a small, detailed dataset with interviews (n=19) and (2) a large dataset (n=326) with 44,838 logged events.ResultsWe present four exploratory visualizations of user engagement with a Web-based intervention, including Navigation Graph, Stripe Graph, Start–Finish Graph, and Next Action Heat Map. The first represents individual usage and the last three, specific aspects of cohort usage. We provide examples of each with a discussion of salient features.ConclusionsLog-data analysis through data visualization is an alternative way of exploring user engagement with Web-based interventions, which can yield different insights than more commonly used summative measures. We describe how understanding the process of engagement through visualizations can support the development and evaluation of Web-based interventions. Specifically, we show how visualizations can (1) allow inspection of content or feature usage in a temporal relationship to the overall program at different levels of granularity, (2) detect different patterns of use to consider personalization in the design process, (3) detect usability issues, (4) enable exploratory analysis to support the design of statistical queries to summarize the data, (5) provide new opportunities for real-time evaluation, and (6) examine assumptions about interactivity that underlie many summative measures in this field.

Dioptase: a distributed data streaming middleware for the future web of things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a promising concept toward pervasive computing as it may radically change the way people interact with the physical world, by connecting sensors to the Internet and, at a higher level, to the Web, thereby enacting a Web of Things (WoT). One of the challenges raised by the WoT is the in-network continuous processing of data streams presented by Things, which must be investigated urgently because it affects the future data models of the IoT, and is critical regarding the scalability and the sustainability required by the IoT. This cross-cutting concern has been previously studied in the context of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) given the focus on the acquisition and in-network processing of sensed data. However, proposed solutions feature various proprietary and highly specialized technologies that are difficult to integrate and complex to use, which represents a hurdle to their wide deployment. At the other end of the spectrum, cloud-based solutions introduce a too high energy cost for the envisioned IoT scale, considering the energy cost of communication over computation. There is thus a need for a distributed middleware solution for data stream management that leverages existing WSN work, while integrating it with today’s Web technologies in order to support the required flexibility and the interoperability of the IoT. Toward that goal, this paper introduces Dioptase, a lightweight Data Stream Management System for the WoT, which aims to integrate the Things and their streams into today’s Web by presenting sensors and actuators as Web services. The middleware specifically provides a way to describe complex fully-distributed stream-based mashups and to deploy them dynamically, at any time, as task graphs, over available Things of the network, including resource-constrained ones.

Self-Supervising BPEL Processes

Service compositions suffer changes in their partner services. Even if the composition does not change, its behavior may evolve over time and become incorrect. Such changes cannot be fully foreseen through prerelease validation, but impose a shift in the quality assessment activities. Provided functionality and quality of service must be continuously probed while the application executes, and the application itself must be able to take corrective actions to preserve its dependability and robustness. We propose the idea of self-supervising BPEL processes, that is, special-purpose compositions that assess their behavior and react through user-defined rules. Supervision consists of monitoring and recovery. The former checks the system's execution to see whether everything is proceeding as planned, while the latter attempts to fix any anomalies. The paper introduces two languages for defining monitoring and recovery and explains how to use them to enrich BPEL processes with self-supervision capabilities. Supervision is treated as a cross-cutting concern that is only blended at runtime, allowing different stakeholders to adopt different strategies with no impact on the actual business logic. The paper also presents a supervision-aware runtime framework for executing the enriched processes, and briefly discusses the results of in-lab experiments and of a first evaluation with industrial partners.