Non-functional Criteria Research Articles

Evaluating automated machine learning platforms for use in healthcare.

To describe development and application of a checklist of criteria for selecting an automated machine learning (Auto ML) platform for use in creating clinical ML models. Evaluation criteria for selecting an Auto ML platform suited to ML needs of a local health district were developed in 3 steps: (1) identification of key requirements, (2) a market scan, and (3) an assessment process with desired outcomes. The final checklist comprising 21 functional and 6 non-functional criteria was applied to vendor submissions in selecting a platform for creating a ML heparin dosing model as a use case. A team of clinicians, data scientists, and key stakeholders developed a checklist which can be adapted to ML needs of healthcare organizations, the use case providing a relevant example. An evaluative checklist was developed for selecting Auto ML platforms which requires validation in larger multi-site studies.

Perancangan Sistem Informasi Inventaris Barang Berbasis Web Secara Online Pada Universitas Prima Indonesia

The importance of inventory management for business success and how technology can help improve inventory management. The design of an online web-based inventory information system at Prima Indonesia University is discussed in this article. The research aims to improve inventory management business profitability at Prima Indonesia University. One of the approaches used to collect data for this project is the waterfall system development process, which also includes interviews, observations, documentation, and literature studies. Blackbox testing is a technique used to test the system in publication. Functional testing verifies that the system can operate according to the functional requirements established during the analysis and design stages. Testing the system's ability to meet non-functional criteria, such as security, speed, and performance, is known as non-functional testing. After testing, the author makes improvements and fixes to the system found during testing. The support and maintenance stages are carried out regularly to ensure the system runs well and meets user needs. The results showed that the web-based online inventory system developed for Prima Indonesia University using the waterfall model can help improve inventory management and business profitability. The system can reduce errors in inventory management and speed up the process of searching and retrieving inventory data. System testing shows that the system can function properly and meet the requirements at the analysis and design stages.

QoS-Based Pattern Recognition Approach for Web Service Discovery: Ar_WSDS

Web service composition requires high levels of integration and reliability of the services involved in its operation, which must meet specific quality criteria to ensure their proper execution and deployment. The discovery and selection of web services currently face optimization problems. Many services might satisfy a requirement with similar quality criteria. Because of this, software developers have to choose the most appropriate services for a given composition, complicated by the rapid increase in providers and services available in the cloud. Service composition also implies coupling according to a composition flow and non-functional requirement criteria. Such requirements make selection and composition a complex task not previously solved in the literature. This paper presents Ar_WSDS, a computational approach for web services discovery and selection in cloud environments, which bases its implementation on the brain’s pattern recognition systematic functioning. This process allows classifying web services through recognition modules created dynamically based on their quality parameters, resulting in a set of web services suitable for a web service composition. This approach allows a solution to the selection problem using less complex tasks. This paper introduces an architectural and procedural definition that provides the web service description with a pattern to recognize and select services using different recognition levels. We simulated our approach and evaluated it using a dataset from the QWS project that offers a set of quality criteria collected from different providers. The web services are recognized and classified using different quality criteria for the composition and each of their services. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the discovery and selection process compared to other approaches. Furthermore, Ar_WSDS allows us to recognize and filter out web services with ambiguity and similarity in their provider information, a process that minimizes the discovery space for services.

Big data platforms: in the lens of selection and evaluation approach

ABSTRACT The manifestation of big data has brought about firms’ intense desires for analytical value creation besides crucial challenges to handle data processing. Unlocking the potentials of big data analytics depends on devising and setting up platforms through the big data value chain. Achieving these appropriate platforms is indispensable and necessitates a selection and evaluation method. To that end, in this research, a new fuzzy superiority and inferiority ranking approach for selecting and evaluating big data platforms has been investigated; and introduced. In the proposed approach, both functional and non-functional criteria for the big data platform were gathered and customized. For demonstrating the applicability of the method, a numerical example provided; and the suggested approach was used in a company case that had been encountered with this platform acquisition problem. Simplifying assessment and selection of the big data platform, and feasible procedure are the main values of the offered approach. The proposed approach is beneficial for buyer firms, vendors and industries of big data, considering more accurate evaluations and making better acquisition decisions.

A similarity network for web services operations substitution

Studying the similarity between Web services operations is a key solution to many problems, especially those related to the substitution, such as during a call failure or a malfunction, a list of similar operations is returned to the customer. He chooses an operation based on non-functional criteria. Generally, the similarity between Web services operations depends on the similarity between their inputs and their outputs parameters. In this work, we propose a new technique to study the functional similarity between web services operations. We will also, form a network such as the nodes represent the operations of the web services. A link joins two similar operations according to some relationships defined between them. The constituted network responds to the substitution best and much easier than existing works.

Qos-Based Web Service Discovery And Selection Using Machine Learning

In service computing, the same target functions can be achieved by multiple Web services from different providers. Due to the functional similarities, the client needs to consider the non-functional criteria. However, Quality of Service provided by the developer suffers from scarcity and lack of reliability. In addition, the reputation of the service providers is an important factor, especially those with little experience, to select a service. Most of the previous studies were focused on the user's feedbacks for justifying the selection. Unfortunately, not all the users provide the feedback unless they had extremely good or bad experience with the service. In this vision paper, we propose a novel architecture for the web service discovery and selection. The core component is a machine learning based methodology to predict the QoS properties using source code metrics. The credibility value and previous usage count are used to determine the reputation of the service.

An Adapted Ant-Inspired Algorithm for Enhancing Web Service Composition

Web Service Composition (WSC) provides a flexible framework for integrating independent web services to satisfy complex user requirements. WSC aims to choose the best web service from a set of candidates. The candidates have the same functionality and different non-functional criteria such as Quality of Service (QoS). In this work, the authors propose an ant-inspired algorithm for such problem. They named it Flying Ant Colony Optimization (FACO). Flying ants inject pheromone not only on the nodes on their paths but also on neighboring nodes increasing their chances of being explored in future iterations. The amount of pheromone deposited on these neighboring nodes is inversely proportional to the distance between them and the nodes on the path. The authors believe that by depositing pheromone on neighboring nodes, FACO may consider a more diverse population of solutions, which may avoid stagnation. The empirical experiments show that FACO outperform Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) for the WSC problem, in terms of the quality of solutions but it requires slightly more execution time.

Assessing Experimental Private Cloud Using Web of System Performance Model

Cloud computing has attracted the attention of educational and research institutions as a way to support modern trends in teaching and learning. This article describes the performance assessment of a private cloud within a university environment using the Web of System Performance (WOSP) model. A survey was carried out to measure the respondents' attitude towards the use of private cloud in which students and experts serve as sample. Testing was conducted by designing a virtual lab consisting of a number of virtual machines operated by a selected sample. The results showed that the usage of cloud computing in university has good perceived system performance judging from how it fares in the constituent parts of the WOSP model. Furthermore, the study revealed that usability and flexibility outperformed criterion like security. Moreover, several non-functional criteria outperformed functionality. In short, the knowledge and results presented from assessing a private cloud using WOSP model could be beneficial for users, designers and managers of private clouds especially in universities.

A New Approach for Grouping Similar Operations Extracted from WSDLs Files using K-Means Algorithm

Grouping similar operations is an effective solution to the various problems, especially those related to research because the services will be classified by joint operations. Searching for a particular operation returns, as a result, all services with this same operation, but also the problems related to the substitution (such as, during a call failure or a malfunction). A list of similar operations is returned to the client. He chooses an operation, based on non-functional criteria. In this work, our goal is to study the functional similarity between operations, and thus constituting groups of similar operations, while benefiting from the K-means algorithm.

Design criteria for visualization of energy consumption: A systematic literature review

Visualizing energy consumption is widely considered an important way to motivate end-users to conserve energy. Designing effective visualizations, however, is a non-trivial software design challenge. In particular, there are no clear criteria for designing visualizations of energy consumption for end-users. This paper presents systematic literature review findings from a total of 22 primary studies selected after applying quality and relevance filters. The results were synthesized using Grounded Theory's open coding and constant comparison procedures and led to the emergence of design criteria for visualization as the central theme across all primary studies. The key categories comprising this central theme include: (a) functional criteria, which include information displayed in the visualization, modes of visualization, and visualization techniques, and (b) non-functional criteria, which include hardware and software considerations such as integrality, extensibility and portability. Together, these criteria provide clear guidelines based on research evidence for software engineers and researchers designing visualizations of energy consumption for end-users.

Enhancing Fuzzy Topsis for web service selection

With proliferation of web services, quality-of-service QoS capability is becoming a significant factor for distinguishing services. QoS includes various non-functional issues such as performance, reliability and availability, etc. The functional requirements are assured through Semantic Matchmaking algorithm whereas the non functional requirements are guaranteed though QoS factors. Selection of a web service has become very crucial due to the availability of multiple web service with similar functionality. To solve this issue there is a need to distinguish the services based on their non-functional criteria QoS. This paper proposes an enhanced QoS-based semantic web service selection and ranking solution with the application of Fuzzy Topsis method. Further, this paper proposes a new dynamic replication algorithm to increase the availability of the service and decrease network delays. This is demonstrated using a diabetes monitoring system.

The active components approach for distributed systems development

The development of distributed systems is an intricate task due to inherent characteristics of such systems. In this paper these characteristics are categorised into software engineering, concurrency, distribution and non-functional criteria. Popular classes of distributed systems are classified with respect to these challenges, and it is deduced that modern technological trends lead to the inception of new application classes with increased demands regarding challenges from more than one area. One recent example is the class of ubiquitous computing, which assumes dynamic scenarios in which devices come and go at any time. Furthermore, it is analysed to which extent today's prevailing software development paradigms – object, component, service and agent orientation – are conceptually capable of supporting the challenges. This comparison reveals that each of the paradigms has its own strengths and weaknesses and none addresses all of the challenges. The new active component approach is proposed aiming at a conceptual integration of the existing paradigms in order to tackle all challenges in an intuitive and unified way. The structure, behaviour and composition of active components are explained, and an infrastructure for active components is introduced. To underline the usefulness of the approach real-world applications is presented and an evaluation according to the challenges is given.

Experiences of sampling-based approaches for estimating QoS parameters in the Web Service composition problem

QoS parameters can be used to characterise services or their compositions according to non-functional criteria. We propose samplingbased techniques to accurately estimate QoS values that will be used in a hybrid composer named PT-SAM, to identify the compositions that best meet a user request. PT-SAM adapts a Petri-Net unfolding and uses a utility function defined on the QoS estimates, to guide the composer. We report on the quality of the estimates and the performance of the composer. Our experiments show that solutions generated by PT-SAM are close to the optimal solutions while the composer can scale to large search spaces.

Seeking Quality of Web Service Composition in a Semantic Dimension

Ranking and optimization of web service compositions represent challenging areas of research with significant implications for the realization of the “Web of Services” vision. “Semantic web services” use formal semantic descriptions of web service functionality and interface to enable automated reasoning over web service compositions. To judge the quality of the overall composition, for example, we can start by calculating the semantic similarities between outputs and inputs of connected constituent services, and aggregate these values into a measure of semantic quality for the composition. This paper takes a specific interest in combining semantic and nonfunctional criteria such as quality of service (QoS) to evaluate quality in web services composition. It proposes a novel and extensible model balancing the new dimension of semantic quality (as a functional quality metric) with a QoS metric, and using them together as ranking and optimization criteria. It also demonstrates the utility of Genetic Algorithms to allow optimization within the context of a large number of services foreseen by the “Web of Services” vision. We test the performance of the overall approach using a set of simulation experiments, and discuss its advantages and weaknesses.

Satisfying End User Constraints in Service Composition by Applying Stochastic Search Methods

Semantic web service compositions must be aligned with requirements from the target users in terms of quality requirements. Given a set of quality requirements, one can choose to either find the optimal composition or a “good enough” composition, which satisfies these requirements. Since optimizing compositions of semantic services under quality constraints is known to be NP-hard, it is unsuitable for realistic problems within large search spaces. The authors address the issue by using the “good enough” approach, selecting the first composition that passes their quality threshold. Firstly, this paper defines quality constraints within an innovative and extensible model designed to balance semantic fit (or functional quality) with quality of service (QoS) metrics. The semantic fit criterion evaluates the quality of semantic links between the semantic descriptions of Web services parameters, while QoS focuses on non-functional criteria of services. User quality requirements are met by selecting a valid composition. To allow the use of this model with a large number of candidate services as foreseen by the strategic EC-funded project SOA4All the authors formulate the selection problem as a Constraint Satisfaction Problem and test the use of a stochastic search method.

The Psychological Impact of Severe Hand Injury

The final outcome of severe hand injuries is not solely determined by the residual functional impairment, but is also a function of non-functional criteria, including the sequelae of the accompanying psychological trauma. This paper reviews the literature with respect to the psychological impact of severe hand injuries, including the special impact of amputations, adaptation processes, adaptation stages, prognostic criteria and aesthetic issues influencing the final individual outcome, including present recommendations for promoting a positive outcome. Motivated and psychologically stable people are reported to do well irrespective of the severity of a hand injury. In patients who find it difficult to cope mentally, successful treatment strategies have been proposed. Their implementation is in a constant state of evolution and includes not only improved surgical techniques and advanced pharmacological pain management but also early psychotherapeutic input and involvement of patients in decision making for treatment.

A quality‐of‐service‐based framework for creating distributed heterogeneous software components

AbstractComponent‐based software development offers a promising solution for taming the complexity found in today's distributed applications. Today's and future distributed software systems will certainly require combining heterogeneous software components that are geographically dispersed. For the successful deployment of such a software system, it is necessary that its realization, based on assembling heterogeneous components, not only meets the functional requirements, but also satisfies the non‐functional criteria such as the desired quality of service (QoS). In this paper, a framework based on the notions of a meta‐component model, a generative domain model and QoS parameters is described. A formal specification based on two‐level grammar is used to represent these notions in a tightly integrated way so that QoS becomes a part of the generative domain model. A simple case study is described in the context of this framework. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Evaluating and selecting testing tools

A system using process and forms to give managers and tool evaluators a reliable way to identify the tool that best fits their organization's needs is discussed. It is shown that a tool evaluator must analyze user needs, establish selection criteria (including general criteria, environment-dependent criteria, tool-dependent functional criteria, tool-dependent nonfunctional criteria, and weighting), search for tools, select the tools, and then reevaluate the tools. Forms for recording tool selection criteria, classifying testing tools, profiling tool-to-organization interconnections, creating hardware and software profiles, and creating tool-interconnection profiles are presented. It is argued that, with these forms, evaluators have a reasonably accurate and consistent system for identifying and quantifying user needs, establishing tool-selection criteria, finding available tools, and selecting tools and estimating return on investment.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>