Open Services For Lifecycle Collaboration Research Articles

Extending the OSLC Standard for ECA-Based Automation

Workflow automation is taking over software development systems, helping businesses increase efficiency, accelerate production, and adapt quickly to market changes. Combined with agile principles, it has given birth to the DevOps paradigm. However, practitioners often face an important issue known as vendor lock-in caused by the cost of tool replacement or migration to different platforms. This issue could be addressed by standardising service interfaces to facilitate their integration. Linked Data is an attractive choice for implementing such a standard without sacrificing versatility. Following this approach, the Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) proposal aims to build an environment where services can interoperate using standard models. Therefore, this article proposes an extension of the existing OSLC specification, based on the Event-Condition-Action (ECA) model, for event-based interoperable automation. This extension enables a new path in the field of semantic automation for OSLC services, which allows the self-interaction of services among them and with human users. The article presents the key concepts of the proposed model and exemplifies its application in an automation scenario with two real-life services. The validation of the proposal has been carried out using established ontology evaluation methods, such as coverage and similarity metrics and competency questions.

An OSLC-based environment for system-level functional testing of ERTMS/ETCS controllers

Product and application life-cycle management (PLM/ALM) are the processes that govern a product and a software system, respectively, encompassing the creation, deployment and operation of a system from the beginning to the end of its life. As both PLM and ALM require cross-discipline collaboration and cooperation, tools integration and inter-operation are necessary to enable the efficient and effective usage of tool suites supporting the management of the entire system life-cycle and overcome the limitations of all-in-one solutions from one tool vendor. In this context, the Open Services for Life-cycle Collaboration (OSLC) initiative proposes a set of specifications to allow a seamless integration based on linked data. This paper describes the work performed within the ARTEMIS JU project CRYSTAL to develop an environment for the functional system-level testing of railway controllers, relying on OSLC to enable inter-operation with existing PLM/ALM tools. A concrete realization of the proposed architecture is described also discussing some design and implementation choices. A real industrial case study is used to exemplify the features and the usage of the environment in testing one of the functionalities of the Radio Block Centre, the vital core of the European Rail Traffic Management System/European Train Control System (ERTMS/ETCS) Control System.

43 SCHIZOPHRENIA POLYGENIC RISK IS ASSOCIATED WITH BRAIN MATURATION IN TYPICALLY DEVELOPING YOUTH

Product and application life-cycle management (PLM/ALM) are the processes that govern a product and a software system, respectively, encompassing the creation, deployment and operation of a system from the beginning to the end of its life. As both PLM and ALM require cross-discipline collaboration and cooperation, tools integration and inter-operation are necessary to enable the efficient and effective usage of tool suites supporting the management of the entire system life-cycle and overcome the limitations of all-in-one solutions from one tool vendor. In this context, the Open Services for Life-cycle Collaboration (OSLC) initiative proposes a set of specifications to allow a seamless integration based on linked data. This paper describes the work performed within the ARTEMIS JU project CRYSTAL to develop an environment for the functional system-level testing of railway controllers, relying on OSLC to enable inter-operation with existing PLM/ALM tools. A concrete realization of the proposed architecture is described also discussing some design and implementation choices. A real industrial case study is used to exemplify the features and the usage of the environment in testing one of the functionalities of the Radio Block Centre, the vital core of the European Rail Traffic Management System/European Train Control System (ERTMS/ETCS) Control System.

Elevating the meaning of data and operations within the development lifecycle through an interoperable toolchain

AbstractThe use of different engineering methods and tools is a common practice to cover all stages in the systems development lifecycle, generating a very good number of system artifacts. Moreover, these artifacts are commonly encoded in different formats and can only be accessed, in most cases, through proprietary and non‐standard protocols. In this context, the OSLC (Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration) initiative pursues the creation of public specifications (data shapes) to exchange any artifact generated during the development lifecycle. In this paper, authors extend and apply the OSLC KM (Knowledge Management) specification as a solution with a two‐folded objective: 1) representation of any kind of system artifact and 2) extension of OSLC mechanisms to support the notion of delegated operation. In this manner, it is possible to enhance the exchange of data items and to reuse existing operations within the toolchain as it is demonstrated through a case study.

Knowledge Representation of Cyber-physical Systems for Monitoring Purpose

Automated warehouses, as a form of cyber-physical systems (CPSs), require several components to work collaboratively to address the common business objectives of complex logistics systems. During the collaborative operations, a number of key performance indicators (KPI) can be monitored to understand the proficiency of the warehouse and control the operations and decisions. It is possible to drive and monitor these KPIs by looking at both the state of the warehouse components and the operations carried out by them. Therefore, it is necessary to represent this knowledge in an explicit and formally-specified data model and provide automated methods to derive the KPIs from the representation. In this paper, we implement a minimalistic data model for a subset of warehouse resources using linked data in order to monitor a few KPIs, namely sustainability, safety and performance. The applicability of the approach and the data model is illustrated through a use case. We demonstrate that it is possible to develop minimalistic data models through Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) resource shapes which enables compatibility with the declarative and procedural knowledge of automated warehouse agents specified in Planning Domain Definition Language (PDDL).

A Service-Oriented Tool-Chain for Model-Based Systems Engineering of Aero-Engines

This paper proposes a service-oriented tool-chain with an emphasis on domain-specific views, simulation automation, and process management to support model-based system engineering of aero-engines. In the tool-chain, a domain-specific modeling approach is adopted to facilitate the descriptions of co-design workflows and the related development information. The relevant domain-specific models are the basis for automated creation of a Web-based process management system consolidating and controlling service-oriented technical resources (models, data, and tools). In particular, the system also provides support for automated orchestration of tool operations, model, and simulation configurations. In order to promote the model and tool interoperability, the tool-chain adopts open standards for integrations, including open services for lifecycle collaboration and functional mock-up interface. Finally, through a case study of simulation-based aero-engine performance analysis, we evaluate the flexibility and efficiency of this tool chain by comparing it with a traditional simulation process both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Service Oriented Integration of Distributed Heterogeneous IT Systems in Production Engineering Using Information Standards and Linked Data

While design of production systems based on digital models brings benefits, the communication of models comes with challenges since models typically reside in a heterogeneous IT environment using different syntax and semantics. Coping with heterogeneity requires a smart integration strategy. One main paradigm to integrate data and IT systems is to deploy information standards. In particular, ISO 10303 STEP has been endorsed as a suitable standard to exchange a wide variety of product manufacturing data. One the other hand, service-oriented tool integration solutions are progressively adopted for the integration of data and IT-tools, especially with the emergence of Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration whose focus is on the linking of data from heterogeneous software tools. In practice, there should be a combination of these approaches to facilitate the integration process. Hence, the aim of this paper is to investigate the applications of the approaches and the principles behind them and try to find criteria for where to use which approach. In addition, we explore the synergy between them and consequently suggest an approach based on combination of them. In addition, a systematic approach is suggested to identify required level of integrations and their corresponding approaches exemplified in a typical IT system architecture in Production Engineering.

Using Linked Data with Information Standards for Interoperability in Production Engineering

Design and verification of factory layout and material flow is a multidisciplinary, knowledge-intensive task which requires a collaborative framework where all specialists involved can communicate, interact, manage and visualize different models. However, the communication of digital models comes with challenges. The information resides in various systems and applications, in different formats and with various levels of detail and viewpoints. This makes the communication and sharing of information among different actors and application, challenging.To deal with the data exchange and integration problem, the information standards ISO 10303 (STEP) has shown a strong capability to represent rich information models in a wide variety of industrial domains for the purpose of exchanging data.On the other hand, the Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) initiative provides a minimalistic set of standardized information models, focusing on the most common concepts within a particular domain. Assuming a loosely-coupled distributed architecture of tools and services, OSLC adopts the Linked Data (LD) approach to ensure data consistency across the data resources.How can we combine STEP's rich information model for data exchange, with OSLC's minimalistic approach for data integration The aim of this work is to show the applicability of using these two complementary paradigms – and their corresponding standards to support interoperability and data integration in a heterogeneous IT environment for material flow analysis and layout design.

Integration of Digital Factory with Smart Factory Based on Internet of Things

Internet of things (IoT) in manufacturing can be defined as a future where every day physical objects in the shop floor, people and systems (things) are connected by the Internet to build services critical to the manufacturing. Smart factory is a way towards a factory-of-things, which is very much aligned with IoT. IoT not only deals with smart connections between physical objects but also with the interaction with different IT tools used within the digital factory. Data and information come from heterogeneous IT systems and from different domains, viewpoints, levels of granularity and life cycle phases causing potential inconsistencies in the data sharing, preventing interoperability. Hence, our aim is to investigate approaches and principles when integrating the digital factory, IT tools and IoT in manufacturing in a heterogeneous IT environment to ensure data consistency. In particular this paper suggests an approach to identify what, when and how information should be integrated. Secondly it suggests integration between IoT and PLM platforms using semantic web technologies and Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) standard on tool interoperability.

Semantic‐based representation, enrichment and computation of product breakdown structures

AbstractProduct breakdown structures (PBS) are considered a cornerstone in the development of safety critical systems. In this context, the dramatic increase of the amount of applications, management platforms or services imply a tangled environment of data formats, models or protocols that prevent a proper re‐use of data and information resources. Recent times have seen the development of the Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) initiative to exchange domain‐based knowledge under a common and shared data model (RDF) and to access services under web‐based protocols. The present paper introduces a method and a model to represent a PBS applying a profile‐based approach using RDF‐based vocabularies. Moreover, a hybrid method to validate data, information and structure of a PBS is also introduced. Finally, a case study is conducted to compare traditional PBS management methods to a Linked Data based PBS using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Service Measurement Index (SMI).

OSLC‐KM: A knowledge management specification for OSLC‐based resources

AbstractThe use of different techniques and tools is a common practice to cover all stages in the development lifecycle generating a very good number of work products under different formats and protocols. This situation implies that a collaborative environment may have the potential of integrating all these data sources creating a real knowledge graph of the development lifecycle easing tasks such as traceability, V&V or quality management. In this light, the OSLC (Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration) initiative pursues the creation of specifications to unify under a common and shared data model (the Resource Description Framework‐RDF) all pieces of information and data involved in the development of a system. The present paper introduces the concept of knowledge management, outlines an OSLC‐based specification in the context of Systems Engineering and presents a case study exposing product scheme classifications.

9.4.1 Why avoiding how when defining what? Towards an OSLC‐based approach to support Model‐Driven Requirements Engineering

AbstractThe present paper debates the concept of requirement in the contexts of software and systems engineering. Requirements are usually extracted from documents, stakeholders and existing systems generating a natural language specification. On the other hand system models are designed to define system behavior and to validate and verify the system against a specification. That is why requirements, as a basic unit of specification, must be aligned and linked to a model with the aim of supporting the whole development lifecycle of any product or service. Although some Model‐based systems engineering (MBSE) methodologies have tried to bridge the gap between natural language and models moving from document‐centric to model or requirement‐based approaches, there is still a lack of interoperability and integration between requirements and models that prevent a proper (re) use of requirements in the whole lifecycle. Furthermore this situation is becoming a major challenge in critical systems since a complete verification and validation must be ensured. In this light the Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) initiative pursues the creation of specifications to unify under a common and shared data model (the Resource Description Framework‐RDF) all pieces of information and data involved in the development of a system. This initiative applies the principles of Semantic Web and the Linked Data initiative to provide a web standards‐based environment for systems development. More specifically, OSLC defines the Requirements Management specification to deliver a common environment for managing and exchanging requirements. In this sense the on‐going work implementing this specification and an example of modeling a controlled vocabulary for requirements management under the principles of the Linked Data and OSLC specifications is provided to demonstrate the capabilities and intentions of both initiatives. Finally some discussion, conclusions and future directions are also presented.