Plug-in Components Research Articles

On the conceptual design of a dynamic component model for reconfigurable AUTOSAR systems

The automotive industry has recently developed the embedded software standard AUTOSAR, which is now being introduced widely in production vehicles. The standard structures the application into reusable components that can be deployed in a specific vehicle using a configuration scheme. However, this configuration takes place at design time, with no provision for dynamically installing components to reconfigure the system. In this paper, we present the conceptual design of a dynamic component model that extends an AUTOSAR based control unit with the possibility to add plug-in components that execute on a virtual machine. This concept is intended to give benefits in terms of much shorter deployment time for new functions, even into vehicles that have already been produced. Further, it creates opportunities for vehicles to take part in federated embedded systems together with other products. It also opens up a market for third-party developers, and fosters open innovation in an ecosystem around the automotive software business.

Cyber-applications as gateway to data-rich Digital Earth systems

The underlying vision of the Digital Earth (DE) calls for applications that can embed vast quantities of geo-referenced data and allow users to study and analyse of our planet. Since the declaration of this vision in the late 90s, a significant number of DE data-sets have been created by the industry, governments, non-governmental organisations and individuals. An overwhelming majority of the successful applications that use DE data-sets has its end-user applications running on the desktop. While these applications are great tools, they remain inaccessible to the community as a whole. In this paper, we present a framework for the development of cyber-applications. We define an abstract architecture for cyber-applications based on the model-view-controller paradigm, which allows the dynamic inclusion of functional and data components into its execution engine at run-time. We define the operational characteristics of cyber-applications. We also specify the interface of pluggable components to the architecture. Finally, we demonstrate the appropriateness of the abstract architecture by means of a case study.

P2PRPIPS: A P2P and Reverse Proxy Based Web Intrusion Protection System

In order to protect web sites with various program languages and high throughput efficiently, a web Intrusion Protection System (IPS) based on P2P and reverse proxy architecture was designed and implemented. The P2P based web intrusion protection system has multi web firewall nodes and nodes with same program cooperate with each other under P2P architecture. Some nodes work as net flow allocator and some work as detector and they can convert to each other according to the requirements dynamically. The WAF program has the characteristics of session keeping and load balancing and it can detect messages by using expert library and many plug-in components. The technology of reverse proxy is used for response the web request. Experiments show that the system can effectively prevent attacks form application layer. It is proved more efficient and stable than single node.

OpenMP-style parallelism in data-centered multicore computing with R

R 1 is a domain specific language widely used for data analysis by the statistics community as well as by researchers in finance, biology, social sciences, and many other disciplines. As R programs are linked to input data, the exponential growth of available data makes high-performance computing with R imperative. To ease the process of writing parallel programs in R, code transformation from a sequential program to a parallel version would bring much convenience to R users. In this paper, we present our work in semi-automatic parallelization of R codes with user-added OpenMP-style pragmas. While such pragmas are used at the frontend, we take advantage of multiple parallel backends with different R packages. We provide flexibility for importing parallelism with plug-in components, impose built-in MapReduce for data processing, and also maintain code reusability. We illustrate the advantage of the on-the-fly mechanisms which can lead to significant applications in data-centered parallel computing.

Video Sensor Architecture for Surveillance Applications

This paper introduces a flexible hardware and software architecture for a smart video sensor. This sensor has been applied in a video surveillance application where some of these video sensors are deployed, constituting the sensory nodes of a distributed surveillance system. In this system, a video sensor node processes images locally in order to extract objects of interest, and classify them. The sensor node reports the processing results to other nodes in the cloud (a user or higher level software) in the form of an XML description. The hardware architecture of each sensor node has been developed using two DSP processors and an FPGA that controls, in a flexible way, the interconnection among processors and the image data flow. The developed node software is based on pluggable components and runs on a provided execution run-time. Some basic and application-specific software components have been developed, in particular: acquisition, segmentation, labeling, tracking, classification and feature extraction. Preliminary results demonstrate that the system can achieve up to 7.5 frames per second in the worst case, and the true positive rates in the classification of objects are better than 80%.

Internationalization of Linked Data: The case of the Greek DBpedia edition

This paper describes the deployment of the Greek DBpedia and the contribution to the DBpedia information extraction framework with regard to internationalization (I18n) and multilingual support. I18n filters are proposed as pluggable components in order to address issues when extracting knowledge from non-English Wikipedia editions. We report on our strategy for supporting the International Resource Identifier (IRI) and introduce two new extractors to complement the I18n filters. Additionally, the paper discusses the definition of Transparent Content Negotiation (TCN) rules for IRIs to address de-referencing and IRI serialization problems. The aim of this research is to establish best practices (complemented by software) to allow the DBpedia community to easily generate, maintain and properly interlink language-specific DBpedia editions. Furthermore, these best practices can be applied for the publication of Linked Data in non-Latin languages in general.

Internationalization of Linked Data: The Case of the Greek DBpedia Edition

This paper describes the deployment of the Greek DBpedia and the contribution to the DBpedia information extraction framework with regard to internationalization (I18n) and multilingual support. I18n filters are proposed as pluggable components in order to address issues when extracting knowledge from non-English Wikipedia editions. We report about our strategy to support International Resource Identifier (IRI) and introduce two new extractors to complement the I18n filters. Additionally, the paper discusses the definition of Transparent Content Negotiation (TCN) rules for IRIs to address de-referencing and IRI serialization problems. The aim of this research is to establish best practices (complemented by software) to allow the DBpedia community to easily generate, maintain and properly interlink language-specific DBpedia editions. Furthermore, these best practices can be applied for the publication of Linked Data in non-Latin languages in general.

A message-queuing framework for STAR's online monitoring and metadata collection

We report our experience on migrating STARs Online Services (Run Control System, Data Acquisition System, Slow Control System and Subsystem Monitoring) from direct read/write database accesses to a modern non-blocking message-oriented infrastructure. Based on the Advanced Messaging Queuing Protocol (AMQP) and standards, this novel approach does not specify the message data structure, allowing great flexibility in its use. After careful consideration, we chose Google Protocol Buffers as our primary (de)serialization format for structured data exchange. This migration allows us to reduce the overall system complexity and greatly improve the reliability of the metadata collection and the performance of our online services in general. We will present this new framework through its software architecture overview, providing details about our staged and non-disruptive migration process as well as details of the implementation of pluggable components to provide future improvements without compromising stability and availability of services.

GAC-GEO: a generic agglomerative clustering framework for geo-referenced datasets

Major challenges of clustering geo-referenced data include identifying arbitrarily shaped clusters, properly utilizing spatial information, coping with diverse extrinsic characteristics of clusters and supporting region discovery tasks. The goal of region discovery is to identify interesting regions in geo-referenced datasets based on a domain expert’s notion of interestingness. Almost all agglomerative clustering algorithms only focus on the first challenge. The goal of the proposed work is to develop agglomerative clustering frameworks that deal with all four challenges. In particular, we propose a generic agglomerative clustering framework for geo-referenced datasets (GAC-GEO) generalizing agglomerative clustering by allowing for three plug-in components. GAC-GEO agglomerates neighboring clusters maximizing a plug-in fitness function that capture the notion of interestingness of clusters. It enhances typical agglomerative clustering algorithms in two ways: fitness functions support task-specific clustering, whereas generic neighboring relationships increase the number of merging candidates. We also demonstrate that existing agglomerative clustering algorithms can be considered as specific cases of GAC-GEO. We evaluate the proposed framework on an artificial dataset and two real-world applications involving region discovery. The experimental results show that GAC-GEO is capable of identifying arbitrarily shaped hotspots for different data mining tasks.

Adding genericity to a plug-in framework

Plug-in components are a means for making feature-rich applications customizable. Combined with plug-and-play composition, end users can assemble customized applications without programming. If plug-and-play composition is also dynamic, applications can be reconfigured on the fly to load only components the user needs for his current work. We have created Plux.NET, a plug-in framework that supports dynamic plug-and-play composition. The basis for plug-and-play in Plux is the composer which replaces programmatic composition by automatic composition. Components just specify their requirements and provisions using metadata. The composer then assembles the components based on that metadata by matching requirements and provisions. When the composer needs to reuse general-purpose components in different parts of an application, the component model requires genericity. The composer depends on metadata that specify which components should be connected and for general-purpose components those metadata need to be different on each reuse. We present an approach for generic plug-ins with component templates and an implementation for Plux. The general-purpose components become templates and the templates get parameterized when they are composed.

Petri Net-based Coordination Component for Collaborative Design

Considering the lack of efficient coordination of task interdependencies in a collaborative design system, the temporal and resource coordination mechanisms for the problems in our investigation are established based on Petri Nets. The whole system could be expanded as a Petri Net for simulation and analysis. The architecture of reusable and pluggable components is also introduced to implement such mechanisms. The proposed approach offers strong support for the performance evaluation of the collaborative design.

A scheduling framework for large-scale, parallel, and topology-aware applications

Scheduling of large-scale, distributed topology-aware applications requires that not only the properties of the requested machines be considered, but also the properties of the machines’ interconnections. This requirement severely complicates the scheduling process, as even a matching between a single multi-processor task and available machines in a single time slot becomes an NP-complete problem with no polynomial approximation. In this paper we propose a complete scheduling framework for multi-cluster, heterogeneous environments that provides, in practice, an efficient solution for the scheduling of topology-aware applications. The proposed framework is very flexible as it is composed of pluggable components and can be easily configured to support a variety of scheduling policies. We also describe three novel scheduling and coallocation algorithms that were developed and plugged into the framework. The proposed scheduling framework was integrated into the QosCosGrid 1 1 http://www.qoscosgrid.eu. system, where it is used as the main decision-making module.

Run-time interoperability between neuronal network simulators based on the MUSIC framework.

MUSIC is a standard API allowing large scale neuron simulators to exchange data within a parallel computer during runtime. A pilot implementation of this API has been released as open source. We provide experiences from the implementation of MUSIC interfaces for two neuronal network simulators of different kinds, NEST and MOOSE. A multi-simulation of a cortico-striatal network model involving both simulators is performed, demonstrating how MUSIC can promote inter-operability between models written for different simulators and how these can be re-used to build a larger model system. Benchmarks show that the MUSIC pilot implementation provides efficient data transfer in a cluster computer with good scaling. We conclude that MUSIC fulfills the design goal that it should be simple to adapt existing simulators to use MUSIC. In addition, since the MUSIC API enforces independence of the applications, the multi-simulation could be built from pluggable component modules without adaptation of the components to each other in terms of simulation time-step or topology of connections between the modules.Electronic Supplementary Material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s12021-010-9064-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

A Component-Based Extension Framework for Large-Scale Parallel Simulations in NEURON

As neuronal simulations approach larger scales with increasing levels of detail, the neurosimulator software represents only a part of a chain of tools ranging from setup, simulation, interaction with virtual environments to analysis and visualizations. Previously published approaches to abstracting simulator engines have not received wide-spread acceptance, which in part may be to the fact that they tried to address the challenge of solving the model specification problem. Here, we present an approach that uses a neurosimulator, in this case NEURON, to describe and instantiate the network model in the simulator's native model language but then replaces the main integration loop with its own. Existing parallel network models are easily adopted to run in the presented framework. The presented approach is thus an extension to NEURON but uses a component-based architecture to allow for replaceable spike exchange components and pluggable components for monitoring, analysis, or control that can run in this framework alongside with the simulation.

A Web-Based Solution for Viewing Large-Sized Microscopic Images

This paper demonstrates a pure web-based solution enabling the presentation of scanned pathologic microscopic images on the web. For each slide, an entire specimen is scanned, and a high-resolution digital image (in the order of giga-pixels) is reconstructed. These huge images are then tiled into many 256 x 256-pixel blocks with different resolutions, and information about the blocks of each scanned slide is included in an extensible markup language metafile. Based on the data, a virtual microscopy system is created for viewing the scanned pathologic slides on web. The functionalities (changing viewing resolution, location adjustment, and multimedia annotation presentation) of our virtual slide viewing system are accomplished using pure hypertext markup language (HTML) and JavaScript. We show that there is no need to add plug-in components to browsers in order to handle virtual slides on the web. In a heterogeneous healthcare environment, methods using pure HTML and JavaScript to deal with pathologic content are more appropriate than using proprietary technologies supported only by specific browsers.

DEVELOPING A SECURE GEOSPATIAL VISUALIZATION AND COLLABORATION SYSTEM USING SOFTWARE ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY

Developing secure web applications is a difficult task because the original purpose of the World Wide Web (WWW) was to freely share information. This paper presents a prototype for a platform-independent secure geospatial visualization and collaboration web application. This system is developed using object-oriented system design methodology. It integrates software engineering, web security, visualization and Java technologies with the WWW to enable production, dissemination, and use of imagery and geospatial information on a hierarchical level through the WWW. Several visualization modules on the client side are developed using the Model-View-Controller design pattern technology. These modules are plug-in and reusable components for other similar applications. A Visualization Web Bridge and Data Providers on the server side are designed and implemented to bridge the gap between the Internet users and the remote geospatial databases. Several Internet security mechanisms are implemented to secure system configuration, to authenticate and authorize data access, and to secure information sharing. The system is an open and extensible source. The application results demonstrate that this system provides a certain level of security, and that users have flexibility to query, visualize, manipulate, and analyze real-time remote geospatial data. It exhibits that multiple users in geographically dispersed organizations can conveniently collaborate and share information as well as 3D images through this system. It also demonstrates that using object-oriented system design and design pattern provides a great chance for software reuse and increases the system flexibility.

Developing A Secure Geospatial Visualization and Collaboration System Using Software Engineering Technology

Developing secure web applications is a difficult task because the original purpose of the World Wide Web (WWW) was to freely share information. This paper presents a prototype for a platform-independent secure geospatial visualization and collaboration web application. This system is developed using object-oriented system design methodology. It integrates software engineering, web security, visualization and Java technologies with the WWW to enable production, dissemination, and use of imagery and geospatial information on a hierarchical level through the WWW. Several visualization modules on the client side are developed using the Model-View-Controller design pattern technology. These modules are plug-in and reusable components for other similar applications. A Visualization Web Bridge and Data Providers on the server side are designed and implemented to bridge the gap between the Internet users and the remote geospatial databases. Several Internet security mechanisms are implemented to secure system configuration, to authenticate and authorize data access, and to secure information sharing. The system is an open and extensible source. The application results demonstrate that this system provides a certain level of security, and that users have flexibility to query, visualize, manipulate, and analyze real-time remote geospatial data. It exhibits that multiple users in geographically dispersed organizations can conveniently collaborate and share information as well as 3D images through this system. It also demonstrates that using object-oriented system design and design pattern provides a great chance for software reuse and increases the system flexibility.

GEMSS: Grid-infrastructure for Medical Service Provision

The European GEMSS Project is concerned with the creation of medical Grid service prototypes and their evaluation in a secure service-oriented infrastructure for distributed on demand/supercomputing. Key aspects of the GEMSS Grid middleware include negotiable QoS support for time-critical service provision, flexible support for business models, and security at all levels in order to ensure privacy of patient data as well as compliance to EU law. The GEMSS Grid infrastructure is based on a service-oriented architecture and is being built on top of existing standard Grid and Web technologies. The GEMSS infrastructure offers a generic Grid service provision framework that hides the complexity of transforming existing applications into Grid services. For the development of client-side applications or portals, a pluggable component framework has been developed, providing developers with full control over business processes, service discovery, QoS negotiation, and workflow, while keeping their underlying implementation hidden from view. A first version of the GEMSS Grid infrastructure is operational and has been used for the set-up of a Grid test-bed deploying six medical Grid service prototypes including maxillo-facial surgery simulation, neuro-surgery support, radio-surgery planning, inhaled drug-delivery simulation, cardiovascular simulation and advanced image reconstruction. The GEMSS Grid infrastructure is based on standard Web Services technology with an anticipated future transition path towards the OGSA standard proposed by the Global Grid Forum. GEMSS demonstrates that the Grid can be used to provide medical practitioners and researchers with access to advanced simulation and image processing services for improved preoperative planning and near real-time surgical support.

The Java Portlet Specification (Die Java Portlet Spezifikation)

Summary Portlets are Java technology based web components, managed by a portlet container, that process requests and generate dynamic content. They are used by portals as pluggable user interface components that provide a presentation layer to Information Systems. After servlets portlets are the next step in web application programming, as they allow the integration of different applications into one consistent view for the end-user. They enable modular and user centric web applications and thus go beyond the servlet model where the web application is one monolithic block. In this article we present the JSR 168 Java Portlet Specification and explain its underlying concepts. We show a Portlet example and discuss how portlets interact with other Java technologies.

NeuroML for plug and play neuronal modeling

Modern software systems for simulation, database access, visualisation and data analysis, supporting distributed, extensible, evolutionary development, are designed around a small core that loads plug-in components. We have designed such a system for the neurosciences using an XML-based protocol, NeuroML, to exchange information between components. NeuroML supports high-level descriptions of data, models, references, and other types of information. We have built simulation kernel plug-ins, visualisation plug-ins, and model-description GUI plug-ins which interoperate in this framework. We describe the current status of these plug-ins and our future plans for further plug-in components.