Software Architecture Description Research Articles

Fuzzy Propositional Configuration Logics

We introduce and investigate a weighted propositional configuration logic over De Morgan algebras. This logic is able to describe software architectures with quantitative features especially the uncertainty of the interactions that occur in the architecture. We deal with the equivalence problem of formulas in our logic by showing that every formula can be written in a specific form. Surprisingly, there are formulas which are equivalent only over specific De Morgan algebras. We provide examples of formulas in our logic which describe well-known software architectures equipped with quantitative features such as the uncertainty and reliability of their interactions.

A New Complexity Metric for UML Sequence Diagrams

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) has been promoted as a way to produce high-quality software while increasing developer productivity through code reuse. Software systems and underlying designs get more extensive and more complicated while maintaining a high degree of quality. One of the widely accepted standards for describing software architectures is the UML Sequence Diagram. A sequence diagram depicts the interaction of two-dimensional chart players by showing messages delivered and received between them. This research aims to develop and validate a metric for complexity evaluation in software design architectures through UML Sequence diagrams. The study included design science, which included metric specification, the creation of a measurement tool, and conceptual and factual verification of the metrics. The metrics use diagram-centric complexity measurements shown to be meaningful when used to determine the difficulty of two example sequence diagrams. Furthermore, conceptual affirmation of the stated metrics was achieved through Weyuker's nine characteristics, which demonstrated that they are computationally efficient. The metric was empirically authenticated, and the findings show that measuring the complexity of sequence diagrams is expedient.

A Model-Based Approach for Common Representation and Description of Robotics Software Architectures

Unlike conventional software, robotic software suffers from a lack of methods and processes that could systematize and facilitate development. Thus, the application of software engineering techniques is at the heart of current issues in robotics. The work presented in this paper aims to facilitate the development of robotic software and to facilitate communication between experts in the field through the use of software engineering techniques and methods. It proposes RsaML (Robotic Software Architecture Modeling Language), a Domain Specific Modeling Language (DSML) dedicated to robotics, which takes into account the different categories of robotic software architectures and makes it possible to describe the latter independently from the implementation platform. The conceptual model defining the terminology and the hierarchy of concepts used for the description and representation of robotic software architectures in RsaML are presented in this article. RsaML is defined through a meta-model which represents the abstract syntax of the language. The real-time properties of robotic software architectures are identified and included in the meta-model. The use of RsaML is illustrated through several experimental scenarios of the language: the definition of a robotic system and the description of its software architecture, the verification of the semantics of a robotic software architecture, and the modeling of a robotic system whose software architecture does not belong to the usual categories. The support tool used for implementations and experimentation is Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF). The results of experimentation showed good working of the proposed solution and made it possible to validate the main concepts of the RsaML language.

Design of an Educational Virtual Assistant Software

Despite the great creators’ efforts of e-learning educational materials, it is not possible to define the content of these materials specifically for all students. Based on this, it is necessary to provide in e-learning education the possibility of a more detailed interpretation of specific parts of the educational material that may be unclear to specific students. Based on this fact, we decided to take the first step in the form of software design, which will represent a virtual assistant in teaching computer science. The role of this assistant will be the ability to answer technical questions related to the presented curriculum. From an architectural point of view, it will be a set of micro-services, each of which will serve a specific task. The prerequisite is the use of decision trees to determine a specific micro-service, which will be implemented in the form of a neural network. Main aim of this paper is to provide detail description of global software architecture for such a virtual assistant

Regulations and Standards Aware Framework for Recording of mHealth App Vulnerabilities

The authors describe a standards-based security framework for the purposes of recording security and privacy vulnerabilities discovered in mHealth apps. The proposed framework is compliant with the international standard for software architecture descriptions, ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010, relevant state-agency regulations, and US federal healthcare mandates, as well as computing standards for data interchange formats. Future real-life implementations are envisioned to consists of three key components: (1) design and implementation of a repository that links vulnerabilities to concepts from the taxonomy used by legislative and standardization bodies; (2) population of the repository with security vulnerability descriptions that follow a standard format, such as JavaScript Object Notation (JSON); and (3) implementation of a searchable user interface (e.g., Google's Firebase UI), which allows for aggregation statistics, data analytics, as well as public access to the repository. The proposed framework design promotes timely updates of regulations, standardization drafts, and app development platforms.

Recent Models for Collaborative E-Government Processes: A Survey

Many governments worldwide are engaging into digital transformation initiatives to improve efficiency, effectiveness, cost, and transparency. Collaborative e-government processes offer a way to overcome the typical integration and interoperability issues of existing isolated e-government solutions. A study was conducted to help e-government modelers and architects to know current approaches to modeling collaborative e-government processes that consider integration and interoperability. The research questions are: Which kind of representations (architecture, framework, ontology, meta-model, model or process) are used to model these processes? Which concerns (cost, value, citizen, technology, organization) do they focus on? How do they address collaborative processes concepts (interoperability and collaboration)? This article describes the design, execution and results of a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) that gathered primary studies from well-known scientific literature databases, and organized them with a novel literature classification schema consisting of model type, model focus, collaboration scheme, and interoperability level. The initial search found 326 publications, of which duplicates removal and exclusion criteria application left only 52 for detailed analysis. Key findings are: literature for this topic proposes Frameworks and (general) Models, but not metamodels or ontologies; most addressed focus has shifted from Technology and Organization, towards Citizen; collaboration studies have shifted from Open Participation towards Data Transparency; and most work that addresses interoperability remains focused on Technical aspects with a smattering of Semantics and Organizational aspects. These findings reinforce the need for proposals that address the problem of collaborative e-government processes as something that lives at the junction of e-government, software architecture description, collaborative work, and interoperability.

A Software Architecture for the Industrial Internet of Things-A Conceptual Model.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging concept that has revolutionized the use of new technologies in everyday life. The economic impact of IoT becoming very important, and it began to be used in the industrial environment under the name of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) concept, which is a sub-domain of IoT. The IIoT changes the way industrial processes are controlled and monitored, increasing operating efficiency. This article proposes a software architecture for IIoT that has a low degree of abstraction compared to the reference architectures presented in the literature. The architecture is organized on four-layer and it integrates the latest concepts related to fog and edge computing. These concepts are activated through the use of fog/edge/gateway nodes, where the processing of data acquired from things is performed and it is the place where things interact with each other in the virtual environment. The main contributions of this paper are the proposal and description of a complete IIoT software architecture, the use of a unified address space, and the use of the computing platform based on SoC (System on Chip) with specialized co-processors in order to be able to execute in real-time certain time-critical operations specific to the industrial environment.

From software architecture to analysis models and back: Model-driven refactoring aimed at availability improvement

With the ever-increasing evolution of software systems, their architecture is subject to frequent changes due to multiple reasons, such as new requirements. Appropriate architectural changes driven by non-functional requirements are particularly challenging to identify because they concern quantitative analyses that are usually carried out with specific languages and tools. A considerable number of approaches have been proposed in the last decades to derive non-functional analysis models from architectural ones. However, there is an evident lack of automation in the backward path that brings the analysis results back to the software architecture. In this paper, we propose a model-driven approach to support designers in improving the availability of their software systems through refactoring actions. The proposed framework makes use of bidirectional model transformations to map UML models onto Generalized Stochastic Petri Nets (GSPN) analysis models and vice versa. In particular, after availability analysis, our approach enables the application of model refactoring, possibly based on well-known fault tolerance patterns, aimed at improving the availability of the architectural model. We validated the effectiveness of our approach on an Environmental Control System. Our results show that the approach can generate: (i) an analyzable availability model from a software architecture description, and (ii) valid software architecture models back from availability models. Finally, our results highlight that the application of fault tolerance patterns significantly improves the availability in each considered scenario. The approach integrates bidirectional model transformation and fault tolerance techniques to support the availability-driven refactoring of architectural models. The results of our experiment showed the effectiveness of the approach in improving the software availability of the system.

Architecture Description Language – Systematic Literature Review

increase numbers and complexity of software development requires that learners of software engineering and software architecture or software architects who do not have sufficient practical experience must have the skills and abilities to perform their jobs. But there is a gap between academia and practical so the question why does not use one of the architecture description languages in teaching and learn software engineering and software architecture to fill this gap? The objective of this study to classification ADLs according to their domain, domain specific or general purpose languages, doing these systematic literature review flowing the steps from Ketchenham. As the result we find that most ADLs are Domain Specific ADLs (Aviation Systems, Distribution Systems, Mobile Systems, Product Lines …etc. ) none of these ADLs is used in the field of software architecture education, but most intended to deal with experts in the field, except general purpose ADLs, like ACME, which we make as start point to design Arabic ADL, so as to enrich Arabic content, also to be as helping language in teaching Software Architecture course, because most of ADLs need experience and high level of understanding to use, moreover, when student think and design with same language subject more understandable. So using software architecture description languages in educating purpose, help on understanding high level of abstraction of software architecture and software engineering courses, there are some studies that aimed to reduce the complexity of these courses using different methodologies and approaches, but none of them using architecture description languages as helping tool. So the use of architecture description languages is helpful in teaching software architecture and software engineering courses.

A modeling approach for Systems-of-Systems by adapting ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 Standard evaluated by Goal-Question-Metric

Context. Systems-of-Systems (SoS) constitute a new category of complex software systems resulting from the integration of independent heterogeneous systems. Each constituent system has its own purpose and could interact with other systems to achieve a common goal. SoS have specific characteristics, namely operational and managerial independence of constituent systems, geographic distribution, evolutionary development and emergent behaviors. Due to the complexity of SoS, their development demands special attention to their software architecture description. Objective. In this work, we aim to elaborate an approach for modeling SoS using an Architecture Description Languages (ADL) adequate with SoS' characteristics. In fact, many researches have addressed the problem of describing the software architecture of SoS. However, there is still a lack of ADL having the expressive power to describe SoS software architectures. Method. To address this problem, we proposed an approach based on the standard “ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010: Systems and software engineering- Architecture Description” to describe the software architectures of SoS. Then, we proposed improvements for this standard to be adequate with SoS characteristics. Finally, we conducted a qualitative study based on Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) with a focus group to evaluate the effectiveness of this work. Results. While applying our approach in an illustrative case study which is an SoS entitled Smart City, we modeled three viewpoints for our SoS, expressing its specific characteristics; structural viewpoint, behavioral viewpoint and requirement viewpoint. Each one of these viewpoints is illustrated via an architecture model modeled by multi-labeled graphs which represent an intuitive and formal ADL. The use of multi-labeled graphs allowed as to check the conformity of the obtained architecture models with design rules via the Graph Matching and Transformation Engine (GMTE). Conclusions. It is concluded that the proposed improvements for the standard are important to express specific characteristics of SoS. Moreover, our proposed formal ADL, entitled multi-labeled graphs, allows us to elaborate different models considering different viewpoints to describe the SoS' architecture. Finally, it is important to investigate larger SoS and to conduct a quantitative study to further evaluate the effectiveness of our approach. • Modeling System of Systems based on the standard ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010. • Improving the ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 standard for System of Systems modeling. • System of Systems case study entitled “Smart City”. • Qualitative study based on Goal-Question-Metric (GQM).

A Research Landscape on Formal Verification of Software Architecture Descriptions

One of the many different purposes of software architecture descriptions is contributing to an early analysis of the architecture with respect to quality attributes. The critical nature of many software systems calls for formal approaches aiming at precisely verifying if their designed architectures can meet important properties such as consistency, completeness, and correctness. In this context, it is worthwhile investigating the role of architecture descriptions to support the formal verification of software architectures to ensure their quality, as well as how such a process happens and is supported by existing languages and verification tools. To evaluate the research landscape on this subject, we have carried out a systematic mapping study in which we collected and analyzed studies available at the literature on formal verification of architecture descriptions. This work contributes with (i) a structured overview and taxonomy of the current state of the art on this topic and (ii) the elicitation of important issues to be addressed in future research.

A formal method for software architecture analysis based on aspect orientation

Software architecture analysis plays an important role in software development lifecycle. However, from the view of separation of concerns, there is an absence of both structural description and behavioural analysis of software architecture. This paper proposes an aspect-oriented software architecture (AOSA) to reduce the complexity of software model and improve the reliability of software system. Aspect-oriented architecture description language based on XML is defined for structural description of software architecture, while aspect-oriented statechart and temporal logic are used for its behavioural analysis. A carousel case illustrates that the formal method is effective.

A multi-scale modeling approach for systems of systems architectures

Modeling correct software-intensive Systems of Systems architectures is a challenging research direction that can be mastered by providing appropriate modeling abstractions. For this purpose, we provide an iterative modeling solution for a multi-scale description of software architectures. We provide a visual notation extending the graphical UML notations to represent structural as well as behavioral features of software architectures. We define a step-wise iterative process from a coarse-grain to a fine-grain description. The intermediate iterations provide a description with a given abstraction that allow the validation to be conducted significantly while remaining tractable w.r.t. complexity. The iterative process involves both system-independent structural features ensuring the model correctness, and system-specific features related to the expected behavior of the modeled domain. We implement the resulting models describing structural and behavioral properties using the Eclipse platform. To experiment our approach, we deal with an SoS dedicated to the Emergency Response and Crisis Management System(ERCMS).

Stimuli-SoS: a model-based approach to derive stimuli generators for simulations of systems-of-systems software architectures

BackgroundSystems-of-systems (SoS) are alliances of independent and interoperable software-intensive systems. SoS often support critical domains, being required to exhibit a reliable operation, specially because people’s safety relies on their services. In this direction, simulations enable the validation of different operational scenarios in a controlled environment, allowing a benchmarking of its response as well as revealing possible breaches that could lead to failures. However, simulations are traditionally manual, demanding a high level of human intervention, being costly and error-prone. A stimuli generator could aid in by continuously providing data to trigger a SoS simulation and maintaining its operation.MethodsWe established a model-based approach termed Stimuli-SoS to support the creation of stimuli generators to be used in SoS simulations. Stimuli-SoS uses software architecture descriptions for automating the creation of such generators. Specifically, this approach transforms SoSADL, a formal architectural description language for SoS, into dynamic models expressed in DEVS, a simulation formalism. We carried out a case study in which Stimuli-SoS was used to automatically produce stimuli generators for a simulation of a flood monitoring SoS.ResultsWe run simulations of a SoS architectural configuration with 69 constituent systems, i.e., 42 sensors, 9 crowdsourcing systems, and 18 drones. Stimuli generators were automatically generated for each type of constituent. These stimuli generators were capable of receiving the input data from the database and generating the expected stimuli for the constituents, allowing to simulate constituent systems interoperations into the flood monitoring SoS. Using Stimuli-SoS, we simulated 38 days of flood monitoring in little more than 6 h. Stimuli generators correctly forwarded data to the simulation, which was able to reproduce 29 flood alerts triggered by the SoS during a flooding event. In particular, Stimuli-SoS is almost 65 times more productive than a manual approach to producing data for the same type of simulation.ConclusionsOur approach succeeded in automatically deriving a functional stimuli generator that can reproduce environmental conditions for simulating a SoS. In particular, we presented new contributions regarding productivity and automation for the use of a model-based approach in SoS engineering.

Contemporary Computer Supported Collaboration: Systems, Technologies, Algorithms, and Applications

Contemporary Computer Supported Collaboration: Systems, Technologies, Algorithms, and Applications

Improvement of the dependency structure of the software architecture model with risk estimation

Software architecture is widely available today to define the high-level design methodology of large software systems. The growth has become a progressively significant part of the software lifecycle, due to the increasing complexity of the software being constructed. Software designers need to carefully define and reason the structural design of complex, distributed information systems, which are often encompassed of a mix of innovative and reused modules. A good, extensible and maintainable architecture often makes the difference between successful and failed projects. A good architectural representation holds the key to the efficiency of the software architecture usage and description. In this paper, an accurate software architecture model is developed using the concept of risk evaluation and prediction. In existing software architecture models, the tree-based model is not implemented. The requirements are not in a structured manner which leads to a greater computation time for execution. In the proposed method, the tree-based software architecture helps to formulate the requirements in a structured way of representation and hence it leads to a lesser computation time for execution. The module prediction strategy is applied to split up the entire requirements into sub-groups to handle the large number of stakeholder requirements. Finally, the risk assessment stage is performed to identify the risk factors of the software model and minimize the impact of the risk. The proposed software architecture results in lesser memory utilization and execution time with better performance, reliability and flexibility than the existing neuro-fuzzy performance evaluation model.

A Model for Run-Time Software Architecture Adaptation

Since the global demand for software systems and constantly changing environments and systems is increasing, the adaptability of software systems is of significant importance. Due to the architecture of software system is a high-level view of the system and makes the modifiability possible at an overall level, the adaptability of the software can be considered an effective approach to adapt software systems by changing architecture configuration. In this study, the architecture configuration is modified through xADL language which is a software architecture description language with a high flexibility. Software architecture reconfiguration is done based on existing rules of rule-based system, which are written with respect to three strategies of load balancing, fixed bandwidth and fixed latency. The proposed model of the study is simulated based on samples of client-server system, video conferencing system and students’ grading system. The proposed model can be used in all types of architecture, include Client Server Architecture, Service Oriented Architecture and etc.

Review of Software for Automated Analysis of Digestive Tract Images

This paper is devoted to development of software, which allows automatically processing the gastrointestinal tract images obtained by wireless endoscopic capsule. This paper considers software of automated workplace of a physician from different manufacturers of endoscopic complexes in detail. Further, the description of software architecture for gastrointestinal tract images processing and the results of software testing are given in this paper. This software is a part of Landish capsule endoscopic complex.

Design of Automatic Aerial Air Pollution Monitoring System

Based on air pollution situation, make the ball with hydrogen floating in the air height of 50 meters as the aerial air pollution automatic detection mobile platform, based on sensor technology, embedded technology, thrust composite applications, GPRS, GPS and other hardware combined with the lower position machine applications、PC software system , conducted the system requirements analysis, software and hardware architecture design and description. The system solves the common aerial equipment’s problem of letting propeller blown air when detecting air parameters, using aerial balloon floating platform for air-parameter sensor automatically detects collection. Achieve operational automation, thus greatly reduce the work intensity of aerial air pollution monitoring and management, reduce the error of manual operation may occur, improve the efficiency of environmental protection, promote informatization construction of environmental protection work. This paper elaborates the overall design process of aerial air pollution automatic monitoring system.

Applying of component system development in object methodology

Applying of component system development in object methodology