Service-Orientation: Conquering Complexity with XMDD

2011 IEEE 35th Annual Computer Software and Applications Conference Workshops

Floyd

Steffen

2011

Self Cite

The central challenge in resource constrained systems is indeed that there is often a dramatic problem of resources: little memory, no display (i.e., mediated control and interaction), and weak processors. These constraints are due to various reasons, including cost (in economies of scale little amounts can make a big difference) and constraints mandated by the host environment such as limitations on weight, size, bandwidth, or power consumption. In addition to structural issues, that already force designers to stretch and squeeze pushing the design to the limit, other problems may affect the design process itself, e.g. when developers must program for a system that is itself still under design: such concurrent development includes easily critical unknown unknowns. Design efforts under these conditions are difficult at best, and it is not clear how much of these constraints and pressures are really unavoidable. We believe that a perspective of designing for simplicity would frame the situation in a more favorable way, leading to systems that better use available resources, are more robust, and easier to maintain and use. In the course of the ITSy project 1 , we interviewed IT experts and industry practitioners about their perspectives on simplicity principles within their research and practice, collecting insights and anecdotal evidence on some phenomena, as well as suggestions for possible principles.In this paper, we apply initial results from this empirical understanding of simplicity to the domain of resource constrained system design. We identify some recurring themes from the outcome of the interviews, and match these understandings for one specific embedded system case study. I. MOTIVATIONMuch has been written and funded on the topics of complexity and complex systems, leading to evident progress in knowledge and practice in that area, though fundamental issues of defining key terms remain [10]. Simplicity, when discussed in the world of IT, has had an almost singular focus on the human interface to technology while perspectives on simplicity within infrastructure design is significantly less well developed. To address this issue, we proposed a fact-finding study on the current culture and practice of simplicity in the information and communication technology in research and industry. This project, IT Simply Works (ITSy), is an ongoing Support Action funded by the EU. In this work we decided to not focus only on a quest for an abstract definition of 1 IT Simply Works! (ITSy), a EU-funded FET Support Action (258058) within the 7th Framework Programme. See http://www.cs.unipotsdam.de/sse/ITSy/index.html simplicity, but rather set the goal of informing the development of principles based on evidence (i.e., by interviewing experts and surveying literature), where the results of applying these principles improves system quality by keeping things as simple as possible. Fundamentally, as the project name states, we wish systems that 'simply work'. While the project is still ongoing, there are already some prelimi...

Section: Principle Three: Abstraction Layering Refinementmentioning

confidence: 99%

IT Simply Works: Simplicity and Embedded Systems Design

2011 IEEE 35th Annual Computer Software and Applications Conference Workshops

Floyd

Steffen

2011

Self Cite

“…The multi-purpose process modeling and execution framework jABC [35] is the current reference implementation of the eXtreme Model-Driven Design (XMDD) paradigm [29], which advocates the rigorous use of user-level models throughout the software development process and software life cycle. The service concept of jABC is very close to an intuitive understanding of service as something that is required to be ubiquitously accessible (location-agnostic) and mechanically configurable [16].…”

Section: The Jabc Framework and Prophetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constraints-Driven Automatic Geospatial Service Composition: Workflows for the Analysis of Sea-Level Rise Impacts

Al-Areqi

Lamprecht

Computational Science and Its Applications -- ICCSA 2016

2016

Self Cite

Abstract. Building applications based on the reuse of existing components or services has noticeably increased in the geospatial application domain, but researchers still face a variety of technical challenges designing workflows for their specific objectives and preferences. Hence, means for automatic service composition that provide semantics-based assistance in the workflow design process have become a frequent demand especially of end users who are not IT experts. This paper presents a method for automatic composition of workflows for analyzing the impacts of sea-level rise based on semantic domain modeling. The domain modeling comprises the design of adequate services, the definition of ontologies to provide domain-specific vocabulary for referring to types and services, and the input/output annotation of the services using the terms defined in the ontologies. We use the PROPHETS plugin of the jABC workflow framework to show how users can benefit from such a domain model when they apply its constraintsdriven synthesis methods to obtain the workflows that match their intentions.

“…jABC provides these participants with a process management framework that hides low-level details in a service-oriented fashion [10], integrates high-level modeling in the overall development process in a way that user-level models become directly executable [9,7], and supports ad-hoc adaptations and evolution [6,8]. The most attractive feature is its simple and intuitive graphical user interface, essential to make it suitable for these educational purposes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The control panel of the Tracer plugin (small window in the upper right corner) steers the execution of the models. We see that it is The jABC is furthermore the current reference implementation of the XMDD (eXtreme Model-Driven Development) paradigm [9] and the One-Thing Approach (OTA) [7], which enforce the rigorous use of user-level models and refinement throughout the software development process and software life cycle. Following the XMDD paradigm, the jABC in fact allows us to begin with the software development at the student's level of expertise, discussing about the things in their domain and talking about types and functionalities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientific Workflows with XMDD: A Way to Use Process Modeling in Computational Science Education

Lamprecht

Procedia Computer Science

2015

Self Cite

Process models are well suited to describe in a formal but still intuitive fashion what a system should do. They can thus play a central role in problem-based computational science education with regard to qualifying students for the design and implementation of software applications for their specific needs without putting the focus on the technical part of coding. eXtreme Model Driven Design (XMDD) is a software development paradigm that explicitly focuses on the What (solving problems) rather than on the How (the technical skills of writing code). In this paper we describe how we apply an XMDD-based process modeling and execution framework for scientific workflow projects in the scope of a computer science course for students with a background in natural sciences.