Abdelkrim Amirat

Bio: Abdelkrim Amirat is an academic researcher from University of Souk Ahras. The author has contributed to research in topics: Software architecture & Software architecture description. The author has an hindex of 7, co-authored 47 publications receiving 172 citations. Previous affiliations of Abdelkrim Amirat include University of Nantes.

First-Class Connectors to Support Systematic Construction of Hierarchical Software Architecture

Abstract: To provide hierarchical description from different software architectural view points we need more than one abstraction hierarchy and connection mechanisms to support the interactions among components. Also, these mechanisms will support the refinement and traceability of architectural elements through the different levels of each hierarchy. Current methods and tools provide poor support for the challenge posed by developing system using hierarchical description. This paper describes an architecture-centric approach allowing the user to describe the logical architecture view where a physical architecture view is generated automatically for all application instances of the logical architecture.

An Adaptive E-Learning System based on Student's Learning Styles: An Empirical Study

Abstract: Personalized e-learning implementation is recognized as one of the most interesting research areas in the distance web-based education. Since the learning style of each learner is different one must fit e-learning with the different needs of learners. This paper presents an approach to integrate learning styles into adaptive e-learning hypermedia. The main objective was to develop a new Adaptive Educational Hypermedia System based on Honey and Mumford learning style model AEHS-H&M and assess the effect of adapting educational materials individualized to the student's learning style. To achieve the main objectives, a case study was developed. An experiment between two groups of students was conducted to evaluate the impact on learning achievement. Inferential statistics were applied to make inferences from the sample data to more general conditions was designed to evaluate the new approach of matching learning materials with learning styles and their influence on student's learning achievement. The findings support the use of learning styles as guideline for adaptation into the adaptive e-learning hypermedia systems.

Towards an Approach for Building Reliable Architectures

Abstract: Composing an application out of independent, reusable pieces has been a key challenge since the early days of software engineering. In this paper we examine some aspects of software architecture. We introduce our COSA+ model built in order to provide some enhancement in the COSA one. Our main contributions are the new structure given to an explicit connector, and the conceptual view of the different abstract levels used to define the applications architectures. Profits expected from these improvements are numerous; mainly we can quote the reduction of the production costs and the time to market, simplify the maintenance operations, and foresee supports for the evolution of the software architecture.

Enhanced connectors to support hierarchical dependencies in software architecture

Abstract: The more important level of abstraction in the description of large and complex software is its architecture description. So, at this abstraction level we can describe the principal system components and their pathways of interaction. Software architecture is considered to be the driving aspect of the development process; it allows specifying which aspects and models in each level needed according to the software architecture design. Early Architecture Description Languages (ADLs), nearly exclusive, focus on structural abstraction hierarchy ignoring behavioural description hierarchy, conceptual hierarchy, and metamodeling hierarchy. In this paper we show that all those hierarchies constitute views to appropriately "reason about" software architectures described using our C3 metamodel which is a minimal and complete ADL. We provide a set of mechanisms to deal with different levels of each hierarchy; also we introduce a new enhanced definition for connector concept deployed in C3 architectures.

Automatic generation of PROMELA code from sequence diagram with imbricate combined fragments

Abstract: Formal verification of UML diagram is the act of proving or disproving the correctness of intended algorithms underlying a system with respect to a certain formal specification or property, using formal methods of mathematics. The most widely used techniques for system or software verification are: simulation and testing, deductive verification and Model checking. Model checking is a formal verification technique, in which an abstract model of a system is testing automatically to verify whether this model meets a given specification. SPIN Model checker is a popular open-source software tool used for the formal verification of distributed software systems. This article proposes a method for converting UML sequence diagrams with imbricate combined fragment automatically to PROMELA code to simulate the execution and to verify properties written in Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) with SPIN Model checker.

An overview of AspectJ

Abstract: Aspect] is a simple and practical aspect-oriented extension to Java With just a few new constructs, AspectJ provides support for modular implementation of a range of crosscutting concerns. In AspectJ's dynamic join point model, join points are well-defined points in the execution of the program; pointcuts are collections of join points; advice are special method-like constructs that can be attached to pointcuts; and aspects are modular units of crosscutting implementation, comprising pointcuts, advice, and ordinary Java member declarations. AspectJ code is compiled into standard Java bytecode. Simple extensions to existing Java development environments make it possible to browse the crosscutting structure of aspects in the same kind of way as one browses the inheritance structure of classes. Several examples show that AspectJ is powerful, and that programs written using it are easy to understand.

Component-Based Robotic Engineering (Part II)

Abstract: This article discusses the role of software components as architectural units of large, possibly distributed, software-intensive robotic systems. The focus is on technologies to manage the heterogeneity of hardware, computational, and communication resources and on design techniques to assemble components into systems .A component-based system is a composition of components, and the way components interact with other components and with the computational environment greatly affects the flexibility of the entire system and the reusability of individual functionality.