Showing papers on "Reference architecture published in 2015"

Evaluating the monolithic and the microservice architecture pattern to deploy web applications in the cloud

Abstract: Cloud computing provides new opportunities to deploy scalable application in an efficient way, allowing enterprise applications to dynamically adjust their computing resources on demand. In this paper we analyze and test the microservice architecture pattern, used during the last years by large Internet companies like Amazon, Netflix and LinkedIn to deploy large applications in the cloud as a set of small services that can be developed, tested, deployed, scaled, operated and upgraded independently, allowing these companies to gain agility, reduce complexity and scale their applications in the cloud in a more efficient way. We present a case study where an enterprise application was developed and deployed in the cloud using a monolithic approach and a microservice architecture using the Play web framework. We show the results of performance tests executed on both applications, and we describe the benefits and challenges that existing enterprises can get and face when they implement microservices in their applications.

System Architecture: Strategy and Product Development for Complex Systems

Abstract: Architecture and Function of Complex Systems System architecture is the study of early decision making in complex systems. This text teaches how to capture experience and analysis about early system decisions, and how to choose architectures that meet stakeholder needs, integrate easily, and evolve flexibly. With case studies written by leading practitioners, from hybrid cars to communications networks to aircraft, this text showcases the science and art of system architecture.

Designing a Smart City Internet of Things Platform with Microservice Architecture

Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) is being adopted in different application domains and is recognized as one of the key enablers of the Smart City vision. Despite the standardization efforts and wide adoption of Web standards and cloud computing technologies, however, building large-scale Smart City IoT platforms in practice remains challenging. The dynamically changing IoT environment requires these systems to be able to scale and evolve over time adopting new technologies and requirements. In response to the similar challenges in building large-scale distributed applications and platforms on the Web, micro service architecture style has emerged and gained a lot of popularity in the industry in recent years. In this work, we share our early experience of applying the micro service architecture style to design a Smart City IoT platform. Our experience suggests significant benefits provided by this architectural style compared to the more generic Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) approaches, as well as highlights some of the challenges it introduces.

DIAT: A Scalable Distributed Architecture for IoT

Abstract: The advent of Internet of Things (IoT) has boosted the growth in number of devices around us and kindled the possibility of umpteen number of applications. One of the major challenges in the realization of IoT applications is interoperability among various IoT devices and deployments. Thus, the need for a new architecture—comprising smart control and actuation—has been identified by many researchers. In this paper, we propose a Distributed Internet-like Architecture for Things (DIAT), which will overcome most of the obstacles in the process of large-scale expansion of IoT. It specifically addresses heterogeneity of IoT devices, and enables seamless addition of new devices across applications. In addition, we propose an usage control policy model to support security and privacy in a distributed environment. We propose a layered architecture that provides various levels of abstraction to tackle the issues such as scalability, heterogeneity, security, and interoperability. The proposed architecture is coupled with cognitive capabilities that helps in intelligent decision-making and enables automated service creation. Using a comprehensive use-case, comprising elements from multiple-application domains, we illustrate the usability of the proposed architecture.

A case study in locating the architectural roots of technical debt

Abstract: Our recent research has shown that, in large-scale software systems, defective files seldom exist alone. They are usually architecturally connected, and their architectural structures exhibit significant design flaws which propagate bugginess among files. We call these flawed structures the architecture roots, a type of technical debt that incurs high maintenance penalties. Removing the architecture roots of bugginess requires refactoring, but the benefits of refactoring have historically been difficult for architects to quantify or justify. In this paper, we present a case study of identifying and quantifying such architecture debts in a large-scale industrial software project. Our approach is to model and analyze software architecture as a set of design rule spaces (DRSpaces). Using data extracted from the project's development artifacts, we were able to identify the files implicated in architecture flaws and suggest refactorings based on removing these flaws. Then we built economic models of the before and (predicted) after states, which gave the organization confidence that doing the refactorings made business sense, in terms of a handsome return on investment.

A study on cloud based Internet of Things: CloudIoT

Abstract: The Next Revolution in the era of computing will be changing in comparison to traditional desktop. Many objects surrounds the human users will be on the network in one form or in another form in the Cloud Computing and Internet of Things framework. Cloud Computing and Internet of Things are two different technologies, these are into our daily life. Most of the surveys discussed the literature work on Internet of Things and Cloud separately. This paper presents the need for integration of Cloud and Internet of Things, an agent-oriented and Cloud assisted on Cloud IoT paradigm which based upon the layered reference architecture. Reference architecture for agent-oriented vision and Cloud-assisted is proposed, a Cloud based IoT paradigm applications scenario is described that have been presented in the literature, and Finally identified and discussed about open issues and future directions.

Software Architecture Patterns

Abstract: Just as developers use design patterns in software development, architects use well-defined architecture patterns to define the characteristics and shape of the architecture. Using the wrong architecture pattern (or no pattern at all) can sometimes be a very costly mistake resulting in an architecture that doesn't work. It is therefore vital that architects are aware of and understand the various architecture patterns available. During this webcast I will discuss several common architecture patterns, including the traditional layered architecture, microservices architecture, space-based architecture, event-driven architecture, and microkernel architecture. Along the way I will show real-world examples to demonstrate how the patterns work, as well as describe the pros and cons of each pattern. I will also discuss how requirements and operational aspects can drive which patterns to use. Using the right architecture pattern for your system is critical, because as we all know, once in place the architecture is very hard to change.

An IoT based reference architecture for smart water management processes.

Abstract: Water is a vital resource for life, and its management is a key issue nowadays. Information and communications technology systems for water control are currently facing interoperability problems due to the lack of support of standardization in monitory and control equipment. This problem affects various processes in water management, such as water consumption, distribution, system identification and equipment maintenance. OPC UA (Object Linking and Embedding for Process Control Unified Architecture) is a platform independent service-oriented architecture for the control of processes in the logistic and manufacturing sectors. Based on this standard we propose a smart water management model combining Internet of Things technologies with business processes coordination and decision support systems. We provide an architecture for sub-system interaction and a detailed description of the physical scenario in which we will test our implementation, allowing specific vendor equipment to be manageable and interoperable in the specific context of water management processes.

Towards a Human-Centred Reference Architecture for Next Generation Balanced Automation Systems: Human-Automation Symbiosis

Abstract: Human-centricity in manufacturing is becoming an essential enabler to achieve social sustainable manufacturing. In particular, human-centric automation can offer new means to increase competitiveness in the face of new social challenges for the factories of the future. This paper proposes a Human-Centred Reference Architecture that can structure and guide efforts to engineer Next Generation Balanced Automation Systems featuring adaptive automation that take into account various criteria in the operating environment such as time-lapse, performance degradation, age-, disability- and inexperience-related limitations of operators to increase their working capabilities.

An empirical study of architectural change in open-source software systems

Abstract: From its very inception, the study of software architecture has recognized architectural decay as a regularly occurring phenomenon in long-lived systems. Architectural decay is caused by repeated changes to a system during its lifespan. Despite decay's prevalence, there is a relative dearth of empirical data regarding the nature of architectural changes that may lead to decay, and of developers' understanding of those changes. In this paper, we take a step toward addressing that scarcity by conducting an empirical study of changes found in software architectures spanning several hundred versions of 14 open-source systems. Our study reveals several new findings regarding the frequency of architectural changes in software systems, the common points of departure in a system's architecture during maintenance and evolution, the difference between system-level and component-level architectural change, and the suitability of a system's implementation-level structure as a proxy for its architecture.

Flexible authentication framework

Abstract: A flexible and extensible architecture allows for secure searching across an enterprise. Such an architecture can provide a simple Internet-like search experience to users searching secure content inside (and outside) the enterprise. The architecture allows for the crawling and searching of a variety of sources across an enterprise, regardless of whether any of these sources conform to a conventional user role model. The architecture further allows for security attributes to be received at query time, for example, in order to provide real-time secure access to enterprise resources. The user query also can be transformed to provide for dynamic querying that provides for a more current result list than can be obtained for static queries.

An Axiomatic Design of a Multiagent Reconfigurable Mechatronic System Architecture

Abstract: In recent years, the fields of reconfigurable manufacturing systems, holonic manufacturing systems, and multiagent systems have made technological advances to support the ready reconfiguration of automated manufacturing systems. While these technological advances have demonstrated robust operation and been qualitatively successful in achieving reconfigurability, their ultimate industrial adoption remains limited. Among the barriers to adoption has been the relative absence of formal and quantitative multiagent system design methodologies based on reconfigurability measurement. Hence, it is not clear that the degree to which these designs have achieved their intended level of reconfigurability, which systems are indeed quantitatively more reconfigurable, and how these designs may overcome their design limitations to achieve greater reconfigurability in subsequent design iterations. To our knowledge, this paper is the first multiagent system reference architecture for reconfigurable manufacturing systems driven by a quantitative and formal design approach. It is rooted in an established engineering design methodology called axiomatic design for large flexible engineering systems and draws upon design principles distilled from prior works on reconfigurability measurement. The resulting architecture is written in terms of the mathematical description used in reconfigurability measurement, which straightforwardly allows instantiation for system-specific application.

Data-Driven Monitoring of Cyber-Physical Systems Leveraging on Big Data and the Internet-of-Things for Diagnosis and Control.

Abstract: The majority of projects dealing with monitoring and diagnosis of Cyber Physical Systems (CPSs) relies on models created by human experts. But these models are rarely available, are hard to verify and to maintain and are often incomplete. Data-driven approaches are a promising alternative: They leverage on the large amount of data which is collected nowadays in CPSs, this data is then used to learn the necessary models automatically. For this, several challenges have to be tackled, such as real-time data acquisition and storage solutions, data analysis and machine learning algorithms, task specific human-machine-interfaces (HMI) and feedback/control mechanisms. In this paper, we propose a cognitive reference architecture which addresses these challenges. This reference architecture should both ease the reuse of algorithms and support scientific discussions by providing a comparison schema. Use cases from different industries are outlined and support the correctness of the architecture.

A Software Architecture Enabling the Web of Things

Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) will include billions of smart “things” connected to the Web and characterized by sensing, actuating, and data processing capabilities. In this context, also known as Web of Things (WoT), the user should ideally be able to collect information provided by smart things, and to mash-up them to obtain value-added services. However, in the current solutions, the access to physical objects is poorly scalable and efficient, the communications are often unidirectional (from the devices to the users), and only tech-savvy people are able to develop mash-up applications. Based on these assumptions, we propose a software architecture to easily mash-up constrained application protocol (CoAP) resources. It is able to discover the available devices and to virtualize them outside the physical network. These virtualizations are then exposed to the upper layers by a REpresentational State Transfer (REST) interface, so that the physical devices interact only with their own virtualization. Furthermore, the system provides simplified tools allowing the development of mash-up applications to different-skilled users. Finally, the architecture allows not only to monitor but also to control the devices, thus establishing a bidirectional communication channel. To evaluate the proposal, we deeply modify and integrate some existing software components to realize an instance of the architecture.

Comparing software architecture recovery techniques using accurate dependencies

Abstract: Many techniques have been proposed to automatically recover software architectures from software implementations. A thorough comparison among the recovery techniques is needed to understand their effectiveness and applicability. This study improves on previous studies in two ways. First, we study the impact of leveraging more accurate symbol dependencies on the accuracy of architecture recovery techniques. Previous studies have not seriously considered how the quality of the input might affect the quality of the output for architecture recovery techniques. Second, we study a system (Chromium) that is substantially larger (9.7 million lines of code) than those included in previous studies. Obtaining the ground-truth architecture of Chromium involved two years of collaboration with its developers. As part of this work we developed a new sub module-based technique to recover preliminary versions of ground-truth architectures. The other systems that we study have been examined previously. In some cases, we have updated the ground-truth architectures to newer versions, and in other cases we have corrected newly discovered inconsistencies. Our evaluation of nine variants of six state-of-the-art architecture recovery techniques shows that symbol dependencies generally produce architectures with higher accuracies than include dependencies. Despite this improvement, the overall accuracy is low for all recovery techniques. The results suggest that (1) in addition to architecture recovery techniques, the accuracy of dependencies used as their inputs is another factor to consider for high recovery accuracy, and (2) more accurate recovery techniques are needed. Our results show that some of the studied architecture recovery techniques scale to the 10M lines-of-code range (the size of Chromium), whereas others do not.

A Flexible and Configurable Architecture for Automatic Control Remote Laboratories

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a novel approach in hardware and software architecture design for implementation of remote laboratories for automatic control. In our contribution, we show the solution with flexible connectivity at back-end, providing features of multipurpose usage with different types of experimental devices, and fully configurable client side application at front-end. The physical setup and communication principles of hardware architecture are based on two types of devices: the programmable logic controllers and industrial network routers. The user interface of client application is designed as a Web page, powered by optimized JavaScript, using the sophisticated on-the-fly content generation. To prove the suitability of the architecture, we compare it with other existing approaches of remote laboratory design. We evaluate their benefits and weaknesses, especially in terms of expense, implementation difficulty, and versatility of usage. In this paper, we also show a detailed example of remote laboratory implementation based on new architecture for thermo-optical educational system and provide three other examples of developed remote laboratories. Evaluation of remote laboratory usage and its benefits is provided to demonstrate the learning value of proposed architecture in education process.

Personalised assistance for fuel-efficient driving

Abstract: Recent advances in technology are changing the way how everyday activities are performed. Technologies in the traffic domain provide diverse instruments of gathering and analysing data for more fuel-efficient, safe, and convenient travelling for both drivers and passengers. In this article, we propose a reference architecture for a context-aware driving assistant system. Moreover, we exemplify this architecture with a real prototype of a driving assistance system called Driving coach. This prototype collects, fuses and analyses diverse information, like digital map, weather, traffic situation, as well as vehicle information to provide drivers in-depth information regarding their previous trip along with personalised hints to improve their fuel-efficient driving in the future. The Driving coach system monitors its own performance, as well as driver feedback to correct itself to serve the driver more appropriately.

Toward Industrially Usable Agent Technology for Smart Grid Automation

Abstract: This work is aimed at facilitating the industrial adoption of agent technology. This paper proposes the hybrid agent architecture specific to the power system automation domain. The architecture builds on the logical-node concept of IEC 61850 and comprises a deliberative and a reactive layer, combining the advantages of both. By relying on the underlined industrial standards IEC 61850 and IEC 61499, the architecture ensures practical applicability and captures domain-specific concepts in the agent-based system design. The developed agent-based system was validated in the cosimulation framework. The architecture provides for rapid system development, reducing the software development life cycle. The benefits are in the traceability of the software requirements, reuse of software components, ease of redesign, and direct deployment of the system model.

The importance of a standard securit y archit ecture for SOA-based iot middleware

Abstract: The proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) in several application domains requires a well-defined infrastructure of systems that provides services for device abstraction and data management, and also supports the development of applications. Middleware for IoT has been recognized as the system that can provide this necessary infrastructure of services and has become increasingly important for IoT in recent years. The architecture of an IoT middleware is usually based on an SOA (service-oriented architecture) standard and has security requirement as one of its main challenges. The large amount of data that flows in this kind of system demands a security architecture that ensures the protection of the entire system. However, none of the existing SOAbased IoT middleware systems have defined a security standard that can be used as a reference architecture. In this sense, this article discusses the importance of defining a standard security architecture for SOA-based IoT middleware, analyzes concepts and existing work, and makes considerations about a set of security services that can be used to define a security architecture to mitigate the security threats in SOA-based IoT middleware systems.

A Reference Architecture and Knowledge-Based Structures for Smart Manufacturing Networks

Abstract: Smart manufacturing networks describe a production chain as a marketplace that delivers products on demand. In this chain, partners collaborate in product work routings that connect dispersed service-enabled systems with resources, materials, human expertise, and operation-equipment combinations. Researchers have developed a reference architecture for developing a highly connected, knowledge-enabled manufacturing network that decentralizes production control. This network will enable collaborative manufacturing of new products and response to product demand, allowing for greater production flexibility and product variability.

MORPH: a reference architecture for configuration and behaviour self-adaptation

Abstract: An architectural approach to self-adaptive systems involves runtime change of system configuration (i.e., the system's components, their bindings and operational parameters) and behaviour update (i.e., component orchestration). Thus, dynamic reconfiguration and discrete event control theory are at the heart of architectural adaptation. Although controlling configuration and behaviour at runtime has been discussed and applied to architectural adaptation, architectures for self-adaptive systems often compound these two aspects reducing the potential for adaptability. In this paper we propose a reference architecture that allows for coordinated yet transparent and independent adaptation of system configuration and behaviour.

TF4SM: A Framework for Developing Traceability Solutions in Small Manufacturing Companies.

Abstract: Nowadays, manufacturing processes have become highly complex. Besides, more and more, governmental institutions require companies to implement systems to trace a product’s life (especially for foods, clinical materials or similar items). In this paper, we propose a new framework, based on cyber-physical systems, for developing traceability systems in small manufacturing companies (which because of their size cannot implement other commercial products). We propose a general theoretical framework, study the requirements of these companies in relation to traceability systems, propose a reference architecture based on both previous elements and build the first minimum functional prototype, to compare our solution to a traditional tag-based traceability system. Results show that our system reduces the number of inefficiencies and reaction time.

Towards assessing software architecture quality by exploiting code smell relations

Abstract: We can evaluate software architecture quality using a plethora of metrics proposed in the literature, but interpreting and exploiting in the right way these metrics is not always a simple task. This is true for both fixing the right metric threshold values and determining the actions to be taken to improve the quality of the system. Instead of metrics, we can detect code or architectural anomalies that give us useful hints on the possible architecture degradation. In this paper, we focus our attention on the detection of code smells and in particular on their relations and co-occurrences, with the aim to evaluate technical debt in an architectural context. We start from the assumption that certain patterns of code anomalies tend to be better indicators of architectural degradation than simple metrics evaluation.

A Reference Architecture and Knowledge- Based Structures for Smart Manufacturing

Abstract: Researchers and practitioners have developed a reference architecture for developing a highly connected, knowledge-enabled manufacturing network that decentralizes production control. This network will enable collaborative product manufacturing and response to product demand, allowing for greater production flexibility and product variability.