Software as a service

About: Software as a service is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 8514 publications have been published within this topic receiving 136177 citations. The topic is also known as: Service as a Software Substitute & SaaSS.

The Problem of 'Personal Data' in Cloud Computing - What Information is Regulated? The Cloud of Unknowing, Part 1

Abstract: Cloud computing service providers, even those based outside Europe, may become subject to the EU Data Protection Directive's extensive and complex regime purely through their customers' choices, of which they may have no knowledge or control. We consider the definition and application of the EU 'personal data' concept in the context of anonymisation/pseudonymisation, encryption and data fragmentation in cloud computing, arguing that the definition should be based on the realistic risk of identification, and that the applicability of data protection rules should be based on the risk of harm and its likely severity. In particular, the status of encryption and anonymisation/pseudonymisation procedures should be clarified to promote their use as privacy-enhancing techniques; data encrypted and secured to recognised standards should not be considered 'personal data' in the hands of those without access to the decryption key, such as many cloud computing providers; and finally, unlike, for example, social networking sites, Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service providers (and certain Software as a Service providers) offer no more than utility infrastructure services, and may not even know if information processed using their services is 'personal data' (hence, the 'cloud of unknowing'), so it seems inappropriate for such cloud infrastructure providers to become arbitrarily subject to EU data protection regulation due to their customers' choices.

Implementation of cloud service models in training of future information technology specialists

Abstract: Leading research directions are defined on the basis of self-analysis of the study results on the use of cloud technologies in training by employees of joint research laboratory “Сloud technologies in education” of Kryvyi Rih National University and Institute of Information Technology and Learning Aids of the NAES of Ukraine in 2009-2018: cloud learning technologies, cloud technologies of blended learning, cloud-oriented learning environments, cloud-oriented methodological systems of training, the provision of cloud-based educational services. The ways of implementation SaaS, PaaS, IaaS cloud services models which are appropriate to use in the process of studying the academic disciplines of the cycles of mathematical, natural science and professional and practical training of future specialists in information technology are shown, based on the example of software engineering, computer science and computer engineering. The most significant advantages of using cloud technologies in training of future information technology specialists are definite, namely, the possibility of using modern parallel programming tools as the basis of cloud technologies. Conclusions are drawn; the direction of further research is indicated: designing a cloud-oriented learning environment for future specialists in computer engineering, identifying trends in the development of cloud technologies in the professional training and retraining of information technology specialists, developing a methodology for building the research competencies of future software engineering specialists by using cloud technologies.

Towards a scalable and robust multi-tenancy SaaS

Abstract: Software-as-as-Service (SaaS) is a new approach for developing software, and it is characterized by its multi-tenancy architecture and its ability to provide flexible customization to individual tenant. However, the multi-tenancy architecture and customization requirements have brought up new issues in software, such as database design, database partition, scalability, recovery, and continuous testing. This paper proposes a hybrid test database design to support SaaS customization with two-layer database partitioning. The database is further extended with a new built-in redundancy with ontology so that the SaaS can recover from ontology, data or meta-data failures. Furthermore, constraints in metadata can be used either as test cases or policies to support SaaS continuous testing and policy enforcement.

Native support of multi-tenancy in RDBMS for software as a service

Abstract: Software as a Service (SaaS) facilitates acquiring a huge number of small tenants by providing low service fees. To achieve low service fees, it is essential to reduce costs per tenant. For this, consolidating multiple tenants onto a single relational schema instance turned out beneficial because of low overheads per tenant and scalable manageability. This approach implements data isolation between tenants, per-tenant schema extension and further tenant-centric data management features in application logic. This is complex, disables some optimization opportunities in the RDBMS and represents a conceptual misstep with Separation of Concerns in mind.Therefore, we contribute first features of a RDBMS to support tenant-aware data management natively. We introduce tenants as first-class database objects and propose the concept of a tenant context to isolate a tenant from other tenants. We present a schema inheritance concept that allows sharing a core application schema among tenants while enabling schema extensions per tenant. Finally, we evaluate a preliminary implementation of our approach.

A genetic programming approach to support the design of service compositions

Abstract: Service-oriented architectures are rapidly gaining presence and popularity in the development of distributed software systems. Their rapid diffusion is changing the software engineering landscape and is opening the way to implement the idea of “software as a service” [19], i.e. something that one uses to compose a workflow that achieves a business goal, and then disengages. A service-oriented system can be thought of a set of services that collaborate in some way to carry on a given task. Also, service-oriented system can be, on its own, a service, usually referred as a composite service or composed service. A conceptual model for service-oriented systems [18] defines it as: “A Composed Service is a particular kind of Service, developed by a Service Integrator, which makes use of other Services”. From this definition emerges how the Service Integrator has a key role while dealing with service compositions. In fact, to have the right prospective of the existing problems, it is desirable to make a clear distinction between different services users i.e.: