Using autonomous components to improve runtime qualities of software

In the development of software systems, quality properties should be considered along with the development process so that the qualities of software systems can be inferred and predicted at the specification and design stages and be evaluated and verified at the deployment and execution stages. However, distributed autonomous software entities are developed and maintained independently by third parties and their executions and qualities are beyond the control of system developers. In this study, the notion of an autonomous component is used to model an independent autonomous software entity. An autonomous component encapsulates data types, associated operations and quality properties into a uniform syntactical unit, which provides a way to reason about the functional and non-functional properties of software systems and meanwhile offers a means of evaluating and assuring the qualities of software systems at runtime. This study also describes the implementation and running support of autonomous components and studies a case application system to demonstrate how autonomous components can be used to improve the qualities of the application system.

[1]  E. Michael Maximilien,et al.  Agent-based trust model involving multiple qualities , 2005, AAMAS '05.

[2]  Sarvapali D. Ramchurn,et al.  Trust in Multiagent Systems , 2004 .

[3]  John D. Musa,et al.  Software reliability - measurement, prediction, application , 1987, McGraw-Hill series in software engineering and technology.

[4]  Franco Zambonelli,et al.  Engineering mobile-agent applications via context-dependent coordination , 2002, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[5]  Donald Steiner,et al.  FIPA: Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents - Das aktuelle Schlagwort , 1998, Künstliche Intell..

[6]  Jan Bosch.  Generative and Component-Based Software Engineering , 2001, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[7]  Li Zhou,et al.  An Approach to Constructing High-Available Decentralized Systems via Self-Adaptive Components , 2009, Int. J. Softw. Eng. Knowl. Eng..

[8]  Richard S. Hall,et al.  Autonomous adaptation to dynamic availability using a service-oriented component model , 2004, Proceedings. 26th International Conference on Software Engineering.

[9]  Farhad Arbab.  Abstract Behavior Types: a foundation model for components and their composition , 2005, Sci. Comput. Program..

[10]  Les Gasser,et al.  Research Directions for Service-Oriented Multiagent Systems , 2005, IEEE Internet Comput..

[11]  Xuanzhe Liu,et al.  An agent-based approach to composing web services to support adaptable business processes , 2006, Multiagent Grid Syst..

[12]  Richard Stuart Neville,et al.  Applying Evolutionary Computing to Complex Systems Design , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics - Part A: Systems and Humans.

[13]  Mary Shaw.  Architectural Requirements for Computing with Coalitions of Resources , 1999 .

[14]  Julio Cesar Sampaio do Prado Leite,et al.  A Framework for Integrating Non-Functional Requirements into Conceptual Models , 2001, Requirements Engineering.

[15]  Amy L. Murphy,et al.  Software engineering for mobility: a roadmap , 2000, ICSE '00.

[16]  Jun Han.  A comprehensive interface definition framework for software components , 1998, Proceedings 1998 Asia Pacific Software Engineering Conference (Cat. No.98EX240).

[17]  Paola Inverardi,et al.  Model-based performance prediction in software development: a survey , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

[18]  Hany H. Ammar,et al.  A Methodology for Architecture-Level Reliability Risk Analysis , 2002, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[19]  Andrea Bondavalli,et al.  Failure classification with respect to detection , 1990, [1990] Proceedings. Second IEEE Workshop on Future Trends of Distributed Computing Systems.

[20]  Sarvapali D. Ramchurn,et al.  Trust in multi-agent systems , 2004, The Knowledge Engineering Review.

[21]  Onn Shehory,et al.  Evaluation of modeling techniques for agent-based systems , 2001, AGENTS '01.

[22]  Katerina Goseva-Popstojanova,et al.  Architecture-based approach to reliability assessment of software systems , 2001, Perform. Evaluation.

[23]  Jörg Ritter,et al.  Towards a Foundation of Component-Oriented Software Reference Models , 2000, GCSE.

[24]  Carlos Angel Iglesias,et al.  A Survey of Agent-Oriented Methodologies , 1998, ATAL.

[25]  Alan Burns,et al.  Real Time Scheduling Theory: A Historical Perspective , 2004, Real-Time Systems.

[26]  Michael Luck,et al.  Agent technology, Computing as Interaction: A Roadmap for Agent Based Computing , 2005 .

[27]  Richard N. Taylor,et al.  Extending the Representational State Transfer (REST) architectural style for decentralized systems , 2004, Proceedings. 26th International Conference on Software Engineering.

[28]  Marco Saerens,et al.  Dynamic Web Service Composition within a Service-Oriented Architecture , 2007, IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2007).

[29]  Thierry Coupaye,et al.  The FRACTAL component model and its support in Java , 2006, Softw. Pract. Exp..

[30]  Michael Luck,et al.  Agent technology, Computing as Interaction , 2005 .

[31]  Tatsuya Suda,et al.  A middleware platform for a biologically inspired network architecture supporting autonomous and adaptive applications , 2005, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[32]  Amin Vahdat,et al.  The costs and limits of availability for replicated services , 2001, TOCS.

[33]  Keith W. Ross,et al.  A Measurement Study of a Large-Scale P2P IPTV System , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia.

[34]  Franco Zambonelli,et al.  Towards a paradigm change in computer science and software engineering: a synthesis , 2003, The Knowledge Engineering Review.

[35]  Israel Ben-Shaul,et al.  Dynamic Adaptation and Deployment of Distributed Components In Hadas , 2001, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[36]  Anne H. H. Ngu,et al.  QoS-aware middleware for Web services composition , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

[37]  Robbert van Renesse,et al.  Adding high availability and autonomic behavior to Web services , 2004, Proceedings. 26th International Conference on Software Engineering.

[38]  George R. Ribeiro-Justo,et al.  A framework for building non-functional software architectures , 2001, SAC.

[39]  Xiaomeng Su,et al.  A Survey of Automated Web Service Composition Methods , 2004, SWSWPC.

[40]  David Villa,et al.  Integration of Intelligent Agents Supporting Automatic Service Composition in Ambient Intelligence , 2008, 2008 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology.

[41]  Amin Vahdat,et al.  The costs and limits of availability for replicated services , 2006 .

[42]  Xavier Franch,et al.  Putting non-functional requirements into software architecture , 1998, Proceedings Ninth International Workshop on Software Specification and Design.

[43]  Lars Grunske,et al.  An Automated Dependability Analysis Method for COTS-Based Systems , 2005, ICCBSS.

[44]  Lars Grunske,et al.  Early quality prediction of component-based systems - A generic framework , 2007, J. Syst. Softw..

[45]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  Intelligent agents: theory and practice , 1995, The Knowledge Engineering Review.

[46]  Jens Woch,et al.  Intelligent Agents IV Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages , 1997, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[47]  Julio Cesar Sampaio do Prado Leite,et al.  On Non-Functional Requirements in Software Engineering , 2009, Conceptual Modeling: Foundations and Applications.

[48]  Teresita Rojas,et al.  Construction of a Systemic Quality Model for Evaluating a Software Product , 2003, Software Quality Journal.

[49]  Lubos Brim,et al.  Partial Order Reduction for State/Event LTL , 2009, IFM.

[50]  Jaroslav Král,et al.  Autonomous Components , 2000, SOFSEM.

[51]  J. A. McDermid,et al.  Towards integrated safety analysis and design , 1994, SIAP.

[52]  Barbara Messing,et al.  An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems , 2002, Künstliche Intell..

[53]  John Mylopoulos,et al.  Representing and Using Nonfunctional Requirements: A Process-Oriented Approach , 1992, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[54]  Zakaria Maamar,et al.  Toward an agent-based and context-oriented approach for Web services composition , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.

[55]  Charles L. Forgy,et al.  Rete: a fast algorithm for the many pattern/many object pattern match problem , 1991 .

[56]  Daniel G. Schwartz,et al.  Dynamic agent-oriented reasoning about belief and trust , 2008, Multiagent Grid Syst..

[57]  Sam Malek,et al.  Improving Availability in Large, Distributed Component-Based Systems Via Redeployment , 2005, Component Deployment.

[58]  M. Calisti,et al.  FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS , 2000 .

[59]  Shuping Ran,et al.  A model for web services discovery with QoS , 2003, SECO.

[60]  Nicolas Lhuillier,et al.  FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS , 2003 .

[61]  Katia P. Sycara,et al.  Dynamic discovery and coordination of agent-based semantic Web services , 2004, IEEE Internet Computing.

[62]  Bill Powell,et al.  IT service management for high availability , 2008, IBM Syst. J..

[63]  Clemens A. Szyperski,et al.  Component software - beyond object-oriented programming , 2002 .

[64]  Zakaria Maamar,et al.  Toward Behavioral Web Services Using Policies , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics - Part A: Systems and Humans.

[65]  Jiming Liu,et al.  Autonomy-oriented computing (AOC): formulating computational systems with autonomous components , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics - Part A: Systems and Humans.

[66]  Magnus Larsson,et al.  Predicting Quality Attributes in Component-based Software Systems , 2004 .