28100130
Global Software Enterprise: A New Software Constructing Architecture
Based on current service-oriented architecture (SOA), this paper introduces a consumer-oriented SOA software constructing architecture: the global software enterprise (GSE) architecture. In this architecture, the software construction starts from the consumers' publishing their requirements in the form of application or service specification which they exactly want. The consumer also publishes the expectation for the services the application needs in the form of collaboration specification and test scripts. The service providers then produce services that meet the needs of the applications. This new approach reduces the workload for the consumer and the communication between the consumer and provider. It also extends the design and code sharing, and thus further improves the software productivity
5453537
Testability of Software in Service-Oriented Architecture
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a system architecture in which a collection of loosely coupled services communicate with each other using standard interfaces and message-exchanging protocols. As an emerging technology in software development, the SOA presents a new paradigm, and it affects the entire software development cycle including analysis, specification, design, implementation, verification, validation, maintenance and evaluation. This paper proposes several testability evaluation criteria for SOA software, which serves as a reference for both service providers and application builders to evaluate the test support to SOA software. The proposed evaluation criteria are illustrated in a stock-trading case study
5650965
L-Tree: A Dynamic Labeling Structure for Ordered XML Data
With the ever growing use of XML as a data representation format, we see an increasing need for robust, high performance XML database systems While most of the recent work focuses on efficient XML query processing, XML databases also need to support efficient updates To speed up query processing, various labeling schemes have been proposed However, the vast majority of these schemes have poor update performance In this paper, we introduce a dynamic labeling structure for XML data: L-Tree and its order-preserving labeling scheme with O(log n) amortized update cost and O(log n) bits per label L-Tree has good performance on updates without compromising the performance of query processing We present the update algorithm for L-Tree and analyze its complexity.
3132727
Query Processing over Incomplete Autonomous Databases
Incompleteness due to missing attribute values (aka "null values") is very common in autonomous web databases, on which user accesses are usually supported through mediators. Traditional query processing techniques that focus on the strict soundness of answer tuples often ignore tuples with critical missing attributes, even if they wind up being relevant to a user query. Ideally we would like the mediator to retrieve such possible answers and gauge their relevance by accessing their likelihood of being pertinent answers to the query. The autonomous nature of web databases poses several challenges in realizing this objective. Such challenges include the restricted access privileges imposed on the data, the limited support for query patterns, and the bounded pool of database and network resources in the web environment. We introduce a novel query rewriting and optimization framework QPIAD that tackles these challenges. Our technique involves reformulating the user query based on mined correlations among the database attributes. The reformulated queries are aimed at retrieving the relevant possible answers in addition to the certain answers. QPIAD is able to gauge the relevance of such queries allowing tradeoffs in reducing the costs of database query processing and answer transmission. To support this framework, we develop methods for mining attribute correlations (in terms of Approximate Functional Dependencies), value distributions (in the form of Naive Bayes Classifiers), and selectivity estimates. We present empirical studies to demonstrate that our approach is able to effectively retrieve relevant possible answers with high precision, high recall, and manageable cost.
2511748
QPIAD: Query Processing over Incomplete Autonomous Databases
Incompleteness due to missing attribute values (aka "null values") is very common in autonomous Web databases, on which user accesses are usually supported through mediators. Traditional query processing techniques that focus on the strict soundness of answer tuples often ignore tuples with critical missing attributes, even if they wind up being relevant to a user query. Ideally we would like the mediator to retrieve such relevant uncertain answers and gauge their relevance by accessing their likelihood of being relevant answers to the query. However, the autonomous nature of the databases poses several challenges, such as the restricted access privileges, limited query patterns, and sensitivity of database and network resource consumption in the Web environment. We introduce a novel query rewriting and optimization framework QPIAD that tackles these challenges to retrieve relevant uncertain answers. Our technique involves reformulating the user query based on approximate functional dependencies (AFDs) among the database attributes and ranking these queries using value distributions learned from naive Bayes classifiers. Empirical studies demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in retrieving relevant uncertain answers with high precision, high recall and manageable cost.
37282807
Testing Web Services Using Progressive Group Testing
This paper proposes progressive group testing techniques to test large number of Web services (WS) available on Internet. At the unit testing level, the WS with the same functionality are tested in group using progressively increasing number of test cases. A small number of WS that scored best will be integrated into the real environment for operational testing. At the integration testing level, many composite services will be constructed and tested by group integration testing. The results of group testing at both unit and integration levels are verified by weighted majority voting mechanisms. The weights are based on the reliability history of the WS under test. A case study is designed and implemented, where the dependency among the test cases in WS is analyzed and used to generate progressive layers of test cases.
8090728
The SAHARA Model for Service Composition across Multiple Providers
Services are capabilities that enable applications and are of crucial importance to pervasive computing in next-generation networks. Service Composition is the construction of complex services from primitive ones; thus enabling rapid and flexible creation of new services. The presence of multiple independent service providers poses new and significant challenges. Managing trust across providers and verifying the performance of the components in composition become essential issues. Adapting the composed service to network and user dynamics by choosing service providers and instances is yet another challenge. In SAHARA, we are developing a comprehensive architecture for the creation, placement, and management of services for composition across independent providers. In this paper, we present a layered reference model for composition based on a classification of different kinds of composition. We then discuss the different overarching mechanisms necessary for the successful deployment of such an architecture through a variety of case-studies involving composition.
62612563
Enabling location-based services in wireless LAN hotspots
The wide deployment of IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN (WLAN) makes possible application services developed in WLAN hotspots. Owing to the small cell size in WLAN hotspots, it is practical to develop location-based services with the awareness of the WLAN access points (APs) that mobile devices currently access. In this paper, we propose an effective location determination technique using the inherent SNMP support in WLAN APs. It is shown that the current location of a mobile device can be determined from the SNMP traps sent by APs. Since the SNMP-based approach doesn't need any particular software or hardware in mobile devices, location-based services can be widely deployed, especially in public WLAN hotspots. To further enable location-based services through the WWW, this paper also considers the location determination of a mobile device from its IP address, retrieved in a WWW environment. In addition, we propose a web service framework for location-based services in WLAN hotspots. Thus, location-based services can be developed in a standard way.
14272034
Optimal Anytime Constrained Simulated Annealing for Constrained Global Optimization
In this paper we propose an optimal anytime version of constrained simulated annealing (CSA) for solving constrained nonlinear programming problems (NLPs). One of the goals of the algorithm is to generate feasible solutions of certain prescribed quality using an average time of the same order of magnitude as that spent by the original CSA with an optimal cooling schedule in generating a solution of similar quality. Here, an optimal cooling schedule is one that leads to the shortest average total number of probes when the original CSA with the optimal schedule is run multiple times until it finds a solution. Our second goal is to design an anytime version of CSA that generates gradually improving feasible solutions as more time is spent, eventually finding a constrained global minimum (CGM). In our study, we have observed a monotonically non-decreasing function relating the success probability of obtaining a solution and the average completion time of CSA, and an exponential function relating the objective target that CSA is looking for and the average completion time. Based on these observations, we have designed CSAAT-ID the anytime CSA with iterative deepening that schedules multiple runs of CSA using a set of increasing cooling schedules and a set of improving objective targets. We then prove the optimality of our schedules and demonstrate experimentally the results on four continuous constrained NLPs. CSAAT-ID can be generalized to solving discrete, continuous, and mixed-integer NLPs, since CSA is applicable to solve problems in these three classes. Our approach can also be generalized to other stochastic search algorithms, such as genetic algorithms, and be used to determine the optimal time for each run of such algorithms.
17642246
Evolving an Experience Base for Software Process Research
Since 1996 the USC Center for Software Engineering has been accumulating a large amount of software process experience through many real-client project software engineering practices. Through the application of the Experience Factory approach, we have collected and evolved this experience into an experience base (eBASE) which has been leveraged successfully for empirically based software process research. Through eBASE we have realized tangible benefits in automating, organizational learning, and strategic advantages for software engineering research. We share our rationale for creating and evolving eBASE, give examples of how the eBASE has been used in recent process research, discuss current limitations and challenges with eBASE, and what we hope to do achieve in the future with it.
2306448
The TheaterLoc Virtual Application
Although much has been written about various information integration technologies, little has been said regarding how to combine these technologies together to build an entire “virtual” application. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of TheaterLoc, an information integration application that allows users to retrieve information about theaters and restaurants for a variety of cities in the United States, including an interactive map depicting their relative locations and video trailers of the movies playing at the selected theaters. The data retrieved by TheaterLoc comes from five distinct heterogeneous and distributed sources. The enabling technology used to achieve the integration includes the Ariadne information mediator and wrappers for each of the web-based data sources. We focus in detail on the mediator technologies, such as data modeling, source axiom compilation, and query planning. We also describe how the wrappers present an interface for querying data on web sites, aiding in information retrieval used during data integration. Finally, we discuss some of the major integration challenges we encountered and our plans to address them.