GMU Software Engineering Seminar Series

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Date: Wed, 09/30/2009

Time: 12 – 1pm

Location: 4801 Engineering

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Title: A Modeling Language for Activity-Oriented Composition of Service-Oriented Software Systems

*** a paper to be presented at ACM/IEEE 12th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems ***

Speaker: Naeem Esfahani

Abstract
The proliferation of smart spaces and emergence of new standards, such as Web Services, have paved the way for a new breed of software systems. The functional and QoS requirements of such software systems are often not known a priori at design-time, and even if they are, they may change at run-time. Unfortunately, the majority of existing software engineering techniques rely heavily on human reasoning and manual intervention, making them inapplicable for automatic composition of such software systems at run-time. Moreover, these approaches are primarily intended to be used by technically knowledgeable software engineers, as opposed to domain users. In this talk, we present Service Activity Schemas (SAS), an activity-oriented language for modeling software system’s functional and QoS requirements. SAS targets service-oriented software systems, and relies on an ontology to provide domain experts with modeling constructs that are intuitively understood. SAS forms the centerpiece of a framework intended for user-driven composition and adaptation of service-oriented software systems in a pervasive setting (SASSY).

Bio
Naeem Esfahani is a PhD candidate in Computer Science Department, Volgenau School of Information Technology and Engineering. He got his bachelor’s degrees on Computer Engineering with major of Software Engineering from University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. He also holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Engineering with major of Software Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. His current research mainly focuses on Software Architecture, Autonomic Computing, Model Driven Development, Pervasive Systems, and Software Development Processes.

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Title: On the Role of Features in Analyzing the Architecture of Self-Adaptive Software Systems

*** a paper to be presented at 4th International Workshop on Models at Runtime ***

Speaker: Ahmed Elkhodary

Abstract
In traditional software families, feature-orientation has been shown effective for bridging the semantic gap between a software system’s requirements and its architecture. Over the past few years, the emergence of self-adaptive software systems, which are significantly more challenging to build than traditional systems, has gained the attention of the software engineering research community. In this talk, we show that using features at runtime could alleviate some of the key challenges of building such systems. The underlying insights are that: (1) features allow representation of the engineer’s knowledge about some facets of the system that can be used to enhance the adaptation logic, and (2) features can serve as an abstraction to deal with the heterogeneity of the underlying architectural models, analytical algorithms, and implementation platforms. We describe the role of features in a self-adaptive framework that we have developed, entitled FeatUre-oriented Self-adaptatION (FUSION). We also report on our preliminary experience with FUSION that demonstrates the benefits of using features in different stages of self-adaptation.

Bio
Ahmed Elkhodary is a PhD student in Computer Science Department, Volgenau School of Information Technology and Engineering. He got his bachelor’s degrees in Computer Engineering from King Abdul-Aziz University, KSA. He also holds a Master of Science in Software Engineering from George Mason University. His current research mainly focuses on Software Architecture, Software Product Lines Engineering, Autonomic Computing, and Online Machine Learning.