scholarly journals Guiding the evolution of product-line configurations

Author(s):  
Michael Nieke ◽  
Gabriela Sampaio ◽  
Thomas Thüm ◽  
Christoph Seidl ◽  
Leopoldo Teixeira ◽  
...  

AbstractA product line is an approach for systematically managing configuration options of customizable systems, usually by means of features. Products are generated for configurations consisting of selected features. Product-line evolution can lead to unintended changes to product behavior. We illustrate that updating configurations after product-line evolution requires decisions of both, domain engineers responsible for product-line evolution as well as application engineers responsible for configurations. The challenge is that domain and application engineers might not be able to interact with each other. We propose a formal foundation and a methodology that enables domain engineers to guide application engineers through configuration evolution by sharing knowledge on product-line evolution and by defining automatic update operations for configurations. As an effect, we enable knowledge transfer between those engineers without the need for interactions. We evaluate our methodology on four large-scale industrial product lines. The results of the qualitative evaluation indicate that our method is flexible enough for real-world product-line evolution. The quantitative evaluation indicates that we detect product behavior changes for up to $$55.3\%$$ 55.3 % of the configurations which would not have been detected using existing methods.

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Lindohf ◽  
Jacob Krüger ◽  
Erik Herzog ◽  
Thorsten Berger

AbstractSoftware product-line engineering is arguably one of the most successful methods for establishing large portfolios of software variants in an application domain. However, despite the benefits, establishing a product line requires substantial upfront investments into a software platform with a proper product-line architecture, into new software-engineering processes (domain engineering and application engineering), into business strategies with commercially successful product-line visions and financial planning, as well as into re-organization of development teams. Moreover, establishing a full-fledged product line is not always possible or desired, and thus organizations often adopt product-line engineering only to an extent that deemed necessary or was possible. However, understanding the current state of adoption, namely, the maturity or performance of product-line engineering in an organization, is challenging, while being crucial to steer investments. To this end, several measurement methods have been proposed in the literature, with the most prominent one being the Family Evaluation Framework (FEF), introduced almost two decades ago. Unfortunately, applying it is not straightforward, and the benefits of using it have not been assessed so far. We present an experience report of applying the FEF to nine medium- to large-scale product lines in the avionics domain. We discuss how we tailored and executed the FEF, together with the relevant adaptations and extensions we needed to perform. Specifically, we elicited the data for the FEF assessment with 27 interviews over a period of 11 months. We discuss experiences and assess the benefits of using the FEF, aiming at helping other organizations assessing their practices for engineering their portfolios of software variants.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathrin Cresswell ◽  
Aziz Sheikh ◽  
Bryony Dean Franklin ◽  
Marta Krasuska Krasuska ◽  
Hung The Nguyen ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND The English Global Digital Exemplar (GDE) Programme is one of the first concerted efforts to create a digital health learning ecosystem across a national health service. OBJECTIVE To explore mechanisms supporting or inhibiting exchange of inter-organisational digital transformation knowledge. METHODS We conducted a formative qualitative evaluation of the GDE Programme. We used semi-structured interviews with clinical, technical and managerial staff, national programme managers and network leaders; non-participant observations of knowledge transfer activities through attending meetings, workshops and conferences; and documentary analysis of policy documents. Data were thematically analysed drawing on a theory-informed sociotechnical coding framework. We used a mixture of deductive and inductive methods, supported by NVivo software to facilitate coding. RESULTS We conducted 341 one-to-one and 116 group interviews, observed 86 meetings, and analysed 245 documents in 36 participating provider organisations. We also conducted 56 high-level interviews with policymakers and vendors; 84 observations of national meetings, workshops, and conferences; and analysed 80 national documents. Formal processes put in place by the GDE Programme to initiate and reinforce knowledge transfer and learning have accelerated the growth of informal knowledge networking and helped establish the foundations of a learning ecosystem. However, formal networks were most effective where supported by informal networking. Benefits of networking were enhanced (and costs reduced) by geographical proximity, shared culture and context, common technological functionality, regional and strategic alignments, and professional agendas. CONCLUSIONS Strategic decision makers can stimulate effective knowledge transfer in large-scale digital health transformation initiatives. Knowledge exchange is most effective when sustained through informal networking driven by mutual benefits of sharing knowledge and learning. Policy interventions to enhance incentives and reduce barriers to sharing across the ecosystem may be more productive than promoting particular knowledge transfer mechanisms.


Diabetes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (Supplement 1) ◽  
pp. 1588-P ◽  
Author(s):  
ROMIK GHOSH ◽  
ASHOK K. DAS ◽  
AMBRISH MITHAL ◽  
SHASHANK JOSHI ◽  
K.M. PRASANNA KUMAR ◽  
...  

Diabetes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (Supplement 1) ◽  
pp. 2258-PUB
Author(s):  
ROMIK GHOSH ◽  
ASHOK K. DAS ◽  
SHASHANK JOSHI ◽  
AMBRISH MITHAL ◽  
K.M. PRASANNA KUMAR ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 9-16
Author(s):  
José Suárez-Varela ◽  
Miquel Ferriol-Galmés ◽  
Albert López ◽  
Paul Almasan ◽  
Guillermo Bernárdez ◽  
...  

During the last decade, Machine Learning (ML) has increasingly become a hot topic in the field of Computer Networks and is expected to be gradually adopted for a plethora of control, monitoring and management tasks in real-world deployments. This poses the need to count on new generations of students, researchers and practitioners with a solid background in ML applied to networks. During 2020, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has organized the "ITU AI/ML in 5G challenge", an open global competition that has introduced to a broad audience some of the current main challenges in ML for networks. This large-scale initiative has gathered 23 different challenges proposed by network operators, equipment manufacturers and academia, and has attracted a total of 1300+ participants from 60+ countries. This paper narrates our experience organizing one of the proposed challenges: the "Graph Neural Networking Challenge 2020". We describe the problem presented to participants, the tools and resources provided, some organization aspects and participation statistics, an outline of the top-3 awarded solutions, and a summary with some lessons learned during all this journey. As a result, this challenge leaves a curated set of educational resources openly available to anyone interested in the topic.


Omega ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 102442
Author(s):  
Lin Zhou ◽  
Lu Zhen ◽  
Roberto Baldacci ◽  
Marco Boschetti ◽  
Ying Dai ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Seyed Hossein Jafari ◽  
Amir Mahdi Abdolhosseini-Qomi ◽  
Masoud Asadpour ◽  
Maseud Rahgozar ◽  
Naser Yazdani

AbstractThe entities of real-world networks are connected via different types of connections (i.e., layers). The task of link prediction in multiplex networks is about finding missing connections based on both intra-layer and inter-layer correlations. Our observations confirm that in a wide range of real-world multiplex networks, from social to biological and technological, a positive correlation exists between connection probability in one layer and similarity in other layers. Accordingly, a similarity-based automatic general-purpose multiplex link prediction method—SimBins—is devised that quantifies the amount of connection uncertainty based on observed inter-layer correlations in a multiplex network. Moreover, SimBins enhances the prediction quality in the target layer by incorporating the effect of link overlap across layers. Applying SimBins to various datasets from diverse domains, our findings indicate that SimBins outperforms the compared methods (both baseline and state-of-the-art methods) in most instances when predicting links. Furthermore, it is discussed that SimBins imposes minor computational overhead to the base similarity measures making it a potentially fast method, suitable for large-scale multiplex networks.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (7) ◽  
pp. 700
Author(s):  
Theodoros Mavridis ◽  
Christina I. Deligianni ◽  
Georgios Karagiorgis ◽  
Ariadne Daponte ◽  
Marianthi Breza ◽  
...  

Now more than ever is the time of monoclonal antibody use in neurology. In headaches, disease-specific and mechanism-based treatments existed only for symptomatic management of migraines (i.e., triptans), while the standard prophylactic anti-migraine treatments consist of non-specific and repurposed drugs that share limited safety profiles and high risk for interactions with other medications, resulting in rundown adherence rates. Recent advances in headache science have increased our understanding of the role of calcitonin gene relate peptide (CGRP) and pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) pathways in cephalic pain neurotransmission and peripheral or central sensitization, leading to the development of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) or small molecules targeting these neuropeptides or their receptors. Large scale randomized clinical trials confirmed that inhibition of the CGRP system attenuates migraine, while the PACAP mediated nociception is still under scientific and clinical investigation. In this review, we provide the latest clinical evidence for the use of anti-CGRP in migraine prevention with emphasis on efficacy and safety outcomes from Phase III and real-world studies.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 1091
Author(s):  
Izaak Van Crombrugge ◽  
Rudi Penne ◽  
Steve Vanlanduit

Knowledge of precise camera poses is vital for multi-camera setups. Camera intrinsics can be obtained for each camera separately in lab conditions. For fixed multi-camera setups, the extrinsic calibration can only be done in situ. Usually, some markers are used, like checkerboards, requiring some level of overlap between cameras. In this work, we propose a method for cases with little or no overlap. Laser lines are projected on a plane (e.g., floor or wall) using a laser line projector. The pose of the plane and cameras is then optimized using bundle adjustment to match the lines seen by the cameras. To find the extrinsic calibration, only a partial overlap between the laser lines and the field of view of the cameras is needed. Real-world experiments were conducted both with and without overlapping fields of view, resulting in rotation errors below 0.5°. We show that the accuracy is comparable to other state-of-the-art methods while offering a more practical procedure. The method can also be used in large-scale applications and can be fully automated.


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