Towards Public Services and Process Integration

Software platforms for e-government transactions may differ in developed functionalities, languages and technologies, hardware platforms, and operating systems that support them. Those differences can be found among public organizations that share common processes, services, and regulations. This scenario hinders interoperability between these organizations. Hence, to find a technique for integrating these platforms becomes a necessity. In this chapter, a rule-based domain-specific modeling environment for public services and process integration is suggested, which consists of common identified public service elements and a set of process integration rules. This approach provides the needed integration or interoperability pursued in this domain. Furthermore a service and process model is proposed to formalize the information needed for integration of both. A set of integration rules is also presented as part of the modeling environment. This set of integration rules completes the proposed model to meet the business requirements of this domain.

Runtime Integration Capability for Distributed Model Driven Applications

Geographically distributed organizations face unique challenges to effectively implement shared information services across the enterprise. Traditional solutions require options such as establishing large centralized application and database servers, which simplifies some data integration issues but involves higher associated centralization risks with potential scalability limitations, or establishing multiple de-centralized application servers optionally arranged in hierarchical hubs, requiring significant customization and data migration functions to be developed, reducing the level of risk but incurring additional expenditure on data integration and transfer. Our ongoing development of a distributed temporal meta-data framework for Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) applications seeks to overcome these issues with the application logic model supporting the capability for direct integration with similar distributed application instances to readily provide: data replication, transfer, and transformations; centralized authorization and distribution of core identity data; sharing and deployment of modified logic model elements; and workflow integration between application instances.

Adaptive Software based on Correct-by-Construction Metamodels

Despite significant research efforts in the last decade, UML has not reached the status of being a high-confidence modeling language. This is due to unsound foundations that result from the insufficiently formal structuring of metamodels that define the MOF/UML Infrastructure. Nowadays, UML-related metamodels are implemented in computing environments (e.g., EMF) to play the role of metadata when one seeks adaptation at runtime. To properly instrument metamodel-based adaptation, this chapter re-formalizes the core of the MOF/UML Infrastructure along with giving formal proofs that avoid ambiguities, contradictions, or redundancies. A (meta-)class creation mechanism (either by instantiation or inheritance) is based on inductive types taken from the constructive logic. Inherent proofs based on the Coq automated prover are also provided. This chapter’s contribution is aligned with a previously established metamodeling framework named “Matters of (meta-)modeling.”

Process for the Validation of System Architectures against Requirements

The development of systems consisting of hardware and software is a challenging task for the system architect. On the one hand, he has to consider an increasing number of system requirements, including the dependencies between them for designing the system architecture; on the other hand, he has to deal with a shortened time-to-market period and requirements changes of the customers up to the implementation phase. This chapter presents a process that enables the architect to validate the system architecture against the architecture-relevant requirements. The process is part of the system design phase and can be integrated in the iterative design of the system architecture. In order to keep track of all requirements, including their dependencies, the architect clusters the requirements according to architecture-specific aspects, the so-called validation targets. For each target he defines examinations processes and check criteria to define the validation status. If all targets are valid, i.e., all check criteria are met by the result of the examination processes, the system architecture itself is valid. Instead of formal validation techniques like model checking, the approach prefers simulations for the examination processes. The approach uses model-based documentation based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML). All data required for the simulations is part of an UML model and extracted to configure and run the simulations. Therefore, changes in the model affect the validation result directly. The process supports the architect in building a system architecture that fulfills the architecture-relevant requirements, and it supports the architect in analyzing the impacts after requirements or architecture changes. A tool facilitates the work effort of the architect by partly automating the major process steps.

Architecture-Driven Modernization for Software Reverse Engineering Technologies

Modernization of legacy systems is a new research area in the software industry that is intended to provide support for transforming an existing software system to a new one that satisfies new demands. Software modernization requires technical frameworks for information integration and tool interoperability that allow managing new platform technologies, design techniques, and processes. The new OMG (Object Management Group) initiative for modernization aligned with this requirement is Architecture-Driven Modernization (ADM). Reverse engineering techniques play a crucial role in system modernization. In this chapter, the authors describe the state-of-the-art in the model-driven modernization area, reverse engineering in particular, and discuss about existing tools and future trends. In addition, they describe a framework to reverse engineering models from object-oriented code that distinguishes three different abstraction levels linked to models, metamodels, and formal specifications. As an example, this chapter shows how to reverse engineering use case diagrams from Java code in the ADM context focusing on transformations at metamodel level. The authors validate their approach by using Eclipse Modeling Framework.

High-Integrity Model-Based Development

Model-Based Development (MBD) has become increasingly used for critical systems, and it is the subject of the MBDV supplement to the DO-178C standard. In this chapter, the authors review the requirements of DO-178C for model-based development, and they identify ways in which MBD can be combined with formal verification to achieve DO-178C requirements for traceability and verifiability of models. In particular, the authors consider the implications for model transformations, which are a central part of MBD approaches, and they identify how transformations can be verified using formal methods tools.

A Model-Based Approach to Aligning Business Goals with Enterprise Architecture

Modern organizations need to address increasingly complex challenges including how to represent and maintain their business goals using technologies and IT platforms that change on a regular basis. This has led to the development of modelling notations for expressing various aspects of an organization with a view to reducing complexity, increasing technology independence, and supporting analysis. Many of these Enterprise Architecture (EA) modelling notations provide a large number of concepts that support the business analysis but lack precise definitions necessary to perform computer-supported organizational analysis. This chapter reviews the current EA modelling landscape and proposes a simple language for the practical support of EA simulation including business alignment in terms of executing a collection of goals against prototype execution.

Demystifying Domain Specific Languages

Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) provide interesting characteristics that align well with the goals and mission of model-driven software engineering. However, there are still some issues that hamper widespread adoption. In this chapter, the authors discuss two of these issues. The first relates to the vagueness of the term DSL, which they address by studying the individual terms: domain, specificity, and language. The second is related to the difficulty of developing DSLs, which they address with a view to making DSL development more accessible via processes, standards, and tools.

Model-Driven Engineering for Electronic Commerce

The chapter explores the development of a specific process e-Commerce metamodel for reuse and interoperability, which is proposed to obtain the taxonomy of e-business processes. It defines a specific ontology and semantics of independent processes platform. This is achieved with the help of the principles proposed by the Model Driven Engineering (MDE), specifically the proposal for the OMG, Model Driven Architecture (MDA), enabling it to minimize the time and effort required to create ecommerce solutions.

Ptolemaic Metamodelling?

By consideration of scientific paradigm shifts, in this chapter the authors evaluate possible parallels in the evolution of modelling, and particularly metamodelling and modelling language construction, as a basis for evaluating whether or not the time is ripe for a similar change of direction in model language development for software engineering. Having identified several inconsistencies and paradoxes in the current orthodoxy, they then introduce a number of ideas from outside software engineering (including language use, philosophy, and ontology engineering) that seem to solve many of these issues. Whether these new ideas, together, are sufficient to create a shift in mindset or whether they are simply the stimulus for others to create new and orthogonal ideas remains to be seen. The authors urge the modelling and metamodelling communities to search out that new orthodoxy (i.e. instigate a paradigm shift) that will, necessarily, ensure that the science will offer simpler and more satisfying solutions in the years to come.