A unified approach to architecture conformance checking

Architectural decisions can be interpreted as structural and behavioral constraints that must be enforced in order to guarantee overarching qualities in a system. Enforcing those constraints in a fully automated way is often challenging and not well supported by current tools. Current approaches for checking architecture conformance either lack in usability or offer poor options for adaptation. To overcome this problem we analyze the current state of practice and propose an approach based on an extensible, declarative and empirically-grounded specification language. This solution aims at reducing the overall cost of setting up and maintaining an architectural conformance monitoring environment by decoupling the conceptual representation of a user-defined rule from its technical specification prescribed by the underlying analysis tools. By using a declarative language, we are able to write tool-agnostic rules that are simple enough to be understood by untrained stakeholders and, at the same time, can be can be automatically processed by a conformance checking validator. Besides addressing the issue of cost, we also investigate opportunities for increasing the value of conformance checking results by assisting the user towards the full alignment of the implementation with respect to its architecture. In particular, we show the benefits of providing actionable results by introducing a technique which automatically selects the optimal repairing solutions by means of simulation and profit-based quantification. We perform various case studies to show how our approach can be successfully adopted to support truly diverse industrial projects. We also investigate the dynamics involved in choosing and adopting a new automated conformance checking solution within an industrial context. Our approach reduces the cost of conformance checking by avoiding the need for an explicit management of the involved validation tools. The user can define rules using a convenient high-level DSL which automatically adapts to emerging analysis requirements. Increased usability and modular customization ensure lower costs and a shorter feedback loop.

A Unified Approach to Architecture Conformance Checking

Software erosion can be controlled by periodically checking for consistency between the de facto architecture and its theoretical counterpart. Studies show that this process is often not automated and that developers still rely heavily on manual reviews, despite the availability of a large number of tools. This is partially due to the high cost involved in setting up and maintaining tool-specific and incompatible test specifications that replicate otherwise documented invariants. To reduce this cost, our approach consists in unifying the functionality provided by existing tools under the umbrella of a common business-readable DSL. By using a declarative language, we are able to write tool-agnostic rules that are simple enough to be understood by non-technical stakeholders and, at the same time, can be interpreted as a rigorous specification for checking architecture conformance

Device for lengthening of a musculotendinous unit by direct continuous traction in the sheep

Background Retraction, atrophy and fatty infiltration are signs subsequent to chronic rotator cuff tendon tears. They are associated with an increased pennation angle and a shortening of the muscle fibers in series. These deleterious changes of the muscular architecture are not reversible with current repair techniques and are the main factors for failed rotator cuff tendon repair. Whereas fast stretching of the retracted musculotendinous unit results in proliferation of non-contractile fibrous tissue, slow stretching may lead to muscle regeneration in terms of sarcomerogenesis. To slowly stretch the retracted musculotendinous unit in a sheep model, two here described tensioning devices have been developed and mounted on the scapular spine of the sheep using an expandable threaded rod, which has been interposed between the retracted tendon end and the original insertion site at the humeral head. Traction is transmitted in line with the musculotendinous unit by sutures knotted on the expandable threaded rod. The threaded rod of the tensioner is driven within the body through a rotating axis, which enters the body on the opposite side. The tendon end, which was previously released (16 weeks prior) from its insertion site with a bone chip, was elongated with a velocity of 1 mm/day. Results After several steps of technical improvements, the tensioner proved to be capable of actively stretching the retracted and degenerated muscle back to the original length and to withstand the external forces acting on it. Conclusion This technical report describes the experimental technique for continuous elongation of the musculotendinous unit and reversion of the length of chronically shortened muscle.

Noisy kriging-based optimization methods: A unified implementation within the DiceOptim package

Kriging-based optimization relying on noisy evaluations of complex systems has recently motivated contributions from various research communities. Five strategies have been implemented in the DiceOptim package. The corresponding functions constitute a user-friendly tool for solving expensive noisy optimization problems in a sequential framework, while offering some flexibility for advanced users. Besides, the implementation is done in a unified environment, making this package a useful device for studying the relative performances of existing approaches depending on the experimental setup. An overview of the package structure and interface is provided, as well as a description of the strategies and some insight about the implementation challenges and the proposed solutions. The strategies are compared to some existing optimization packages on analytical test functions and show promising performances.

Mobile Cloud Networking: Mobile Network, Compute, and Storage as One Service On-Demand

The Future Communication Architecture for Mobile Cloud Services: Mobile Cloud Networking (MCN) is a EU FP7 Large-scale Integrating Project (IP) funded by the European Commission. MCN project was launched in November 2012 for the period of 36 month. In total top-tier 19 partners from industry and academia commit to jointly establish the vision of Mobile Cloud Networking, to develop a fully cloud-based mobile communication and application platform.

Dicto: A Unified DSL for Testing Architectural Rules

Software architecture consists of a set of design choices that can be partially expressed in form of rules that the implementation must conform to. Architectural rules are intended to ensure properties that fulfill fundamental non-functional requirements. Verifying architectural rules is often a non- trivial activity: available tools are often not very usable and support only a narrow subset of the rules that are commonly specified by practitioners. In this paper we present a new highly-readable declarative language for specifying architectural rules. With our approach, users can specify a wide variety of rules using a single uniform notation. Rules can get tested by third-party tools by conforming to pre-defined specification templates. Practitioners can take advantage of the capabilities of a growing number of testing tools without dealing with them directly.