Systems-of-Systems (SoS) encompass diverse and independent systems that must cooperate with each other for performing a combined action that is greater than their individual capabilities. In parallel, architecture descriptions, which are the main artifact expressing software architectures, play an important role in fostering interoperability among constituents by facilitating the communication among stakeholders and supporting the inspection and analysis of the SoS from an early stage of its life cycle. The main problem addressed in this thesis is the lack of adequate architectural descriptions for SoS that are often built without an adequate care to their software architecture. Since constituent systems are, in general, not known at design-time due to the evolving nature of SoS, the architecture description must specify at design-time which coalitions among constituent systems are feasible at run-time. Moreover, as many SoS are being developed for safety-critical domains, additional measures must be placed to ensure the correctness and completeness of architecture descriptions. To address this problem, this doctoral project employs SoSADL, a formal language tailored for the description of SoS that enables one to express software architectures as dynamic associations between independent constituent systems whose interactions are mediated for accomplishing a combined action. To synthesize concrete architectures that adhere to one such description, this thesis develops a formal method, named Ark, that systematizes the steps for producing such artifacts. The method creates an intermediate formal model, named TASoS, which expresses the SoS architecture in terms of a constraint satisfaction problem that can be automatically analyzed for an initial set of properties. The feedback obtained in this analysis can be used for subsequent refinements or revisions of the architecture description. A software tool named SoSy was also developed to support the Ark method as it automates the generation of intermediate models and concrete architectures, thus concealing the use of constraint solvers during SoS design and development. The method and its accompanying tool were applied to model a SoS for urban river monitoring in which the feasibility of candidate abstract architectures is investigated. By formalizing and automating the required steps for SoS architectural synthesis, Ark contributes for adopting formal methods in the design of SoS architectures, which is a necessary step for obtaining higher reliability levels. / Sistemas-de-sistemas (SoS) englobam sistemas diversos e independentes que cooperam entre si para executar uma ação combinada que supera suas competências individuais. Em paralelo, descrições arquiteturais são artefatos que expressam arquiteturas de software, desempenhando no contexto de SoS um importante papel na promoção da interoperabilidade entre constituintes ao facilitar a comunicação entre interessados e apoiar atividades de inspeção e análise desde o início de seu ciclo de vida. O principal problema abordado nessa tese consiste na falta de descrições arquiteturais adequadas para SoS que estão sendo desenvolvidos sem um devido cuidado à sua arquitetura de software. Uma vez que os sistemas constituintes não são necessariamente conhecidos em tempo de projeto devido à natureza evolucionária dos SoS, a descrição arquitetural precisa definir em tempo de projeto quais coalisões entre sistemas constituintes são possíveis em tempo de execução. Como muitos desses sistemas são desenvolvidos para o domínio crítico de segurança, medidas adicionais precisam ser adotadas para garantir a correção e completude da descrição arquitetural. Visando tratar esse problema, esse projeto de doutorado emprega SosADL, uma linguagem formal criada especialmente para o domínio de SoS que permite expressar arquiteturas de software como associações dinâmicas entre sistemas independentes em que as interações devem ser mediadas para desempenhar uma ação conjunta. Em particular, é proposto um novo método formal, denominado Ark, para sistematizar os passos necessários na síntese de arquiteturas concretas aderentes a essa descrição. Para isso, o método cria um modelo formal intermediário, denominado TASoS, que expressa a arquitetura do SoS em termos de um problema de satisfatibilidade de restrições, possibilitando desse modo a verificação automática de um conjunto inicial de propriedades. O resultado obtido por essa análise pode ser utilizado em refinamentos e revisões subsequentes da descrição arquitetural. Uma ferramenta de apoio denominada SoSy também foi desenvolvida para automatizar a geração de modelos intermediários e arquiteturas concretas, ocultando o uso de solucionadores de restrições no projeto e desenvolvimento de SoS. O método e sua ferramenta foram aplicados em um modelo de SoS para monitoramento de rios em áreas urbanas em que a viabilidade de arquiteturas abstratas foi investigada. Ao formalizar e automatizar os passos necessários para a síntese arquitetural de SoS, é possível adotar métodos formais no projeto arquitetural de SoS, que são necessários para alcançar níveis maiores de confiabilidade.

Arquiteturas de referência são construídas por combinarem as melhores praticas, padrões, plataformas e componentes para a construção e padronização de sistemas de software de um determinado domínio. De fato, diversas arquiteturas de referência podem ser encontradas para o domínio de sistemas embarcados, motivadas principalmente pela importância e complexidade crescentes que esses sistemas de software vêm apresentando. Dentre as atividades para elaboração de uma arquitetura de referência, a descrição apropriada dessa arquitetura é essencial para permitir que ela seja de fato utilizada. Contudo, não há na literatura um consenso sobre qual a melhor maneira de descrever arquiteturas de referência do domínio de sistemas embarcados, os tipos de informação que devem ser capturados ou ainda o conjunto de pontos de vista que pode ser construído. Visando sistematizar e padronizar a representação de arquiteturas de referência de sistemas embarcados, este trabalho propõe o método ProSA-Re. O método baseia-se nos resultados de uma revisão sistemática conduzida sobre o assunto e estabelece um conjunto de atividades e diretrizes para a construção da representação de arquiteturas de referência de sistemas embarcados. O método também esclarece o ciclo de vida de arquiteturas de referência, de modo a auxiliar na manutenção e na evolução das representações construídas com o seu apoio. Para ilustrar o ProSA-Re, uma representação da arquitetura de referência de sistemas multiagentes locais foi elaborada. Em seguida, a realização de uma avaliação com especialistas da área de arquitetura de software e um estudo de caso com usuários dessa representação permitiram a identicação de vantagens e limitações desse método. Espera-se que os resultados alcancados nesta dissertação possam contribuir para o reúso do conhecimento arquitetural e o desenvolvimento mais eficiente de sistemas de software do domínio de sistemas embarcados / Reference architectures combine the best practices, standards, platforms, and components to standardize software systems of a given domain. In this sense, reference architectures can be found for embedded systems, motivated by the increasing importance and complexity that these systems must cope with. In particular, the representation of the reference architecture is an essential activity for it to be used in practice. However, there is no consensus in the literature on what is the best way to describe reference architectures of embedded systems, including what types of information should be captured in those descriptions and also the set of viewpoints that could be adopted. Thus, this work establishes ProSA-Re, a method for systematizing and standardizing the representation of reference architectures of embedded systems. ProSA-Re considers the results of a systematic review on this subject and species a set of viewpoints, concerns, tasks, and guidelines to describe reference architectures of embedded systems. ProSA-Re also supports the reference architectures\' life cycle by clarifying the evolution of architectural descriptions built with it. To illustrate the method, a representation for the reference architecture of situated multiagent systems was built. Then, a case study was conducted to evaluate the resulting representation and specialists were consulted to evaluate the method description. We hope with this method to further improve the reuse of architectural knowledge, thus contributing for the development of software systems in this domain

Systems-of-Systems (SoS) encompass diverse and independent systems that must cooperate with each other for performing a combined action that is greater than their individual capabilities. In parallel, architecture descriptions, which are the main artifact expressing software architectures, play an important role in fostering interoperability among constituents by facilitating the communication among stakeholders and supporting the inspection and analysis of the SoS from an early stage of its life cycle. The main problem addressed in this thesis is the lack of adequate architectural descriptions for SoS that are often built without an adequate care to their software architecture. Since constituent systems are, in general, not known at design-time due to the evolving nature of SoS, the architecture description must specify at design-time which coalitions among constituent systems are feasible at run-time. Moreover, as many SoS are being developed for safety-critical domains, additional measures must be placed to ensure the correctness and completeness of architecture descriptions. To address this problem, this doctoral project employs SoSADL, a formal language tailored for the description of SoS that enables one to express software architectures as dynamic associations between independent constituent systems whose interactions are mediated for accomplishing a combined action. To synthesize concrete architectures that adhere to one such description, this thesis develops a formal method, named Ark, that systematizes the steps for producing such artifacts. The method creates an intermediate formal model, named TASoS, which expresses the SoS architecture in terms of a constraint satisfaction problem that can be automatically analyzed for an initial set of properties. The feedback obtained in this analysis can be used for subsequent refinements or revisions of the architecture description. A software tool named SoSy was also developed to support the Ark method as it automates the generation of intermediate models and concrete architectures, thus concealing the use of constraint solvers during SoS design and development. The method and its accompanying tool were applied to model a SoS for urban river monitoring in which the feasibility of candidate abstract architectures is investigated. By formalizing and automating the required steps for SoS architectural synthesis, Ark contributes for adopting formal methods in the design of SoS architectures, which is a necessary step for obtaining higher reliability levels. / Sistemas-de-sistemas (SoS) englobam sistemas diversos e independentes que cooperam entre si para executar uma ação combinada que supera suas competências individuais. Em paralelo, descrições arquiteturais são artefatos que expressam arquiteturas de software, desempenhando no contexto de SoS um importante papel na promoção da interoperabilidade entre constituintes ao facilitar a comunicação entre interessados e apoiar atividades de inspeção e análise desde o início de seu ciclo de vida. O principal problema abordado nessa tese consiste na falta de descrições arquiteturais adequadas para SoS que estão sendo desenvolvidos sem um devido cuidado à sua arquitetura de software. Uma vez que os sistemas constituintes não são necessariamente conhecidos em tempo de projeto devido à natureza evolucionária dos SoS, a descrição arquitetural precisa definir em tempo de projeto quais coalisões entre sistemas constituintes são possíveis em tempo de execução. Como muitos desses sistemas são desenvolvidos para o domínio crítico de segurança, medidas adicionais precisam ser adotadas para garantir a correção e completude da descrição arquitetural. Visando tratar esse problema, esse projeto de doutorado emprega SosADL, uma linguagem formal criada especialmente para o domínio de SoS que permite expressar arquiteturas de software como associações dinâmicas entre sistemas independentes em que as interações devem ser mediadas para desempenhar uma ação conjunta. Em particular, é proposto um novo método formal, denominado Ark, para sistematizar os passos necessários na síntese de arquiteturas concretas aderentes a essa descrição. Para isso, o método cria um modelo formal intermediário, denominado TASoS, que expressa a arquitetura do SoS em termos de um problema de satisfatibilidade de restrições, possibilitando desse modo a verificação automática de um conjunto inicial de propriedades. O resultado obtido por essa análise pode ser utilizado em refinamentos e revisões subsequentes da descrição arquitetural. Uma ferramenta de apoio denominada SoSy também foi desenvolvida para automatizar a geração de modelos intermediários e arquiteturas concretas, ocultando o uso de solucionadores de restrições no projeto e desenvolvimento de SoS. O método e sua ferramenta foram aplicados em um modelo de SoS para monitoramento de rios em áreas urbanas em que a viabilidade de arquiteturas abstratas foi investigada. Ao formalizar e automatizar os passos necessários para a síntese arquitetural de SoS, é possível adotar métodos formais no projeto arquitetural de SoS, que são necessários para alcançar níveis maiores de confiabilidade.

Les systèmes-de-systèmes (Systems-of-Systems, SoS) interconnectent plusieurs systèmes indépendants qui travaillent ensemble pour exécuter une action conjointe dépassant leurs compétences individuelles. Par ailleurs, les descriptions architecturales sont des artefacts qui décrivent des architectures logicielles jouant dans le contexte SoS un rôle important dans la promotion de l’interaction des éléments constituants tout en favorisant la communication parmi les intéressés et en soutenant les activités d’inspection et d’analyse dès le début de leur cycle de vie. Le principal problème traité dans cette thèse est le manque de descriptions architecturales adéquates pour les SoS qui sont développés sans l’attention nécessaire à leur architecture logicielle. Puisque les systèmes constituants ne sont pas forcément connus pendant la conception du projet à cause du développement évolutionnaire des SoS, la description architecturale doit définir à la conception même du projet quelles coalitions entre les systèmes constituants seront possibles pendant son exécution. En outre, comme plusieurs de ces systèmes sont développés pour le domaine critique de sécurité, des mesures supplémentaires doivent être mises en place pour garantir l’exactitude et la complétude de la description architecturale. Afin de résoudre ce problème, nous nous servons du SosADL, un langage formel créé spécialement pour le domaine SoS et qui permet de décrire les architectures logicielles comme des associations dynamiques entre systèmes indépendants où les interactions doivent être coordonnées pour réaliser une action combinée. Notamment, une nouvelle méthode formelle, nommée Ark, est proposée pour systématiser les étapes nécessaires dans la synthèse d’architectures concrètes obéissant à cette description. Dans ce dessein, cette méthode crée un modèle formel intermédiaire, nommé TASoS, qui décrit l’architecture du SoS en tant que problème de satisfaisabilité de restrictions, rendant ainsi possible la vérification automatique d’un ensemble initial de propriétés. Le résultat obtenu par cette analyse peut s’utiliser en raffinements et révisions ultérieurs de la description architecturale. Un outil logiciel nommé SoSy a été aussi développé pour automatiser la génération de modèles intermédiaires et d’architectures concrètes, en cachant l’utilisation de solveurs de contraintes dans le projet de SoS. Particulièrement, cet outil intègre un environnement de développement plus important et complet pour le projet de SoS. Cette méthode et son outil ont été appliqués dans un modèle de SoS de surveillance de rivières urbaines où la faisabilité d’architectures abstraites a été étudiée. En formalisant et en automatisant les étapes requises pour la synthèse architecturale de SoS, Ark contribue à l’adoption de méthodes formelles dans le projet d’architectures SoS, ce qui est nécessaire pour atteindre des niveaux plus élevés de fiabilité. / Systems-of-Systems (SoS) encompass diverse and independent systems that must cooperate with each other for performing a combined action that is greater than their individual capabilities. In parallel, architecture descriptions, which are the main artifact expressing software architectures, play an important role in fostering interoperability among constituents by facilitating the communication among stakeholders and supporting the inspection and analysis of the SoS from an early stage of its life cycle. The main problem addressed in this thesis is the lack of adequate architectural descriptions for SoS that are often built without an adequate care to their software architecture. Since constituent systems are, in general, not known at design-time due to the evolving nature of SoS, the architecture description must specify at design-time which coalitions among constituent systems are feasible at run-time. Moreover, as many SoS are being developed for safety-critical domains, additional measures must be placed to ensure the correctness and completeness of architecture descriptions. To address this problem, this doctoral project employs SoSADL, a formal language tailored for the description of SoS that enables one to express software architectures as dynamic associations between independent constituent systems whose interactions are mediated for accomplishing a combined action. To synthesize concrete architectures that adhere to one such description, this thesis develops a formal method, named Ark, that systematizes the steps for producing such artifacts. The method creates an intermediate formal model, named TASoS, which expresses the SoS architecture in terms of a constraint satisfaction problem that can be automatically analyzed for an initial set of properties. The feedback obtained in this analysis can be used for subsequent refinements or revisions of the architecture description. A software tool named SoSy was also developed to support the Ark method as it automates the generation of intermediate models and concrete architectures, thus concealing the use of constraint solvers during SoS design and development. The method and its accompanying tool were applied to model a SoS for urban river monitoring in which the feasibility of candidate abstract architectures is investigated. By formalizing and automating the required steps for SoS architectural synthesis, Ark contributes for adopting formal methods in the design of SoS architectures, which is a necessary step for obtaining higher reliability levels.

Arquiteturas de referência são construídas por combinarem as melhores praticas, padrões, plataformas e componentes para a construção e padronização de sistemas de software de um determinado domínio. De fato, diversas arquiteturas de referência podem ser encontradas para o domínio de sistemas embarcados, motivadas principalmente pela importância e complexidade crescentes que esses sistemas de software vêm apresentando. Dentre as atividades para elaboração de uma arquitetura de referência, a descrição apropriada dessa arquitetura é essencial para permitir que ela seja de fato utilizada. Contudo, não há na literatura um consenso sobre qual a melhor maneira de descrever arquiteturas de referência do domínio de sistemas embarcados, os tipos de informação que devem ser capturados ou ainda o conjunto de pontos de vista que pode ser construído. Visando sistematizar e padronizar a representação de arquiteturas de referência de sistemas embarcados, este trabalho propõe o método ProSA-Re. O método baseia-se nos resultados de uma revisão sistemática conduzida sobre o assunto e estabelece um conjunto de atividades e diretrizes para a construção da representação de arquiteturas de referência de sistemas embarcados. O método também esclarece o ciclo de vida de arquiteturas de referência, de modo a auxiliar na manutenção e na evolução das representações construídas com o seu apoio. Para ilustrar o ProSA-Re, uma representação da arquitetura de referência de sistemas multiagentes locais foi elaborada. Em seguida, a realização de uma avaliação com especialistas da área de arquitetura de software e um estudo de caso com usuários dessa representação permitiram a identicação de vantagens e limitações desse método. Espera-se que os resultados alcancados nesta dissertação possam contribuir para o reúso do conhecimento arquitetural e o desenvolvimento mais eficiente de sistemas de software do domínio de sistemas embarcados / Reference architectures combine the best practices, standards, platforms, and components to standardize software systems of a given domain. In this sense, reference architectures can be found for embedded systems, motivated by the increasing importance and complexity that these systems must cope with. In particular, the representation of the reference architecture is an essential activity for it to be used in practice. However, there is no consensus in the literature on what is the best way to describe reference architectures of embedded systems, including what types of information should be captured in those descriptions and also the set of viewpoints that could be adopted. Thus, this work establishes ProSA-Re, a method for systematizing and standardizing the representation of reference architectures of embedded systems. ProSA-Re considers the results of a systematic review on this subject and species a set of viewpoints, concerns, tasks, and guidelines to describe reference architectures of embedded systems. ProSA-Re also supports the reference architectures\' life cycle by clarifying the evolution of architectural descriptions built with it. To illustrate the method, a representation for the reference architecture of situated multiagent systems was built. Then, a case study was conducted to evaluate the resulting representation and specialists were consulted to evaluate the method description. We hope with this method to further improve the reuse of architectural knowledge, thus contributing for the development of software systems in this domain

Nowadays, large-scale software systems consist of multiple applications, which interact with each other to fulfill desired system-level requirements. It is usually required to coordinate the interactions of the constituent applications to ensure that the system-level requirements are fulfilled. In this paper, we outline a set of requirements that must be fulfilled to facilitate the modular composition of multiple applications. We introduce the concept of architectural event modules, which are abstractions to represent constituent applications and their coordination logic in a modular and uniform way. We explain the implementation of this concept in the EventReactor language, and define their formal semantics in processing events using the UPPAAL toolset. We illustrate the suitability of architectural event modules in achieving modularity and loose coupling in the composition of multiple applications by means of a case study in the domain of energy-efficient computing.

¡@¡@Business strategy may lead the organization and people to achieve the strategy goals and let the stakeholder know the reason why the organization exists and the motive why people fight for missions. Therefore, business strategy management should be able to describe the business strategy clearly in order to assist to consolidate each point of view and enable business strategy achieve synergy effects. ¡@¡@The strategy map, adopting word, graphic and process languages, is used to describe the business strategy. However, the implementation and consolidation of these languages have problems that they cannot integrate business organization¡¦s ¡§Structure View¡¨ and ¡§Process View¡¨ together. ¡@¡@This research uses Strategy Architectural Description Language (SADL) to construct an Business Strategy Architecture-Oriented Integrated Model (BSAOIM) which utilizes the ¡§Union of Structure View and Process View¡¨ to enhance the insufficient description capability of the strategy map. ¡@¡@The result of the study shows that BSAOIM is from the huge view to the microcosmic, from whole to some merger strategy thinking. By SADL to consolidate business exclusive Strategy Architectural Diagram (SAD), The SAD integrates organizational structure and business process closely and provides various points of views to transform implicit into explicit knowledge, which is a paramount description tool that can transform the abstract concept into real system and enable the organization and people, under the instruction of strategy, implement strategies successfully.

Component based software engineering has been perceived to have immense reuse potential. This area has evoked wide interest and has led to considerable investment in research and development efforts. Most of these investigations have explored internal characteristics of software components such as correctness, reliability, modularity, interoperability, understandability, maintainability, readability, portability and generality for promoting reuse. But experience over the past decade and a half has demonstrated that the usefulness of a component depends as much on the context into which it fits as it does on the internal characteristics of the component. Software architecture descriptions that take into account the requirements of the domain can be used to serve as this context. While the Perry, Wolf definition of software architecture has been widely acknowledged, a number of architectural description languages (ADL) have emerged that aim to capture various facets of a software, using varying degrees of formalism. There is currently no agreement towards a standard approach for documenting software architectures which would help define the vocabulary for architectural semantics. In spite of lack of any specification standards for components, Software Product Lines (SPL) and Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) components do provide a rich supporting base for creating software architectures and promise significant improvements in the quality of software configurations that can be composed from pre-built components. However, further research is needed for evaluation of architectural merits of such component based configurations. In this research, we identify the key aspects of software that need to be specified to enable useful analysis at an architectural level. We also propose a set of metrics that enable objective evaluation of reusability potential. Architectural research has established that software architectural styles provide a way for achieving a desired coherence for component-based architectures. Different architectural styles enforce different quality attributes for a system. Thus, if the architectural style of an emergent system could be predicted, a person playing the role of a system integrator could make necessary changes to ensure that the quality attributes dictated by the system requirements were satisfied before the actual system is built and deployed, thus somewhat mitigating project risks. As part of this research, we propose a model for predicting architectural styles based on use cases that need to be satisfied by a system configuration and demonstrate how our approach can be used to determine stylistic conformance. We also propose objective methods for assessing architectural divergence, erosion and drift during system evolution and maintenance. / text

The graphical user interface for a software system has several important roles to fulfill. It shall serve the end users in their interactions with the system and it shall act as a front for the system. It is an advantage if the graphical user interface gives the receiver confidence and inspiration to use the system. Consistency and usability in graphical and technical design are important qualities and aspects that influence the receiver’s opinion of a graphical user interface and additionally the whole system. Moreover when there is a suite of proprietary systems from one supplier, the different application user interfaces shall provide for a homogeneous and familiar impression. The graphical user interface gives furthermore a possibility to confirm brand recognition for the software producer. It is a great challenge for a large-scale enterprise to develop and deliver comprehensive software systems with a common expression and consistency in the different graphical user interfaces. In order for large-scale enterprises to succeed in such activities, it is necessary to coordinate and integrate the development of user interfaces. The focus of this thesis is, consequently, to investigate how technological support for graphical user interface development in large-scale enterprises can contribute to this and support user interface designers and developers in a large-scale enterprise when the product portfolio is widespread. The contributions of the thesis work are presented as a number of observations and the observations as such are summarized in a case study. Moreover, the thesis proposes a technological concept for a large-scale software enterprise, where the aim is to support a common and coordinated way of working with enterprise development of graphical user interfaces.

Nowadays, large-scale software systems consist of multiple applications, which interact with each other to fulfill desired system-level requirements. It is usually required to coordinate the interactions of the constituent applications to ensure that the system-level requirements are fulfilled. In this paper, we outline a set of requirements that must be fulfilled to facilitate the modular composition of multiple applications. We introduce the concept of architectural event modules, which are abstractions to represent constituent applications and their coordination logic in a modular and uniform way. We explain the implementation of this concept in the EventReactor language, and define their formal semantics in processing events using the UPPAAL toolset. We illustrate the suitability of architectural event modules in achieving modularity and loose coupling in the composition of multiple applications by means of a case study in the domain of energy-efficient computing.