This thesis in computer science aimed to evaluate the suitability of the Web Audio API to implement virtual analog synthesizers. In order to do so a method for producing a reference architecture for analog synthesizers and a categorization and point system for the evaluation were developed. A reference architecture were made and then implemented with the API and the evaluation were then made based on that implementation. The API were found to cover a lot of the necessary areas, but lacking in a few key components; a noise generator, a native way to automate custom numeric properties and the implementation of the oscillator were deemed too closed to support all use cases.

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

A área de pesquisa de Arquitetura de Software tem recebido cada vez mais atenção dentro da Engenharia de Software, visto que arquiteturas de software têm tido papel determinante para a qualidade de sistemas de software. Nesse contexto, arquiteturas de referência surgiram como um tipo especial de arquitetura que provê diretrizes para construção de arquiteturas de software de uma dada classe de sistemas, promovendo também o reúso do conhecimento sobre um dado domínio de aplicação. Considerando sua relevância, arquiteturas de referência têm sido propostas e utilizadas com sucesso em diferentes domínios. Em outra perspectiva, a indústria de software tem cada vez mais adotado métodos ágeis de desenvolvimento de software, visando, entre outros aspectos, diminuir o tempo de entrega de seus produtos. De um modo geral, esses métodos têm como característica comum ciclos curtos de produção e entrega no desenvolvimento de software. Consequentemente, minimizam a quantidade de documentação gerada no processo. Dessa forma, parece ser conflitante a adoção de arquiteturas de referência no contexto de métodos ágeis. No entanto, iniciativas já podem ser encontradas, apesar de haver uma carência de trabalhos que propõem a utilização de ambas de forma integrada. Dessa forma, o principal objetivo desse projeto de mestrado foi o estabelecimento um processo ágil de desenvolvimento de software, denominado AGIRA, que explora as vantagens do uso de arquiteturas de referência. A avaliação de tal processo foi realizada em duas frentes. A primeira foi por meio da condução de um action case com alunos de uma disciplina de Arquitetura de Software da Universidade de Bolzano. A segunda frente foi conduzida através de um questionário com especialistas da indústria. Resultados alcançados mostram que o AGIRA tem potencial para ser utilizado pela indústria e que, dessa forma, arquiteturas de referência podem ser aplicadas juntamente com métodos ágeis / Software architectures and reference architectures have been playing a significant role in determining the success of software systems. In particular, reference architectures have emerged, achieving well-recognized understanding of specific domains, promoting reuse of design expertise and facilitating the development of systems. In another perspective, agile methods have been widely adopted as a promising iterative, incremental and collaborative software development process, including by the software industry. However, it is observed that reference architectures have not been widely used together with agile methods. Therefore, the main advantage of reference architectures, i.e., the reuse of knowledge contained in such architectures, has not been combined with the agility promoted by these methods. In this sense, the main objective of this master´s project was to establish an agile software development process, named AGIRA, that aims at exploring the advantages of the use of reference architectures. The evaluation of the process was done in two parts. The first one was through the conduction of an action case with students of a Software Architecture course in the University of Bolzano. The second part of the evaluation was done in the industry context, through the conduction of a survey with experts in software architecture and agile methods. Results point out that AGIRA has potential to be used by the industry and, consequently, reference architectures can be used in the context of agile methods

A robótica tem passado por uma notável evolução ao longo dos últimos anos, juntamente com um crescente interesse por parte da sociedade. Robôs não são mais exclusivamente produzidos para realizar atividades repetitivas em fábricas, eles têm sido projetados para apoiar humanos em diversos e importantes domínios de aplicação. Os sistemas robóticos utilizados para controlar tais robôs têm, portanto, se tornado maiores, mais complexos e difíceis de desenvolver. Nesse cenário, a Arquitetura Orientada a Serviços (do inglês, Service-Oriented Architecture - SOA) tem sido investigada como um promissor estilo arquitetural para o desenvolvimento de sistemas robóticos de forma mais flexível, reusável e produtiva. Embora um número considerável de Sistemas Robóticos Orientados a Serviços (do inglês, Service-Oriented Robotic Systems - SORS) já exista, grande parte deles têm sido desenvolvida de maneira ad hoc. A pouca atenção e o suporte limitado ao projeto das arquiteturas de software de SORS pode não só impedir a obtenção dos benefícios associados à adoção da SOA, mas também reduzir a qualidade dos sistemas robóticos que, frequentemente, são utilizados em contextos de segurança crítica. Essa tese tem por objetivo aprimorar o entendimento e a sistematização do projeto arquitetural de SORS. Para isso, é proposta uma taxonomia de serviços para o domínio de robótica, bem como um processo e uma arquitetura de referência para sistematizar o projeto das arquiteturas de software de SORS. Os resultados obtidos evidenciam que tanto o processo quanto a arquitetura de referência podem impactar positivamente na qualidade das arquiteturas de software de SORS e, consequentemente, contribuir para o desenvolvimento de sistemas robóticos. / Robotics has experienced an increasing evolution and interest from the society in recent years. Robots are no longer produced exclusively to perform repetitive tasks in factories, they have been designed to collaborate with humans in several important application domains. Robotic systems that control these robots are therefore becoming larger, more complex, and difficult to develop. In this scenario, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has been investigated as a promising architectural style for the design of robotic systems in a exible, reusable, and productive manner. Despite the existence of a considerable amount of Service-Oriented Robotic Systems (SORS), most of them have been developed in an ad hoc manner. The little attention and limited support devoted to the design of SORS software architectures may not only hamper the benefits of SOA adoption, but also reduce the overall quality of robotic systems, which are often used in safety-critical contexts. This thesis aims at improving the understanding and systematization of SORS architectural design. It describes a taxonomy of services for the robotics domain, as well as proposes a process and a reference architecture that systematize the design of SORS software architectures. Results achieved in the evaluation studies evidence that both process and reference architecture can positively impact on the quality of SORS software architectures and, as a consequence, contribute to the development of robotic systems.

A robótica tem passado por uma notável evolução ao longo dos últimos anos, juntamente com um crescente interesse por parte da sociedade. Robôs não são mais exclusivamente produzidos para realizar atividades repetitivas em fábricas, eles têm sido projetados para apoiar humanos em diversos e importantes domínios de aplicação. Os sistemas robóticos utilizados para controlar tais robôs têm, portanto, se tornado maiores, mais complexos e difíceis de desenvolver. Nesse cenário, a Arquitetura Orientada a Serviços (do inglês, Service-Oriented Architecture - SOA) tem sido investigada como um promissor estilo arquitetural para o desenvolvimento de sistemas robóticos de forma mais flexível, reusável e produtiva. Embora um número considerável de Sistemas Robóticos Orientados a Serviços (do inglês, Service-Oriented Robotic Systems - SORS) já exista, grande parte deles têm sido desenvolvida de maneira ad hoc. A pouca atenção e o suporte limitado ao projeto das arquiteturas de software de SORS pode não só impedir a obtenção dos benefícios associados à adoção da SOA, mas também reduzir a qualidade dos sistemas robóticos que, frequentemente, são utilizados em contextos de segurança crítica. Essa tese tem por objetivo aprimorar o entendimento e a sistematização do projeto arquitetural de SORS. Para isso, é proposta uma taxonomia de serviços para o domínio de robótica, bem como um processo e uma arquitetura de referência para sistematizar o projeto das arquiteturas de software de SORS. Os resultados obtidos evidenciam que tanto o processo quanto a arquitetura de referência podem impactar positivamente na qualidade das arquiteturas de software de SORS e, consequentemente, contribuir para o desenvolvimento de sistemas robóticos. / Robotics has experienced an increasing evolution and interest from the society in recent years. Robots are no longer produced exclusively to perform repetitive tasks in factories, they have been designed to collaborate with humans in several important application domains. Robotic systems that control these robots are therefore becoming larger, more complex, and difficult to develop. In this scenario, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has been investigated as a promising architectural style for the design of robotic systems in a exible, reusable, and productive manner. Despite the existence of a considerable amount of Service-Oriented Robotic Systems (SORS), most of them have been developed in an ad hoc manner. The little attention and limited support devoted to the design of SORS software architectures may not only hamper the benefits of SOA adoption, but also reduce the overall quality of robotic systems, which are often used in safety-critical contexts. This thesis aims at improving the understanding and systematization of SORS architectural design. It describes a taxonomy of services for the robotics domain, as well as proposes a process and a reference architecture that systematize the design of SORS software architectures. Results achieved in the evaluation studies evidence that both process and reference architecture can positively impact on the quality of SORS software architectures and, as a consequence, contribute to the development of robotic systems.

<p>Precision livestock farming (PLF) has emerged as a solution to address global challenges related to food scarcity, increasing demand for animal products, slim profit margins in livestock production, and growing societal concerns regarding farm animal welfare. By offering individualized care for animals, PLF aims to provide labor savings, enhanced monitoring, and improved control capabilities within complex farming systems, enabled by digital technologies. The adoption of an individual-centric approach to farming through PLF is anticipated to enhance farm productivity and ensure ethical treatment of animals while mitigating concerns associated with labor shortages in modern intensive farming operations. Real-time continuous monitoring of each animal enables precise and accurate health and well-being management. However, to achieve these benefits, large-scale animal farms require commercially viable technological solutions for individualized care and welfare. Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) offer precise monitoring and control and present a promising avenue for PLF but pose significant implementation challenges.</p> <p>  In this work, a generalizable CPS architecture was formalized with active robotic nodes that can realize adaptive continuous real-time animal health monitoring to maximize productivity, animal welfare, and sustainability. Taking the example of dairy farming, a resource- and criticality-aware CPS was developed that enables real-time resource-aware sensing, adaptive control, and agile networking with an emphasis on handling emergencies autonomously. Using a decentralized approach, each node was made capable of optimizing its operation to be resource conscious, while also being able to identify emergency conditions in real-time. In this novel design, we accommodate the social dynamics of the herd and effectively address the various types of emergencies possible in PLF. Moreover, the communication was customized for the unique needs of animal agriculture, wherein it reduced latency and power consumption while ensuring collision-free two-way synchronization with adaptive range extension for emergency conditions. Further, since the CPS was centered around animals, a special robust security layer was also developed and implemented to protect the active embodied nodes against known and unknown malicious attacks. The proposed CPS reference architecture provides a foundation for implementing individualized care and welfare, ultimately improving the efficiency and sustainability of livestock operations.</p>

Trust is the cornerstone of success in any relationship between two or more parties. Generally, we do not socialize, seek advice, consult, cooperate, buy or sell goods and services from/to others unless we establish some level of mutual trust between interacting parties. When e-commerce was merging infancy, the concept of trusting an entity in a virtual world was a huge obstacle. Gradually, increasingly-sophisticated, largely generic reputation scoring and management systems were embedded into the evolving marketplaces. Current technologies to include cloud computing, social networking, and mobile applications, coupled with the explosion in storage capacity and processing power, are evolving large-scale global marketplaces for a wide variety of resources and services, such as Amazon.com, BitTorrent, WebEx and Skype. In such marketplaces, user entities, or users for short; namely, consumers, providers and brokers, are largely autonomous with vastly diverse requirements, capabilities and trust profiles. Users' requirements may include service quality levels, cost, ease of use, etc. Users' capabilities may include assets owned or outsourced. Trustors' profiles may include what is promised and commitments to keep these promises. In such a large-scale heterogeneous marketplace, the trustworthy interactions and transactions in services and resources constitute a challenging endeavor. Currently, solving such issues generally adopts a "one-size fits all" trust models and systems. Such approach is limiting due to variations in technology, conflicts between users' requirements and/or conflicts between user requirements and service outcomes. Additionally, this approach may result in service providers being overwhelmed by adding new resources to satisfy all possible requirements, while having no information or guarantees about the level of trust they gain in the network. Accordingly, we hypothesize the need for personalizable customizable Trust Management Systems (TMSs) for the robustness and wide-scale adoption of large-scale marketplaces for resources and services. Most contemporary TMSs suffer from the following drawbacks: • Oblivious to diversities in trustors' requirements, • Primarily utilize feedback and direct or indirect experience as the only form of credentials and trust computations, • Trust computation methodologies are generally hardcoded and not reconfigurable, • Trust management operations, which we identify as monitoring, data management, analysis, expectation management, and decision making, are tightly coupled. Such coupling impedes customizability and personalization, and • Do not consider context in trust computations, where trust perspectives may vary from a context to another. Given these drawbacks and the large scale of the global marketplace of resources and services, a reference architecture for trust management systems is needed, which can incorporate current systems and may be used in guidance and development of a wide spectrum of trust management systems ranging from un-personalized to fully personalized systems. Up to our knowledge, no TMS reference architecture exists in the literature. In this dissertation, we propose a new Reference Architecture for Trust Management (RATM). The proposed reference architecture applies separation of concern among trust management operations; namely, decision expectation, analytics, data management and monitoring. RATM defines trust management operations through five reconfigurable components which collectively can be used to implement a wide spectrum of trust management systems ranging from generic to highly personalized systems. We used RATM for trust personalization, where we propose a Personalized Trust Management System (PTMS) based on RATM. We evaluated PTMS's scalability and demonstrated its effectiveness, efficiency and resilience by contrasting against a Generic Trust Management System (GTMS). We used two case studies for our evaluations; namely, BitTorrent and a video conferencing application. Intellectual Merit In this work, we propose RATM, a reference architecture for trust management systems that can be used to implement a wide variety of trust management systems ranging from generic systems (un-personalized) to highly personalized systems. We assume service-based environment where consumers, brokers and service providers are interacting and transacting in services and resources to satisfying their own trust requirements. We used RATM to implement a personalized trust management system (TMS). The main contributions of this work are as follows: • Proposing RATM for the guidance and development of a wide spectrum of TMSs ranging from un-personalized to fully personalized systems, and • Utilizing our RATM to propose and implement a personalized, scalable TMS with varying trust computation models. Broader Impact RATM provides reference architecture for trust management which can be used to develop and evaluate a wide spectrum of TMSs. Personalization, in general, paves the road for reaching high levels of satisfaction, where interacting parties' requirements are individually considered and thus consumers are served the best suited service(s). Hence, we claim that PTMS would largely enhance large-scale heterogeneous systems offering services and resources. This could lead to more cooperation, more transactions, more satisfaction, less malicious behavior and lower costs. / PHD

​​Cloud computing is an area that many companies use in order to stay in line with technological development. To keep these systems productive and easily managed, a reference architecture can be used as a framework and also as a manual on how to structure an organization to suit its specific needs and goals. The reference architecture can make it easier to divide responsibility as well as working tasks within an organization. One company facing the challenges that comes with cloud based systems is Vattenfall, one of the biggest energy companies in Europe. An organization like Vattenfall handles a great load of customer data which is to be controlled and protected in every way. In order to keep on making sure that these systems are efficient and secure, a reference architecture could be a helpful tool.   ​With the purpose of investigating how a section within Vattenfall’s IT department can use a reference architecture to determine the ownership of customers’ personal data more easily, an interview study was conducted. The interviews focused on evaluation of how employees’ reason when handling customers’ personal data within cloud environments. The reference architecture found most suitable for handling personal data was the international standard ISO/IEC 17789. It describes multiple work roles within cloud computing which can make the process of handling sensitive information clearer and easier. The data collected from the interviews was later applied to this reference architecture in order to see how it can be used in order to more easily divide responsibility. The study could in the end present several recommendations as to how the department should divide responsibilities and raise awareness regarding the topic amongst employees in order to increase data security.   ​Finally, the expected value created from implementing these recommendations and applying the reference architecture to the organization is expected to be high. The thesis concluded that the chosen reference architecture can be applied to the Vattenfall organization. With a few organizational changes, the responsibility regarding customers’ personal data can be divided more easily amongst the employees and the security can be improved. The recommendations presented could benefit the organization and raise awareness of the topic amongst employees.

Population ageing has been taking place all over the world, being estimated that 2.1 billion people will be aged 60 or over in 2050. Healthcare Supportive Home (HSH) Systems have been proposed to overcome the high demand of remote home care for assisting an increasing number of elderly people living alone. Since a heterogeneous team of healthcare professionals need to collaborate to continually monitor health status of chronic patients, a cooperation of pre-existing e-Health systems, both outside and inside home, is required. However, current HSH solutions are proprietary, monolithic, high coupled, and expensive, and most of them do not consider their interoperation neither with distributed and external e-Health systems, nor with systems running inside the home (e.g., companion robots or activity monitors). These systems are sometimes designed based on local legislations, specific health system configurations (e.g., public, private or mixed), care plan protocols, and technological settings available; therefore, their reusability in other contexts is sometimes limited. As a consequence, these systems provide a limited view of patient health status, are difficult to evolve regarding the evolution of patients health profile, do not allow continuous patients monitoring, and present limitations to support the self-management of multiple chronic conditions. To contribute to solve the aforementioned challenges, this thesis establishes HomecARe, a reference architecture for supporting the development of quality HSH systems. HomecARe considers HSH systems as Systems-of-Systems (SoS) (i.e., large, complex systems composed of heterogeneous, distributed, and operational and managerial independent systems), which achieve their missions (e.g., improvement of patients quality of life) through the behavior that emerges as result of collaborations among their constituents. To establish HomecARe, a systematic process to engineer reference architectures was adopted. As a result, HomecARe presents domain knowledge and architectural solutions (i.e., architectural patterns and tactics) described using conceptual, mission, and quality architectural viewpoints. To assess HomecARe, a case study was performed by instantiating HomecARe to design the software architecture of DiaManT@Home, a HSH system to assist at home patients suffering of diabetes mellitus. Results evidenced HomecARe is a viable reference architecture to guide the development of reusable, interoperable, reliable, secure, and adaptive HSH systems, bringing important contributions for the areas of e-Health, software architecture, and reference architecture for SoS. / O envelhecimento da população é um fenômeno mundial e estima-se que no ano 2050, 2,1 bilhões de pessoas terão 60 anos ou mais. Sistemas de casas inteligentes para o cuidado da saúde (em inglês Healthcare Supportive Home - HSH systems) têm sido propostos para atender a alta demanda de serviços de monitoramento contínuo do número cada vez maior de pacientes que vivem sozinhos em suas residências. Considerando que o monitoramento do estado de saúde de pacientes crônicos requer a colaboração de equipes formadas por profissionais de várias especialidades, é fundamental que haja cooperação entre sistemas eletrônicos de saúde (por exemplo, sistemas de prontuário eletrônico ou sistemas de atenção de emergência), sendo eles externos ou internos à residência. Entretanto, as soluções de HSH existentes são comerciais, monolíticas, altamente acopladas e de alto custo. A maioria delas não considera a interoperabilidade entre sistemas distribuídos e exteriores ou internos à residência dos pacientes, como é o caso de robôs de companhia e monitores de atividade. Além disso, os sistemas de HSH muitas vezes são projetados com base em legislações locais, na estrutura do sistema de saúde (por exemplo, público, privado ou misto), nos planos de cuidados nacionais e nos recursos tecnológicos disponíveis; portanto, a reusabilidade desses sistemas em outros contextos é não é uma tarefa trivial. Em consequência, os sistemas de HSH existentes oferecem uma visão restrita do estado de saúde do paciente, são difíceis de evoluir acompanhando as mudanças no perfil de saúde do paciente, impossibilitando assim seu monitoramento contínuo e limitando o suporte para o paciente na autogestão de suas múltiplas condições crônicas. Visando contribuir na resolução dos desafios apresentados, esta tese estabelece a HomecARe, uma arquitetura de referência para apoiar o desenvolvimento de sistemas de HSH de qualidade. A HomecARe considera os sistemas de HSH como Sistemas-de-Sistemas (do inglês Systems-of-Systems - SoS) (ou seja, sistemas grandes e complexos formados por outros sistemas heterogêneos, distribuídos e que apresentam independência em seu gerenciamento e operação), que cumprem suas missões (por exemplo, melhoria da qualidade de vida do paciente) mediante o comportamento que emerge resultante da colaborações entre seus sistemas constituintes. Para estabelecer a HomecARe, foi adotado um processo sistemático que apoia a engenharia de arquiteturas de referência. Como resultado, a HomecARe contém o conhecimento do domínio, bem como soluções arquiteturais (por exemplo, padrões arquiteturais e táticas) que são descritas usando os pontos de vista conceitual, de missão e de qualidade. A HomecARe foi avaliada por meio da condução de um estudo de caso em que a arquitetura de referência foi instanciada para projetar o DiaManT@Home, um sistema de HSH que visa apoiar pacientes diagnosticados com diabetes mellitus na autogestão de sua doença. Os resultados obtidos evidenciaram que a HomecARe é uma arquitetura de referência viável para guiar o desenvolvimento de sistemas de HSH reusáveis, interoperáveis, confiáveis, seguros e adaptativos, trazendo importantes contribuições nas áreas de saúde eletrônica, arquitetura de software e arquiteturas de referência para SoS.

In general, a common reference architecture can be derived for Software as a Service (SaaS) architecture. However, while designing particular applications one may derive various different application design alternatives from the same reference SaaS architecture specification. To meet the required functional and nonfunctional requirements of different enterprise applications it is important to model the possible design so that a feasible alternative can be defined. In this thesis, we propose a systematic approach and the corresponding tool support for guiding the design of the SaaS application architecture. The approach defines a SaaS reference architecture, a family feature model and a set of reference design rules. Based on the business requirements an application feature model is defined using the family feature model. Selected features are related to design decisions and a SaaS application architecture design is derived. By defining multiple application architectures based on different application feature models we can even compare multiple alternatives and based on this select the most feasible alternative.