Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2015-12-01T11:18:53Z No. of bitstreams: 1 vitorfreitasesouza.pdf: 4838221 bytes, checksum: 593f759949de45c0b044f62ba94f9a1a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-12-01T11:18:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 vitorfreitasesouza.pdf: 4838221 bytes, checksum: 593f759949de45c0b044f62ba94f9a1a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-02-27 / A concepção de workflows científicos é uma abordagem amplamente utilizada no contexto de e-Science e experimentação científica. Existem muitas pesquisas voltadas para o gerenciamento e execução de experimentos baseados em workflows. No entanto, experimentos complexos envolvem interações entre pesquisadores geograficamente distribuídos, demandando utilização de grandes volumes de dados, serviços e recursos computacionais distribuídos. Este cenário categoriza um ecossistema de experimentação científica. Para conduzir experimentos neste contexto, cientistas precisam de uma arquitetura flexível, extensível e escalável. Durante o processo de experimentação, informações valiosas podem ser perdidas e oportunidades de reutilização de recursos e serviços desperdiçadas, caso a arquitetura de ecossistema para e-Science não considere estes aspectos. Com o objetivo de tratar a flexibilidade, a extensibilidade e a escalabilidade de plataformas de ecossistemas, este trabalho apresenta uma arquitetura orientada a serviços apoiada por uma rede ponto a ponto, desenvolvida para tratar as etapas do ciclo de vida de um experimento científico. Este trabalho apresenta como contribuições uma arquitetura para ecossistemas de software científico, a implementação desta arquitetura, bem como a sua avaliação. / The conception of scientific workflows is a widely used approach in the context of e- Science and scientific experimentation. There are many researches about the management and execution of experiments based on workflows. However, scientific experiments involve complex interactions between geographically distributed researchers, requiring the usage of large amount of data, services and distributed computing resources. This scenario categorizes a scientific experimentation ecosystem. In order to carry out experiments in this context researchers need an architecture for e-Science that supports flexibility, extensibility and scalability. During the experimentation process, valuable information can be unexploited and reusing opportunities of resources and services could be lost if the ecosystem architecture for e-Science does not consider previous mentioned requirements. In order to address the flexibility, extensibility and scalability of ecosystems platforms, this dissertation presents a service-oriented architecture supported by a peer-to-peer network. It was developed to support life-cycle stages of a scientific experiment. This work also presents, as contributions, an architecture to support experiments execution of scientific software ecosystems, the implementation of this architecture, as well as its evaluation.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2017-06-06T18:14:11Z No. of bitstreams: 1 vitorfreitasesouza.pdf: 4838221 bytes, checksum: 593f759949de45c0b044f62ba94f9a1a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2017-06-07T13:31:03Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 vitorfreitasesouza.pdf: 4838221 bytes, checksum: 593f759949de45c0b044f62ba94f9a1a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-07T13:31:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 vitorfreitasesouza.pdf: 4838221 bytes, checksum: 593f759949de45c0b044f62ba94f9a1a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-02-27 / FAPEMIG - Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais / A concepção de workflows científicos é uma abordagem amplamente utilizada no contexto de e-Science e experimentação científica. Existem muitas pesquisas voltadas para o gerenciamento e execução de experimentos baseados em workflows. No entanto, experimentos complexos envolvem interações entre pesquisadores geograficamente distribuídos, demandando utilização de grandes volumes de dados, serviços e recursos computacionais distribuídos. Este cenário categoriza um ecossistema de experimentação científica. Para conduzir experimentos neste contexto, cientistas precisam de uma arquitetura flexível, extensível e escalável. Durante o processo de experimentação, informações valiosas podem ser perdidas e oportunidades de reutilização de recursos e serviços desperdiçadas, caso a arquitetura de ecossistema para e-Science não considere estes aspectos. Com o objetivo de tratar a flexibilidade, a extensibilidade e a escalabilidade de plataformas de ecossistemas, este trabalho apresenta uma arquitetura orientada a serviços apoiada por uma rede ponto a ponto, desenvolvida para tratar as etapas do ciclo de vida de um experimento científico. Este trabalho apresenta como contribuições uma arquitetura para ecossistemas de software científico, a implementação desta arquitetura, bem como a sua avaliação. / The conception of scientific workflows is a widely used approach in the context of eScience and scientific experimentation. There are many researches about the management and execution of experiments based on workflows. However, scientific experiments involve complex interactions between geographically distributed researchers, requiring the usage of large amount of data, services and distributed computing resources. This scenario categorizes a scientific experimentation ecosystem. In order to carry out experiments in this context researchers need an architecture for e-Science that supports flexibility, extensibility and scalability. During the experimentation process, valuable information can be unexploited and reusing opportunities of resources and services could be lost if the ecosystem architecture for e-Science does not consider previous mentioned requirements. In order to address the flexibility, extensibility and scalability of ecosystems platforms, this dissertation presents a service-oriented architecture supported by a peer-to-peer network. It was developed to support life-cycle stages of a scientific experiment. This work also presents, as contributions, an architecture to support experiments execution of scientific software ecosystems, the implementation of this architecture, as well as its evaluation.

Variability modeling is one of the key disciplines to cope with complex variability in large software product lines. It aims at creating, evolving, and configuring variability models, which describe the common and variable characteristics, also known as features, of products in a product line. Since the introduction of feature models more than twenty years ago, many variability modeling languages and notations have been proposed both in academia and industry, followed by hundreds of publications on variability modeling techniques that have built upon these theoretical foundations. Surprisingly, there are relatively few empirical studies that aim at understanding the use of such languages. What variability modeling concepts are actually used in practice? Do variability models applied in real-world look similar to those published in literature? In what technical and organizational contexts are variability models applicable? We present an empirical study that addresses this research gap. Our goals are i) to verify existing theoretical research, and ii) to explore real-world variability modeling languages and models expressed in them. We study concepts and semantics of variability modeling languages conceived by practitioners, and the usage of these concepts in real, large-scale models. Our aim is to support variability modeling research by providing empirical data about the use of its core modeling concepts, by identifying and characterizing further concepts that have not been as widely addressed, and by providing realistic assumptions about scale, structure, content, and complexity of real-world variability models. We believe that our findings are of relevance to variability modeling researchers and tool designers, for example, those working on interactive product configurators or feature dependency checkers. Our extracted models provide realistic benchmarks that can be used to evaluate new techniques. Recognizing the recent trend in software engineering to open up software platforms to facilitate inter-organizational reuse of software, we extend our empirical discourse to the emerging field of software ecosystems. As natural successors of successful product lines, ecosystems manage huge variability among and within their software assets, thus, represent a highly interesting class of systems to study variability modeling concepts and mechanisms. Our studied systems comprise eleven highly configurable software systems, two ecosystems with closed platforms, and three ecosystems relying on open platforms. Some of our subjects are among the largest successful systems in existence today. Results from a survey on industrial variability modeling complement these subjects. Our overall results provide empirical evidence that the well-researched concepts of feature modeling are used in practice, but also that more advanced concepts are needed. We observe that assumptions about variability models in the literature do not hold. Our study also reveals that variability models work best in centralized variability management scenarios, and that they are fragile and have to be controlled by a small team. We also identify a particular type of dependencies that is increasingly used in open platforms and helps sustain the growth of ecosystems. Interestingly, while enabling distributed variability, these dependencies rely on a centralized and stable vocabulary. Finally, we formulate new hypotheses and research questions that provide direction for future research.

To offer customisable software, there are two main concepts yet: software product lines that allow the product customisation based on a fixed set of variability and software ecosystems, allowing an open product customisation based on a common platform. Offering a software family that enables external developers to supply software artefacts means to offer a common platform as part of an ecosystem and to sacrifice variability control. Keeping full variability control means to offer a customisable product as a product line, but without the support for external contributors. This thesis proposes a third concept of variable software: partly open software families. They combine a customisable platform similar to product lines with controlled openness similar to ecosystems. As a major contribution of this thesis a variability modelling concept is proposed which is part of a variability management for these partly open software families. This modelling concept is based on feature models and extends them to support open variability modelling by means of interfaces, structural interface specifications and the inclusion of semantic information. Additionally, the introduction of a rights management allows multiple contributors to work with the model. This is required to enable external developers to use the model for the concrete extension development. The feasibility of the proposed model is evaluated using a prototypically developed modelling tool and by means of a case study based on a car infotainment system.

Esta pesquisa trata do desenvolvimento de uma estrutura conceitual para um framework de maturidade, para o domínio de ecossistemas digitais de produção de software, utilizando a pesquisa-ação como paradigma de pesquisa. A estrutura de medição proposta tem como base o critério descrito no item 5 da Norma ISO/IEC 15504-2 Uma Estrutura de Medição para a capacidade de processo, com as adaptações necessárias para o domínio do Software Publico Brasileiro (SPB). O framework tem como objetivo o desenvolvimento de referências conceituais para um modelo de maturidade de um ecossistema público de software, considerando as referências do pensamento sistêmico. A abordagem do pensamento sistêmico permitiu identificar que o ecossistema evolui em ciclos de aprendizado que resultaram em um modelo de maturidade. Foi observado também que a mesma abordagem pode ser utilizada em outros ecossistemas. O objeto de pesquisa, o ecossistema do SPB, é uma experiência inovadora na administração pública, que combina características do modelo de produção de software livre com o conceito de bens públicos e é entregue por um portal que une pessoas e interesses diferentes. O portal do SPB é um espaço virtual para disseminação e aprimoramento de ferramentas de software. Em algumas comunidades acontecem atividades de desenvolvimento de novas funcionalidades ou mesmo de novas versões de ferramentas. Portanto, acontecem processos de desenvolvimento de software, porém ainda sem um processo de qualidade instituído. O desenvolvimento da pesquisa utilizou como referências teóricas frameworks de modelos de maturidade de processos, framework de métodos para construção de modelos, conceitos de sistemas complexos, pensamento sistêmico e ecossistemas digitais. A metodologia de pesquisa utilizada foi a pesquisa-ação e o trabalho de campo teve a duração de dois anos. / This research project addresses the development of a conceptual structure to measure the quality of software production in the digital ecosystem domain, using the action research paradigm. The proposed measurement framework is based on the criteria described in item 5 of ISO / IEC 15504-2 - A Measurement Framework for process capability, with the necessary adaptations to the Public Domain Software (PDS). Development of the structure aims to contribute to the creation of conceptual references for a maturity model for a public software development ecosystem, using the literature on Systems Thinking. The Systems Thinking Approach identified the ecosystem evolves in learning cycles that resulted in a maturity model. It was also observed that the same approach can be used in other ecosystems. The research object is the Brazilian Public Software Ecosystem (BPS), an innovative experience in public administration that combines features of the free software production model with the concept of public goods and is delivered by a portal that links different people and interests. The BPS portal is a virtual space for the development, dissemination and enhancement of software by software communities. These communities engage in activities involving the development of new functionality or even new versions of solutions. Thus they involve software development processes but without a minimum of quality assurance. The theoretical references for the research project ranged from frameworks for process maturity models and frameworks for model construction to concepts of complex systems, systemic thinking and digital ecosystems. The research methodology used was action research and the field work had duration of two years.

Esta pesquisa trata do desenvolvimento de uma estrutura conceitual para um framework de maturidade, para o domínio de ecossistemas digitais de produção de software, utilizando a pesquisa-ação como paradigma de pesquisa. A estrutura de medição proposta tem como base o critério descrito no item 5 da Norma ISO/IEC 15504-2 Uma Estrutura de Medição para a capacidade de processo, com as adaptações necessárias para o domínio do Software Publico Brasileiro (SPB). O framework tem como objetivo o desenvolvimento de referências conceituais para um modelo de maturidade de um ecossistema público de software, considerando as referências do pensamento sistêmico. A abordagem do pensamento sistêmico permitiu identificar que o ecossistema evolui em ciclos de aprendizado que resultaram em um modelo de maturidade. Foi observado também que a mesma abordagem pode ser utilizada em outros ecossistemas. O objeto de pesquisa, o ecossistema do SPB, é uma experiência inovadora na administração pública, que combina características do modelo de produção de software livre com o conceito de bens públicos e é entregue por um portal que une pessoas e interesses diferentes. O portal do SPB é um espaço virtual para disseminação e aprimoramento de ferramentas de software. Em algumas comunidades acontecem atividades de desenvolvimento de novas funcionalidades ou mesmo de novas versões de ferramentas. Portanto, acontecem processos de desenvolvimento de software, porém ainda sem um processo de qualidade instituído. O desenvolvimento da pesquisa utilizou como referências teóricas frameworks de modelos de maturidade de processos, framework de métodos para construção de modelos, conceitos de sistemas complexos, pensamento sistêmico e ecossistemas digitais. A metodologia de pesquisa utilizada foi a pesquisa-ação e o trabalho de campo teve a duração de dois anos. / This research project addresses the development of a conceptual structure to measure the quality of software production in the digital ecosystem domain, using the action research paradigm. The proposed measurement framework is based on the criteria described in item 5 of ISO / IEC 15504-2 - A Measurement Framework for process capability, with the necessary adaptations to the Public Domain Software (PDS). Development of the structure aims to contribute to the creation of conceptual references for a maturity model for a public software development ecosystem, using the literature on Systems Thinking. The Systems Thinking Approach identified the ecosystem evolves in learning cycles that resulted in a maturity model. It was also observed that the same approach can be used in other ecosystems. The research object is the Brazilian Public Software Ecosystem (BPS), an innovative experience in public administration that combines features of the free software production model with the concept of public goods and is delivered by a portal that links different people and interests. The BPS portal is a virtual space for the development, dissemination and enhancement of software by software communities. These communities engage in activities involving the development of new functionality or even new versions of solutions. Thus they involve software development processes but without a minimum of quality assurance. The theoretical references for the research project ranged from frameworks for process maturity models and frameworks for model construction to concepts of complex systems, systemic thinking and digital ecosystems. The research methodology used was action research and the field work had duration of two years.

To offer customisable software, there are two main concepts yet: software product lines that allow the product customisation based on a fixed set of variability and software ecosystems, allowing an open product customisation based on a common platform. Offering a software family that enables external developers to supply software artefacts means to offer a common platform as part of an ecosystem and to sacrifice variability control. Keeping full variability control means to offer a customisable product as a product line, but without the support for external contributors. This thesis proposes a third concept of variable software: partly open software families. They combine a customisable platform similar to product lines with controlled openness similar to ecosystems. As a major contribution of this thesis a variability modelling concept is proposed which is part of a variability management for these partly open software families. This modelling concept is based on feature models and extends them to support open variability modelling by means of interfaces, structural interface specifications and the inclusion of semantic information. Additionally, the introduction of a rights management allows multiple contributors to work with the model. This is required to enable external developers to use the model for the concrete extension development. The feasibility of the proposed model is evaluated using a prototypically developed modelling tool and by means of a case study based on a car infotainment system.