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Component-based software composition offers a development paradigm with reduced time-to-market and cost while achieving enhanced productivity, quality and maintainability. Existent work on the composition paradigm are of a static composition paradigm, which is not sufficient in distributed environment, in which both constituent components and assembled distributed system are subject to dynamic adaptation. This paper presents two types of dynamic composition for distributed components: assertive and autonomous over .NET based Web Services environment. Two case studies are provided: the first one illustrates at a low level how the underlying infrastructure enables the dynamic composition; the second one illustrates at a high level how dynamic compositions are specified., Prepared in collaboration with Indiana University Purdue University, Indianapolis, IN and the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA. Published version in Journal of Universal Computer Science, v11 n10 p1645-1675, 28 Oct 2005.

The advancement of internet technology enables legacy software systems to be reused across geographical boundaries. Web Services (WS) have emerged as a new component-based software development paradigm in a network-centric environment based on the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), the open standard description language XML and transportation protocol HTML. Therefore, legacy software systems can incorporate WS technology in order to be reused and integrated in a distributed environment across heterogeneous platforms. In this paper, we present a comprehensive, systematic, automatable approach toward reengineering legacy software systems to WS applications, rather than rewriting the whole legacy software system from scratch in an ad-hoc manner., Submitted to International Journal of Information Technology and Web Engineering. The original document contains color images. All DTIC reproductions will be in black and white.

This chapter introduces the UniFrame approach to creating high quality computing systems from heterogeneous components distributed over a network. It describes how this approach employs a unifying framework for specifying such systems to unite the concepts of service-oriented architectures, a component-based software engineering methodology and a mechanism for automatically finding components on a network in order to assemble a specified system. UniFrame employs a formal specification language to define the components and serve as a basis for generating glue/wrapper code that connects heterogeneous components. It also provides a high level language for the system developer to use for inserting code in a created system to validate it empirically and estimate the quality of service it supports. The chapter demonstrates how a comprehensive approach, which involves the practicing community as well as technical experts, can lead to solutions of many of the difficulties inherent in constructing distributed computing systems., Published in Service-Oriented Software System Engineering: Challenges and Practices, chapter 4, p68-87, 2005. The original document contains color images.

Software systems are usually designed and documented with the aid of visual modeling notations. Visual modeling notations keep evolving over the years in tandem with visual modeling tools, and the tight binding in between impedes the exchanging of modeling assets, which causes a spatial isolation of the models. Another problem with legacy software models is that they are isolated temporally in the early phases of the software engineering life cycle without reaching out to the later phases. This paper presents an approach for breaking both spatial and temporal isolation of software models by marshaling and unmarshaling models using the Entity-Relationship (ER) model, thus providing a promising way for evolving model-driven software development., Presented at the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (20th Annual) (SAC 2005) held in Santa Fe, NM on 13-17 Mar 2005. Published in the Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (20th Annual) (SAC 2005), p1553-1557, 2005. The original document contains color images.

We present an approach towards automatic component assembly based on aspect-oriented generative domain modeling. It involves the lifecycle covering the component specification generation, and subsequent assembly of implementation components to produce the final software system. Aspect-oriented techniques are applied to capture the crosscutting concerns that emerge during the assembly process. Subsequently, those concerns are woven to generate glue/wrapper code for assembling heterogeneous components to construct a single integrated system., Pub. in Electronic Notes in THeoretical Computer Science, v114, p119-136, 2005.

The UniFrame research was supported under the CIP/SW Program. The vision of this research is to automate the process of integrating heterogeneous and distributed systems that conform to specific quality requirements. This research addressed three key challenges : a) architecture-based interoperability, b) distributed resource discovery, and c) validation of quality requirements. Principles and prototypical systems were created to demonstrate the successful completion of the research.

The UniFrame research was supported under the CIP/SW Program. The vision of this r:esearch is to automate the process of integrating heterogeneous and distributed systems that conform to specific quality requirements. This research addressed three key challenges : a) architecture-based interoperability, b) distributed resource discovery, and c) validation of quality requirements. Principles and prototypical systems were created to demonstrate the successful completion of the research.

We present an approach towards automatic component assembly based on aspect-oriented generative domain modeling. It involves the lifecycle covering the component specification generation, and subsequent assembly of implementation components to produce the final software system. Aspect-oriented techniques are applied to capture the crosscutting concerns that emerge during the assembly process. Subsequently, those concerns are woven to generate glue/wrapper code for assembling heterogeneous components to construct a single integrated system.

Component-based software composition offers a development approach with reduced time-to-market and cost while achieving enhanced productivity, quality and maintainability. Existent work on the composition paradigm focuses on static composition, which is not sufficient in a distributed environment, in which both constituent components and the assembled distributed system are subject to dynamic adaptation. This paper presents two types of dynamic composition for distributed components: assertive and autonomous over a .NET based Web Services environment. Three case studies are provided to illustrate the use of assertive and autonomous composition.

UniFrame is a framework to help organizations to build interoperable distributed computing systems. Using UniFrame, a new system is built by assembling predeveloped heterogeneous and distributed software components. UniFrame solves the heterogeneity problem by explicitly modeling the domain knowledge of various technology domains (component model domains, programming language domains, operating system platform domains, etc.), from which the Interoperation Generative Domain Model (IGDM) straddling the technology domains can be constructed. The glue/wrapper code that realizes the interoperation among the distributed and heterogeneous software components can be generated from the IGDM. In this paper, an informal implementation in Java of glue/wrapper code generator is given, followed by a discussion on a formalization of IGDM. The formalism comes from the fact that if the family of glue/wrapper code can be modeled formally, an instance glue/wrapper code can be generated automatically. In this formalization, the IGDM is formally modeled as a language definition using a grammar; the code that realizes the interoperation is a valid sentence derivable from the grammar, and will be generated automatically from the IGDM during the assembly time., Presented at the IEEE International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference (8th) (EDOC2004) held in Monterey, CA in 2004. The original document contains color images.

Feature modeling is a popular domain analysis method for describing the commonality and variability among the domain products. The current formalisms of feature modeling do not have enough support for automated domain product configuration and validation. We have developed a theory of feature modeling: a feature model is analogous to a definition of a language; a particular feature composition instance (domain product) is analogous to a program written in that language; and the way the features can be assembled to form a product is analogous to the way various tokens can be assembled to form a program. To apply this theory, we have developed a meta-language Two-Level Grammar++ to specify feature models. The interpreter derived from the feature model specification performs automated product configuration and product quality validation., Presented at the International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (16th) (SEKE'04) held in Banff, Canada in 2004. Published in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (16th) (SEKE'04), p185-191, 2004. The original document contains color images.

Web Services (WS) technology is becoming pervasive in the development of distributed systems and is an appealing vehicle for service presentation and horizontal integration. On the other hand, Model Integrated Computing (MIC) offers a means of system integration in the vertical direction by using domain-specific modeling, and then synthesizing the software system from the high-level model using a model-specific generator. This paper presents a meta-modeling approach to WS to explore the application of MIC in WS development and its contribution., Presented at the IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2004) held in San Diego, CA on 6-9 July 2004. Published in the Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2004), p796-799, 2004.

Component-Based Software Architecture is a promising solution for distributed computing. To develop high quality software, analysis of non-functional aspects of the software properties (also called Quality of Service or QoS) is very important. The UniFrame research project proposes a Unified Component Meta-Model Framework (UniFrame) that includes QoS contracts. A classification of QoS parameters, both static and dynamic, relevant to component-based distributed computing is proposed and represented formally using Two-Level Grammar (TLG), an object-oriented formal specification language. TLG may be transformed into both a UML model, augmented with OCL constraints, and executable code in the Java programming language. This may be regarded as standardized code for implementation of the distributed application with dynamic measurement of the QoS aspects incorporated. The approach is consistent with OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA) in that QoS properties may be specified at the Platform Independent Model (PIM) level and then carried down to the Platform Specific Model (PSM) level in implementation., Presented at the World Conference on Integrated Design and Process Technology (7th) (IDPT 2003) held in Austin, TX in 2003. Published in the Proceedings of the World Conference on Integrated Design and Process Technology (IDPT 2003), p291-299, 2003. Sponsored in part by ONR. The original document contains color images.

Component-based Software Engineering (CBSE) and related technologies have demonstrated their strength in recent years by increasing development productivity and parts reuse. Recently, the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) has raised the abstraction level of programming languages to modeling languages that can be compiled by downward model transformations. Correspondingly, the goal of Generative Programming (GP) is to automate concrete software product generation from a domain-specification and reusable components. This paper describes the UniFrame framework, which is built on the foundation of CBSE while leveraging the capabilities offered by MDA and GP. UniFrame provides theories and implementation for steps of model transformations for a concrete software product based on domain development in various Generative Domain Models (GDMs)., Presented at the Workshop on Component-Based Software Engineering (6th): Automated Reasoning and Prediction, held in Portland, OR on 3-4 May 2003. Published in the Proceedings of the Workshop on Component-Based Software Engineering (6th): Automated Reasoning and Prediction, 2003.

Web Services offer a platform independent solution for system integration in a distributed environment. But Web Services are weak in representing the business semantics of application domains. This paper presents a model-driven approach for specifying domain-specific component models in an effort to complement the current Web Services technology in terms of enriching the semantics representation. Web Services Description Language (WSDL) can then be generated automatically from the models with generators. The modeling of domain-specific components serves as a front-end to represent the semantics of components as well as for formalizing components while the generated artifacts facilitate component service synthesis., Proceedings of IDPT 2003, presented at the World Congress on Integrated Design and Process Technology (7th), held on Dec 3-5, 2003, in Austin,TX. Prepared in collaboration with Indiana University Purdue University, in Indianapolis, In., and Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA.

Feature modeling is commonly used to capture the commonalities and variabilities of systems in a domain during Domain Analysis. The outputs of feature modeling are reusable assets (i.e., components, patterns, domain-specific language, etc.) that can be fed into the application engineering phase for ultimate software products. But current practice lacks an automatic approach for seamless generation of reusable assets from feature models. This paper presents an algorithm for generating sets of instance descriptions (feature instances) from feature models of a domain and applies this algorithm to create a Generic Feature Modeling Environment for automating Feature-Oriented Domain Analysis., Presented at the International Conference on Software Engineering Research and Practice (SERP'03) held in Las Vegas, NV, on 23-26 Jun 2003. Prepared in cooperation with the Department of Computer and Information Science, Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, IN and the Computer Science Department, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA. The original document contains color images.

The UniFrame approach to component-based software development assumes that concrete components are developed from a meta-model, called the Unified Meta-component Model, according to standardized business domain models. Implicit in this development is that there is a Platform Independent Model (PIM) which is transformed into a Platform Specific Model (PSM) under the principles of Model-Driven Architecture. This paper advocates natural language as the starting point for developing the business domain models and the meta-model and shows how this natural language may be mapped through the PIM to PSM using a formal system of rules expressed in Two-Level Grammar. This allows software requirements to be progressed from business logic to implementation of components and provides sufficient automation that components may be modified at the model level, or even the natural language requirements level, as opposed to the code level.

Component-based Software Development is being recognized as the direction in which the software industry is headed. With the proliferation of Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) Components, this trend will continue to emerge as a preferred technique for developing distributed software systems encompassing heterogeneous components. In order for this approach to result in software systems with a predictable quality, the COTS components utilized should in turn offer a guaranteed level of quality. This calls for an objective paradigm for quantifying the quality of service of COTS components. A Quality of Service (QoS) catalog, proposed here, for software components is a first step in quantifying the quality attributes. This catalog is a critical component of the UniFrame project, which targets at unifying the existing and emerging distributed component models under a common meta-model for the purpose of enabling discovery, interoperability, and collaboration of components via generative programming techniques., Presented at the Southeastern Software Engineering Conference held in Huntsville, AL in April 2002. Published in the Proceedings of the Southeastern Software Engineering Conference, p513-520, 2002. Sponsored in part by ARL and ARO.