Maintaining coherence between system functional, performance, production and operational requirements is a key to the ability to optimize the design of large-scale systems. Different architectural configurations entail significant differences in functionality, performance, ease of manufacturing/assembly and operational behavior. While the first two are the usual concerns in architectural tradeoff analysis, the last two, reflected by manufacturability and operational metrics, such as manufacturability and affordability, are often neglected in architectural optimization. In this work, we propose a methodology to derive the formal specification of operational metrics applicable to design optimization based on life cycle processes, such as “manufacturing”, “sunny day operation”, and “unplanned maintenance”. These operational metrics are presented in the context of an industrial case study for an Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) to provide context for the recommended approach. We suggest an approach to (1) define libraries of reusable operational metrics based on architectural properties, (2) build reusable data processing patterns to calculate these architectural properties, and (3) map calculated architectural parameters to a specific design model.

AbstractModel‐Based Systems Engineering is making its way into the design processes of many Systems builders. But as with any new concept, it must prove its worth by demonstrating significant Return‐On‐Investment. One of the benefits of having designs formalized in models is sharing information, models and data, between designers and teams, and allowing valuable analytics to be performed over that collection of information. This paper will discuss a gradually evolving approach to model integration, sharing and collaboration, from simple indexing and relationship maintenance to comprehensive frameworks for information integration based on the recent advances in ontology‐based data fusion and model transformations.

Viewpoint modeling is an effective approach for analyzing and designing complex systems. Splitting various elements and corresponding constraints into different perspectives of interests, enables separation of concerns such as domains of expertise, levels of abstraction, and stages in lifecycle. Specifically, in Systems Engineering different viewpoints could include functional requirements, physical architecture, safety, geometry, timing, scenarios, etc. Despite partial interdependences, the models are usually developed independently by different parties, using different tools and languages. However, the essence of Systems Engineering requires repetitive integration of many viewpoints in order to find feasible designs and to make good architectural decisions, e. g., in each mapping between consecutive levels of abstraction and in each design space exploration. This integration into one consistent model becomes a significant challenge from both modeling and information management perspectives. In this paper we suggest (1) a unique modular algebraic viewpoint representation robust to design evolution and suitable for generation of the integrated optimization/analysis models, and (2) an underlying ontology-based approach for consistent integration of local viewpoint concepts into the unified design space model. We show an example of an optimization model with different combinations of partially interdependent Analysis Viewpoints. Using the proposed modeling and information management approaches the underlying viewpoints' equations can be applied without modification, making the approach pluggable. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B. V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Georgia Institute of Technology

When designing a complex system, adhering to a design methodology is essential to ensure design quality and to shorten the design phase. Until recently, enforcing this could be done only partially or manually. This paper demonstrates how constraint programming technology can enable automation of the design methodology support when the design artifacts reside in a central repository. At any phase of the design, the proposed constraint programming application can indicate whether the design process data complies with the methodology and point out any violations that may exist. Moreover, the application can provide recommendations regarding the design process. The application was successfully used to check the methodology conformance of an industrial example and produced the desired outputs within reasonable times.

Domain-specific languages (DSLs) have recently become a focus of attention in the software engineering community. We look at domain-specific modeling (DSM) methods that drive modeling languages for specific domains with a strong emphasis on visual tools and suggest a method for integrating them into common software design methodologies. We demonstrate a practical approach, whereby components of software are designed to be externalized as specific domain-oriented tasks. The logic in such tasks is intended to be developed by skilled personnel, different from those required to implement the main application. Furthermore, the application will become adaptable to a large class of solutions that do not require new version releases when business logic changes. Unlike application customization via configuration parameters, the logic implemented in DSL languages requires a meaningful imperative expressive power. Our method starts with the common software design methodologies based on UML and uses the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) tools to externalize a selected subset of the design.

Domain Specific Languages (DSL) also known as "small languages" lack the power of a general purpose language (GPL), but are very productive for the purpose they are designed. While "internal" DSLs require and rely on the use of a hosting GPL, "external" DSLs are independent of a GPL and are thus more suitable for the non-programmer - but domain expert - end-user. Empowering this end-user via DSLs is our prime goal as software designers and architects. Our product will be stronger since much of the final tuning of the application can be done by the end-user and will reduce the number of software revisions that require stringent GPL software testing and validations. As software engineers, the design of a DSL as part of our product should fit into the tools of the trade of software development. We adopt UML for this purpose and propose that the design of DSL can be embedded as an extension of the traditional software modeling and design tools. In this paper we present firstly a view of software development process in which DSLs are an integral part, and than how we use UML to design a DSL which, via empowering a domain expert end-user, achieves challenging software delivery requirements with good stability and excellent performance.

Developments in the realm of business services have opened new challenges in the business consulting world. Consequently, new procedures for services system development are being proposed. In this work, we present a model driven approach for streamlining the service engineering process. An important aspect of our work is a method for model transformation, which is essential for providing and enhancing the management and governance capabilities of the service engineering process. We then introduce a novel infrastructure which leverages Web 2.0 technologies to address the challenge of developing semantic modeling editors. Finally, we use this infrastructure as the target platform to validate our work.

Massive collection of data at high rates is critical for many industries. Typically, a massive stream of records is gathered from the business information network at a very high rate. Because of the complexity of the collection process, the classical database solution falls short. The high volume and rate of records involved requires a heterogeneous pipeline comprised of two major parts: a system that carries out massive collection and then uploads the information to a database, and a subsequent data analysis and management system consisting of an Extract Transform and Load component. We developed a massive collection and loading system, based on a highly scalable heterogeneous architecture solution. The solution has been applied successfully for Telco revenue assurance, and can be applied to other industrial areas. The solution was successful in scaling up a Telco client system to handle streams of records ten times larger than was previously possible.

High performance and ease of use are the two main goals of the Massive Collection System (MCS). On the outset, MCS is a classical process that consumes massive amount of input, processes it according to business specifications, and produces a comparable amount of output. To do that, MCS has a massive parallel architecture whose core processing task executes the business rules on a continuous flux of input records organized in files. Each processing task executes a processing “plan” which is a high level domain specific language (DSL) designed for domain experts rather than professional programmers. The MCS design for performance is composed of two factors: one is the massively parallel execution framework; the second is the effective compilation and execution of the domain specific MCS plans. The execution framework is built on top of IBM J2EE implementation Websphere Application Server (WAS). The entire MCS is a WAS application, written in Java, which obtained its performance goals as well as ease of use. The performance challenges of MCS were stated in terms of hundreds of millions of records a day. We selected Java and WAS for implementation due to their development advantages, allowing us to obtain proofs for the MCS performance goals rather early – within several months, which were shown to scale up almost linearly on the input size.

The software engineering community has taken a great interest in using domain-specific languages (DSLs) [1] to improve the productivity of software development. We demonstrate the design of a DSL as a variant of object-oriented development by applying UML [2] via the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) [3] [4], exposing significant software functionality to the non-programmer domain experts.

Enterprises today wish to manage their IT resources so as to optimize business objectives, such as income, rather than IT metrics, such as response times. Therefore, we introduce a new paradigm, which focuses on such business objective oriented resource management. Additionally, we define a general simulation-based autonomous process enabling such optimizations, and describe a case study, demonstrating the usefulness of such a process.