CSSE Seminar Series (CSSESS)
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Seminar
~ Dynamic Component Composition-Vision vs. Reality ~
Speaker
Assoc. Prof. Jens Dietrich
Institute
Massey University
Time & Place
10:00 hrs, Friday 9 September
Room 422, Erskine Building
All are welcome
Abstract
The vision of component-based software engineering is often described using the LEGO® Brick metaphor complex applications are built by stacking together simple, re-usable and inexpensive parts. It turns out that it is not that easy after 40 years component-based software engineering is only slowly being adapted. The latest trend is a new generation of dynamic component models supporting a service-oriented programming model. This includes OSGi and its extensions. In these systems, components are not assembled manually by software engineers but automatically by component containers. Automated assembly is based on rich component meta data. The initial success of these technology is impressive, and some of the largest and most complex systems such as IBM WebSphere, Oracle WebLogic and the Java Development Kit (JDK) either have been or are currently being refactored to take advantage of these new technologies. We are interested in two questions related to these new generation component models: firstly, can existing composition techniques ensure the correctness of assemblies? Secondly, is it possible to automate the modularisation of monolithic legacy systems? We present several studies investigating these questions.
In the first experiment, we have investigated component contracts in the (OSGi-based) Eclipse ecosystem. It turns out that verification fails for a significant number of contracts, violating some of the Eclipse (social) community rules. In the second experiment, we have analysed a large set of real world programs for occurrences of certain antipatterns that present barriers to modularisation. The preliminary results are promising: the algorithm we have developed can detect a small number of basic refactorings that can remove the majority of antipattern instances, confirming that the Pareto principle (aka "80-20 rule") applies here. This result is obtained by running an experiment on the Qualitas Corpus data set. I will also briefly discuss a tool we have developed for architectural analysis: http://xplrarc.massey.ac.nz
Biography
Jens is an Associate Professor in the School of Engineering and Advanced Technology (SEAT) at the Turitea (Palmerston North) Campus of Massey University. He has a Master in Mathematics and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Leipzig in Germany. Jens worked for a couple of years in industry as consultant in Germany, Namibia, Switzerland and the UK, and returned in 2003 to academia. His research interests are in the areas of design pattern formalisation, software componentry, agile software engineering techniques and business rule automation.
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