Organic aggregation : a human-centred and model-driven approach to engineering service-oriented systems
Date
2010
Authors
Wang, Yuanzhi
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Owing to a widespread trend of globalisation and service economies, there are exponentially increasing demands for Software-Intensive Systems (SIS) in general, and Service-Oriented Systems (SOS) in particular. However, it presents great challenges to develop and manage these systems. Although current research and practice provide various means to attack these challenges, there are many difficult impediments to overcome. This research is motivated by such demands, challenges, and opportunities. The ultimate objective is to understand and address the critical challenges of services engineering. To do so, we develop a multi-phased and iterative research methodology that is adapted from typical applied science research methodologies, in order to suit the exploratory nature of this research. According to the research methodology, we investigate and analyse the special characteristics of services engineering, such as a high degree of complexity, uncertainty, and volatility. Moreover, some existing approaches and related work are studied and analysed in a critical way. We conclude that the great difficulties of services engineering are fundamentally caused by a lack of disciplined engineering approaches that take into account the rapidly co-evolving socio-technical environments, where both human intellectual capacities and engineering competence need to be well understood and exploited. To realise our vision, we derive a generic engineering framework based on generalisation of other engineering disciplines, based on which, a services engineering framework called Organic Aggregation Services Engineering Framework (OASEF) is proposed. OASEF contains a theoretical foundation that consists of complementary theories and knowledge from multiple disciplines. Some important concepts are also defined, such as services engineering, models and modelling, and Socio-Technical Environments (STE). Moreover, OASEF contains some guiding principles that provide important guidance for the design and realisation of SOS and services engineering. Based on these conceptual resources, a profound concept called organic aggregation is developed, which takes an organic and synthetic approach to grow and manage systems of any kind. Furthermore, OASEF also incorporates: 1) a generic conceptual process model called Organic Aggregation Process (OAP) in support of organic aggregations of human intellectual and technical capacities; 2) a fully integrated model-driven method to realise OASEF/OAP activities in a systematic and automatic way; 3) a range of domain-specific and general purpose modelling languages for OASEF activities; 4) a mechanism to capture and reuse engineering capacities and to realise automatic system generation; and 5) an integrated tool environment in support of OASEF. Two controlled proof-of-concept case studies are conducted in real world settings, which aim to evaluate and improve OASEF concepts, methods, and mechanisms. Results show that OASEF helps to manage system complexity, agility, and productivity when engineering SOS. Some limitations and insufficiencies are also observed, which require future research. Although this research mainly focuses on SOS and services engineering, its engineering framework, or more specifically, the theoretical foundation, guiding principles, and generic process model, can be applied within a wider scope of software engineering and systems engineering.
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