Feature-based generation of pervasive systems architectures utilizing software product line concepts
Abstract
As the need for pervasive systems tends to increase and to dominate the computing discipline, software engineering approaches must evolve at a similar pace to facilitate the construction of such systems in an efficient manner. In this thesis, we provide a vision of a framework that will help in the construction of software product lines for pervasive systems by devising an approach to automatically generate architectures for this domain. Using this framework, designers of pervasive systems will be able to select a set of desired system features, and the framework will automatically generate architectures that support the presence of these features. Our approach will not compromise the quality of the architecture especially as we have verified that by comparing the generated architectures to those manually designed by human architects. As an initial step, and in order to determine the most commonly required features that comprise the widely most known pervasive systems, we surveyed more than fifty existing architectures for pervasive systems in various domains. We captured the most essential features along with the commonalities and variabilities between them. The features were categorized according to the domain and the environment that they target. Those categories are: General pervasive systems, domain-specific, privacy, bridging, fault-tolerance and context-awareness. We coupled the identified features with well-designed components, and connected the components based on the initial features selected by a system designer to generate an architecture. We evaluated our generated architectures against architectures designed by human architects. When metrics such as coupling, cohesion, complexity, reusability, adaptability, modularity, modifiability, packing density, and average interaction density were used to test our framework, our generated architectures were found comparable, if not better than the human generated architectures.
Department
Computer Science & Engineering Department
Degree Name
MS in Computer Science
Graduation Date
2-1-2012
Submission Date
December 2011
First Advisor
Aly, Sherif Gamal
Extent
NA
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Library of Congress Subject Heading 1
Software architecture.
Library of Congress Subject Heading 2
Ubiquitous computing.
Rights
The author retains all rights with regard to copyright. The author certifies that written permission from the owner(s) of third-party copyrighted matter included in the thesis, dissertation, paper, or record of study has been obtained. The author further certifies that IRB approval has been obtained for this thesis, or that IRB approval is not necessary for this thesis. Insofar as this thesis, dissertation, paper, or record of study is an educational record as defined in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 USC 1232g), the author has granted consent to disclosure of it to anyone who requests a copy.
Institutional Review Board (IRB) Approval
Not necessary for this item
Recommended Citation
APA Citation
Hamza, M.
(2012).Feature-based generation of pervasive systems architectures utilizing software product line concepts [Master's Thesis, the American University in Cairo]. AUC Knowledge Fountain.
https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/1198
MLA Citation
Hamza, Mostafa Ahmed. Feature-based generation of pervasive systems architectures utilizing software product line concepts. 2012. American University in Cairo, Master's Thesis. AUC Knowledge Fountain.
https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/1198