Supporting Integration of COTS Components from a Perspective of Self-Adaptive Software Architecture

This paper describes an approach to the design of a wrapper for self-managing COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) components. Each wrapper for COTS components encapsulates the properties of self-management — detection, reconfiguration, and repair. A COTS component deals with the application perspectives, whereas the wrapper handles the self-management perspectives, separately from the application perspectives. Each wrapper for self-managing COTS components is structured into several objects in support of detection, reconfiguration, and repair of the anomalous COTS components. The approach suggested in this paper is applied to the distributed elevator system consisting of multiple COTS components.

Software in the modern age are mostly developed by the of pre fabricated COTS components as it is the simplest way to develop systems quickly consuming lesser cost as compared to the traditional development approaches. The promising features of component-based-software-engineering (CBSE) have introduced new idea of assembling-software rather than building them.Assembling software in this way alternatively results in rapid development, lesser cost with quality software assembled from pre tested COTS components. However the task is not as easy as it appears apparently. Assembling software from the existing components presents other challenges among which the integration time is the one.Various strategies have been proposed to overcome these mismatches each requiring some external mechanism outside the component to solve them.This paper is an endeavour to provide an integrated approach for resolving time semantic mismatches. It enables COTS components to detect semantic mismatches and resolve them by themselves, thus letting the COTS component itself to participate in mismatch resolution process.The external mediation, in this way, will be reduced up to maximum, resulting in a smooth process with a cut-down in cost. The proposed approach will further enhance the fault tolerance capabilities of COTS components as it is used more and more.

Component-based software development (CBSD) is becoming more and more important since it promotes reuse to higher levels of abstraction. As a consequence, many components are available being either open-source software (OSS) or commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS). However, it is still unclear how the decision for acquiring OSS or COTS components is made in practice. This paper describes an empirical study on why project decision-makers selected COTS instead of OSS components, or vice versa. The study was performed as an international survey in Norway, Italy and Germany. It focused on decision making on using off-the-shelf (OTS) components. We have gathered answers from 83 projects using only COTS components and 44 projects using only OSS components. Results of this study show significant differences and commonalities of integrating OSS or COTS components. Moreover, the study illustrates several research questions that warrant future research.

: Small unmanned systems provide great utility to military applications due to their portable and expendable design. These systems are, however, costly to develop, produce, and maintain, making it desirable to integrate available commercial off the shelf (COTS) components. This research investigates the integration of COTS components through the development of a modular unified command and control (C2) architecture for heterogeneous and homogeneous vehicle teams to accomplish formation flocking and communication relay scenarios. A vehicle agnostic architecture was developed to be applied across different vehicle platforms, different vehicle combination, and different cooperative missions. COTS components consisting primarily of open source hardware and software were integrated and tested based on the positional accuracy, precision, and other qualitative measures. The resulting system successfully demonstrated formation flocking in three of four vehicle combinations, with the forth still demonstrating leader follower behaviors. The system achieved at best a mean positional error of 0.99m, a standard deviation of 0.44m, and a DRMS of 0.59m....

Budget and schedule savings are the driving factors for the adoption of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software components by software development organizations. The reliance on COTS components has lead to component-based development (CBD) software systems and introduced changes to the software development process and hence software project management responsibilities and roles. This paper introduces a general framework discussion of essential management aspects for CBD, focusing on COTS. Particularly, stakeholders, requirements, component selection and architecture management issues are discussed from different angles. Some CBD management guidelines and best practices for these aspects are outlined in the conclusion. In addition, CBD management challenges are drawn along with some suggestions in the conclusion section.

Now a days Ubiquitous computing plays major role in the adaptable software development. The ubiquitous computing works on the principle of context awareness. Context awareness is the methodology which recognizes and monitors the environment and adapt to the environment where they have been introduced. The self-adaptive software architecture is developed based on component based software engineering, which concentrates on the reusability of the software components to achieve better productivity. The proposed architecture uses component repository to adapt the changes to the architecture. The component repository is introduced where it contains the predefined and reusable components and their services for adaptation. The optimized algorithm applied for the component selection in the component repository. The GRASP algorithm is used to optimize the system architecture. The experimental results are validated based on real time environments and compare the results with other existing methods. The proposed models show the superiority in terms of performance.

Safety-critical systems and in particular mixed-criticality systems require spatial and temporal separation for their hosted applications and functionalities. Additional constraints are using Commercial Off -- The -- Shelf (COTS) components, portability and determinism. These items are required for economic success for products with low piece numbers and long life-cycles like aircraft. Available embedded processors lack means for spatial separation of Input/Output (I/O) components like an Input/Output Memory Management Unit (IOMMU). The objective of this paper is to provide spatial separation for I/O in COTS mixed-criticality embedded real-time systems like avionics with minimum possible impact on performance (transfer time, transfer rate, Central Processing Unit (CPU) usage). The three main contributions of this paper are: (1) The presented Input/Output Memory Protection Unit (IOMPU) enables to upgrade spatial separation for I/O to a system by using COTS components and Non-Transparent Bridge (NTB) technology. In addition, the IOMPU concept is compatible with existing temporal separation solutions. (2) The paper shows a prototype implementation and a potential use case in context of hardware-based I/O virtualization. (3) The evaluation in this paper demonstrates that the IOMPU concept is practically applicable. The performance overhead (transfer time, transfer rate) is below 0.88%, which is almost negligible, particularly compared to state-of-the-art software-based solutions.

Software development communities have made the true venture to software development through the concept of component-based software approach and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS). Majority of the present software applications have software components as the basic elements, and component-based software development (CBSD) has been successful in building applications and systems. However, the security of CBS for the software component is still not properly noticed. Developing secure software is the accountability of all the stakeholders involved with component-based software development model. The main challenge is to access how much security we have achieved or how can we predict and evaluate the security at the early stage of software development? Software security has a very constructive impact on software productivity, maintainability, cost, and quality. Therefore, more early we introduce and evaluate security into component-based software more productivity and quality we can achieve. In this paper, efforts are done to provide some suitable guiding principle to the software engineers in the development of secure component-based software products. This paper also discusses the overview of requirement specification and analyzes the software architectures and design for developing secure component-based software products.

Along with the development of object-oriented technology, component development is gradually extended to commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components and component-based software development (CBSD) has gradually become the dominant orientation of the field of software engineering. The claims of high reliability need further investigation based on reliability analysis techniques that are applicable to component-based applications. This paper introduces a new reliability analysis technique applicable to high-level designs. The technique is named reliability analysis based on rewrite logic (RABRL). RABRL is specific for component-based software whose analysis is strictly based on its operational profile and specification. Specification based on rewrite logic can be executed with the help of rewrite technique of Maude, driven by test cases designed from the operational profile. By analyzing the execution process with statistics, we can get the transition probability between components and expected number of visits to components approximately. The paper also adapts the probabilistic model "component-dependency graph" (CDG) proposed by Sherif M. Yacoub to model the component-based software, which is named "adapted component-dependency graph" (ACDG). ACDGs are directed graphs that represent components, component reliabilities, transitions, and transition probabilities. Based on ACDGs, an algorithm is presented to analyze the reliability of the application as the function of reliabilities of its components. A simple case study illustrates the applicability of the algorithm. The RABRL is also used to identify critical components.

This paper presents a software tool for integrating a child-friendly computer system based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components. The effective selection of COTS components, which meet a child’s requirements and expectations, is a non-trivial and challenging optimization problem. However, many published papers consider the functional requirements while ignoring usability requirements. The functional requirements are concerned with what the computer should be able to do, whereas the usability requirements are concerned with the extent to which the child is able to learn effectively and efficiently throughout the COTS based computer. In this paper, the authors propose an iterative five-task selection and integration of COTS process, including both hardware devices and software modules, to be automated. The core of the automated tool is employing Simulated Annealing (SA) to search the design space to match, select, and integrate COTS components with a maximal satisfaction while neither exceeding a given budget nor violating child and performance constraints. A Monte Carlo simulator was utilized to evaluate the goodness of the COTS based computer design. Computational results based on building a computer for a child handwriting e-learning application show feasibility of SPACots in finding a solution satisfying all constraints while reducing the cost by 58%.

This paper presents a software tool for integrating a child-friendly computer system based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components. The effective selection of COTS components, which meet a child’s requirements and expectations, is a non-trivial and challenging optimization problem. However, many published papers consider the functional requirements while ignoring usability requirements. The functional requirements are concerned with what the computer should be able to do, whereas the usability requirements are concerned with the extent to which the child is able to learn effectively and efficiently throughout the COTS based computer. In this paper, the authors propose an iterative five-task selection and integration of COTS process, including both hardware devices and software modules, to be automated. The core of the automated tool is employing Simulated Annealing (SA) to search the design space to match, select, and integrate COTS components with a maximal satisfaction while neither exceeding a given budget nor violating child and performance constraints. A Monte Carlo simulator was utilized to evaluate the goodness of the COTS based computer design. Computational results based on building a computer for a child handwriting e-learning application show feasibility of SPACots in finding a solution satisfying all constraints while reducing the cost by 58%.

The purpose of the project was to develop the processes for using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) parts for WR production and to put in place a system for implementing the data management tools required to disseminate, store, track procurement, and qualify vendors. Much of the effort was devoted to determining if the use of COTS parts was possible. A basic question: How does the Nuclear Weapons Complex (NWC) begin to use COTS in the weapon Stockpile Life Extension Programs with high reliability, affordability, while managing risk at acceptable levels? In FY00, it was determined that a certain weapon refurbishment program could not be accomplished without the use of COTS components. The elements driving the use of COTS components included decreased cost, greater availability, and shorter delivery time. Key factors that required implementation included identifying the best suppliers and components, defining life cycles and predictions of obsolescence, testing the feasibility of using COTS components with a test contractor to ensure capability, as well as quality and reliability, and implementing the data management tools required to disseminate, store, track procurement, and qualify vendors. The primary effort of this project then was to concentrate on the risks involved in the use of COTS and address the issues of part and vendor selection, procurement and acceptance processes, and qualification of the parts via part and sample testing. The Enterprise Component Information System (eCIS) was used to manage the information generated by the COTS process. eCIS is a common interface for both the design and production of NWC components and systems integrating information between SNL National Laboratory (SNL) and the Kansas City Plant (KCP). The implementation of COTS components utilizes eCIS from part selection through qualification release. All part related data is linked across an unclassified network for access by both SNL and KCP personnel. The system includes not only NWC part information but also includes technical reference data for over 25 Million electronic and electromechanical commercial and military parts via a data subscription. With the capabilities added to the system through this project, eCIS provides decision support, parts list/BOM analysis, editing, tracking, workflows, reporting, and history/legacy information integrating manufacturer reference, company technical, company business, and design data.

Dealing with Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) com- ponents is a daily business for avionic system manufacturers. They are necessary ingredients for hardware designs, but are not built in accordance with the avionics consensus standard DO- 254 for Airborne Electronic Hardware (AEH) design. Especially for complex COTS hardware components used in safety critical AEH, like Microcontroller Units (MCUs), additional assurance activities have to be performed. All of them together shall form a convincing confident, that the hardware is safe in its intended operation environment. The focus of DO-254 is one approach called Design Assurance (DA). Its aim is to reduce design errors by adherence of prescribed process objectives for the entire design life cycle. The effort for certain COTS assurance activities could be reduced if it is possible to demonstrate, that the COTS design process is based on similar effective design process guide- lines to minimize desgin errors. In the last years, semiconductor manufacturers released safety MCUs in compliance to the ISO 26262 standard, dedicated for the development of functional safe automotive systems. These products are COTS components in the sense of avionics, but they are also developed according to a process that focuses on reduction of design errors. In this paper an evaluation is performed to figure out if the ISO 26262 prescribes a similar DA approach as the DO-254, in order to reduce the COTS assurance effort for coming avionic systems.

: A major challenge facing the MLS community is to find ways to provide the information and connectivity that DoD users demand without either imposing unacceptable security risks or requiring expensive hardware and software that fails to mesh with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) applications. This paper proposes, very briefly, an architecture that meets these goals using only a small number of relatively simple, low cost, high assurance components in combination with a preponderance of unmodified COTS hardware, operating systems and applications.

A quality framework for developing and evaluating original software components