A scientific paper entitled “Current and Future Challenges of Software Engineering for Services and Applications” has been co-authored by UBITECH and published at the Cloud Forward 2016 Conference that is going to be held in Madrid at 18-20 October, 2016. Given that ICT and, in particular, software is more and more pervasive and it cannot be considered anymore as a minor element of a complex system, there is a need to consolidate the software engineering discipline, which, despite the impressive achievements in the area of software technology, is probably one of the youngest scientific and technological disciplines with about 60 years of history. This paper summarizes the challenges that the Software Engineering for Services and Applications (SE4SA) cluster is considering as relevant. At this paper, UBITECH has actively contributed towards the collection and compilation of challenges dealt by the current European projects in Software Engineering (especially the “software design” and “software implementation and orchestration middleware” challenges), as well as the specification of future trends in the “privacy and security by design” software development era.
Category: News
A Successful 1st Review of PaaSword in Brussels
The PaaSword consortium successfully demonstrated the results of the first 18 months during the first project review on 30th of September at the European Commission in Brussels. These results included the first release (by UBITECH and INTRASOFT) of the PaaSword Framework – a holistic data privacy and security by design framework that helps to protect sensitive data in the cloud. This includes among others mechanisms for flexible context-aware access control and security policies, innovative encryption and data fragmentation as well as distributed key management. A plug-in for the cloud-based Eclipse Che IDE supports cloud developers to create secure cloud applications, allowing standardized security- and privacy- related annotations at code level. The committee of external reviewers have been quite enthusiastic about the results; especially about the live, end-to-end demo of the PaaSword platform that UBITECH presented, which they said to be “very impressive”.
Source: https://www.paasword.eu/2016/10/04/successful-1st-review-paasword
Joint paper with TUB and FOKUS on security of Cloud services deployment and operation at the IEEE technically co-sponsored Networks 2016
Co-authoring a research paper, entitled “Embedding Security and Privacy into the Development and Operation of Cloud Services”, with the Technical University Berlin and Fraunhofer FOKUS in Berlin, UBITECH participates in the 17th International Network Strategy and Planning Symposium (Networks 2016). Networks 2016 constitutes the 17th edition of a symposium held every two years which attracts participants from all over the world. Network operators, software designers, system integrators, researchers from universities and industry, marketers, regulators and policy-makers convene to present their latest findings and share experiences in network strategy, planning, operations, management, control and design. Networks 2016 is technically co-sponsored by IEEE Communications Society.
Dr. Anastasios Zafeiropoulos, Dr. Panagiotis Gouvas and their co-authors introduce an approach allowing Cloud application developers and service providers to consider security and privacy requirements across the application lifecycle. Specifically, a DevOps framework has been described that took into account several emerging technologies such as Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Microservice Pattern Design.
UBITECH presents an approach for anonymization of sensitive clinical and genetic data in CERC 2016
UBITECH participates in the “Collaborative European Research Conference” (CERC 2016), which is held in Blackrock Castle Cork on the 23rd of September 2016, constituting the result of a long standing research collaboration between Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) and the Hochschule Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, with a research paper introducing an approach for the anonymization of sensitive clinical and genetic data based on data cubes structures. In particular, in this paper, Mr. Ntalaperas presents a methodology for transforming data corresponding to patient clinical and genetic data to an equivalent data set that contains the informational content of the original data set regarding the medical data, but from which all information regarding personal data has been filtered out. The methodology builds upon the data cubes technologies combined with cell-suppression and perturbation techniques that ensure that the produced data cube cannot be reversed engineered, while also retaining the same statistical characteristics as the original data set.
Joint paper accepted for publication at the “Expert Systems With Applications” Journal of Elsevier
A journal paper of UBITECH, in collaboration with the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the International Hellenic University and the Centre of Research & Technology Hellas, has been accepted for publication at the Elsevier Journal of Expert Systems with Applications (Impact Factor: 2,981). In this paper, Panagiotis Gouvas and his co-authors present a the recommendation algorithm that has been developed on top of a unified PaaS semantic model, for providing the application developer with recommendations about the best-matching Cloud PaaS offering. The algorithm consists of: a) a matchmaking part, where the functional parameters of the application are taken into account to rule out inconsistent offerings, and b) a ranking part, where the non-functional parameters of the application are considered to score and rank offerings. ?he algorithm is extensively evaluated showing linear scalability to the number of offerings and application requirements. Furthermore, it is extensible upon future semantic model extensions, because it is agnostic to domain specific concepts and parameters, using SPARQL template queries.
Source: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0957417416305164
New paper presentation at SEMANTiCS 2016 focusing on energy-efficient lifestyles through behavioral change
A joint paper with the Semantic Technology Institute and the University of Murcia introducing a semantic approach towards implementing energy efficient lifestyles through behavioural change is presented at the main track of the SEMANTiCS 2016 conference held in Leipzig, at September 12-15, 2016. In this paper, UBITECH’s R&D team with their co-authors present a novel semantics-empowered approach for motivating end-users towards the adoption of energy efficient lifestyles, based on recommendations provided through personalised applications and serious games. As a foundation of our approach, we have designed two semantic models to represent energy consumption and behavioural characteristics of consumers. The Energy Efficiency Semantic Model represents energy consumption data collected from a heterogeneous sensor network, while the Behavioural Semantic Model focuses on energy consumption profile of end-users.
New paper presentation at the PROCON 2016 workshop focusing on reconfigurable-by-design highly distributed applications over programmable infrastructure
UBITECH participates in the “First International Workshop on Programmability for Cloud Networks and Applications” (PROCON 2016), which is held in conjunction with the ITC 28 in Würzburg, technically co-sponsored by IEEE and VDE ITG, and in cooperation with ACM SIGCOMM, and supported and initiated by the two EC H2020 projects INPUT and ARCADIA, with a paper introducing a Novel Reconfigurable-by-Design Highly Distributed Applications (HDAs) Development Paradigm over Programmable Infrastructure. The proposed framework relies on the development of an extensible Context Model which will be used by developers to produce annotated source-code and generate HDAs as service chains of application tiers and network functions containing meaningful semantics. A Smart Controller responsible for on-boarding the HDAs will undertake the tasks of translating annotations to optimal infrastructural configuration. Such a controller will enforce an optimal configuration to the registered programmable resources and will pro-actively adjust the configuration plan based on the Infrastructural State and the Application State to meet objectives and apply policies. Driving a HDA through its entire lifetime proves highly beneficial for all stakeholders since the synergy of the introduced applications’ reconfigurability and the underlying infrastructure’s programmability, facilitates the development of new fine-grained strategies able to fulfil new and complex requirements.
Source: http://procon-workshop.com
Successful first review for the ARCADIA H2020 research project
The results of the first eighteen months of the ARCADIA H2020- project have been successfully demonstrated during the first project review on 9th of September at the European Commission in Brussels. These results include the first release of the ARCADIA Framework, consisting of the ARCADIA Orchestrator (called Smart Controller) and the ARCADIA Development toolkit. Through the ARCADIA Development Toolkit, the software developer is able to design and develop reconfigurable-by-design applications. Through the ARCADIA Orchestrator, a Service Provider is able to deploy and manage reconfigurable-by-design applications over programmable infrastructure, by enforcing in parallel a set of defined policies.
UBITECH, with the role of technical coordinator of the project, was actively involved in the design of the overall framework and the implementation of a set of components consisting the ARCADIA Orchestrator as well as the ARCADIA Development Toolkit. Indicatively, UBITECH developed the Policies Enforcement and Optimisation Engine, the Deployment and Execution Manager, the set of Monitoring mechanisms, the Overlay Networking mechanisms, as well as the set of Repositories for storing the developed components, applications and policies and the ARCADIA Dashboard. Work in progress regards the development of the Resource Manager and a set of virtual functions that can be enabled in an automated manner (e.g. load balancer supporting horizontal scalability characteristics).
A video highlighting the main features of the ARCADIA Framework implemented by UBITECH is available here.
UBITECH releases the first version of the ARCADIA Orchestrator
Following an intense period of work towards the design and development of a set of innovative features, the first integrated version of the ARCADIA Orchestrator is made available by UBITECH. The ARCADIA Orchestrator supports the deployment and management of distributed reconfigurable-by-design applications over programmable infrastructure. Such applications are developed following the ARCADIA software development paradigm and denoted in the form of a service graph. The ARCADIA Orchestrator support the automated and policy-aware deployment and management of such applications over programmable infrastructure, by exploiting a set of novel technologies. Such technologies include an optimisation framework based on Drools for optimal placement of reconfigurable-by-design applications over programmable infrastructure, a policies enforcement framework based on a Drools rules-management system (Expert System), a set of Software Defined Networking (SDN) mechanisms for overlay routing establishment, a set of novel virtualisation technologies for applications packaging in the form of VMs or unikernels, a set of annotations validation and interpretation mechanisms during runtime and the interconnection of the Orchestrator with a web-based development environment. It should be noted that the ARCADIA Orchestrator is supporting the placement and management of applications denoted in the form of service graphs, including network applications denoted in the form of Virtual Network Functions Forwarding Graphs (VNF-FGs), as defined by the ETSI NFV specifications. A video highlighting the main features of the ARCADIA Orchestrator is available here.
Paper on renovating public sector information by enabling linked data and analytics accepted for publication at the Information Systems Frontiers
A joint paper of UBITECH with the National Technical University of Athens (Greece), the University of Bonn and Fraunhofer FOKUS has been accepted for publication at the Information Systems Frontiers – Springer Journal of Research and Innovation. In this paper, entitled “Challenges and opportunities in renovating public sector information by enabling linked data and analytics”, Ms. Eleni Fotopoulou, Dr. Anastasios Zafeiropoulos and their co-authors have investigated the challenges of linked data tools adoption from the Public Sector organizations in view of the current state-of-the-art of linked data technologies and presented a linked data technical framework that aims to hide the underlying complexity of the SPARQL syntax while preserving or even strengthening the power of the linked data paradigm. This framework can be used in order to minimize the required adoption effort of linked data technology and offer more options and flexibility to the end-users of Public Sector Information. It could be argued that the power provided through the combination of linked data technologies and analytics can facilitate the Public Sector to realise advanced analysis and gain insights in the context of policy formulation.
Source: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10796-016-9687-1
