Escaping the concurrency trade-off: a new approach to enterprise software. Enterprise software manages the operations of all business and government organisations. Designers of this often rely on their intuition or luck, by using high-performance database facilities whose correctness is not guaranteed. This project will show designers how to use these facilities while still having the assurance that the data will not be corrupted. This will improve the quality of the data used by Australian ent ....Escaping the concurrency trade-off: a new approach to enterprise software. Enterprise software manages the operations of all business and government organisations. Designers of this often rely on their intuition or luck, by using high-performance database facilities whose correctness is not guaranteed. This project will show designers how to use these facilities while still having the assurance that the data will not be corrupted. This will improve the quality of the data used by Australian enterprises, and thus improve their operations. Australian software designers will also benefit, as they will be able to produce software that combines high performance with assurance that concurrency errors will not occur.Read moreRead less
Managing Knowledge in Web-Driven Organisational Evolution. Organisations are increasingly concerned with the effective utilisation of Web technologies, and especially the ways in which these technologies can be used to improve their business. Effective management of knowledge about the interplay between the organisation and technical drivers of this technology adoption will enable a much-enhanced process for leveraging emerging information and communication technologies. This project aims to li ....Managing Knowledge in Web-Driven Organisational Evolution. Organisations are increasingly concerned with the effective utilisation of Web technologies, and especially the ways in which these technologies can be used to improve their business. Effective management of knowledge about the interplay between the organisation and technical drivers of this technology adoption will enable a much-enhanced process for leveraging emerging information and communication technologies. This project aims to link related research at UTS and Southampton University to understand how tools might support this knowledge management. Outcomes will include the creation of specific tools (and techniques for using them) within the context of managing organisational uptake of new technologies.Read moreRead less
Metamodel-based Methodology for Developing Agent-Oriented Systems. In the context of building high quality software, agent technology offers substantial promise. However, its widespread deployment by industry is hampered by the lack of commercially acceptable development methodologies. Here, we expand a metamodel-based process framework (the OPEN Process Framework) to support agent-oriented (AO) software development that will eventually both form a de facto standard for AO methodologies and be ....Metamodel-based Methodology for Developing Agent-Oriented Systems. In the context of building high quality software, agent technology offers substantial promise. However, its widespread deployment by industry is hampered by the lack of commercially acceptable development methodologies. Here, we expand a metamodel-based process framework (the OPEN Process Framework) to support agent-oriented (AO) software development that will eventually both form a de facto standard for AO methodologies and be acceptable for commercial software application development. To create this extension, significant research in AO software engineering is required. Our basis will be the OPF plus elements from existing AO methodologies, notably Tropos and Gaia, whose authors will collaborate actively.Read moreRead less
Creating and Assessing Processes for Object-Oriented and Component-Based Software Development. This project is based on the principles of both theoretical and empirical software engineering. It focuses on the processes, technology and quality of software systems produced using component-based development (CBD) which is achieving substantial software re-use. Among the main objectives of this project are the creation of a unified CBD process metamodel and associated family of reference processes t ....Creating and Assessing Processes for Object-Oriented and Component-Based Software Development. This project is based on the principles of both theoretical and empirical software engineering. It focuses on the processes, technology and quality of software systems produced using component-based development (CBD) which is achieving substantial software re-use. Among the main objectives of this project are the creation of a unified CBD process metamodel and associated family of reference processes together with a closely linked CBD assessment methodology.Read moreRead less
Fault-tolerant CORBA-based distributed systems. The focus of this research is Fault-Tolerant CORBA-based Distributed Systems. An implementation of the CORBA Fault Tolerance specification will be produced and evaluated against performance, interoperability and compliance criteria. A model for the management of degradation behaviour in distributed systems will be developed and an implementation produced. Novel algorithms, models and approaches to fault tolerance and degradation management will be ....Fault-tolerant CORBA-based distributed systems. The focus of this research is Fault-Tolerant CORBA-based Distributed Systems. An implementation of the CORBA Fault Tolerance specification will be produced and evaluated against performance, interoperability and compliance criteria. A model for the management of degradation behaviour in distributed systems will be developed and an implementation produced. Novel algorithms, models and approaches to fault tolerance and degradation management will be developed. Convincing demonstration applications will be produced to illustrate the widespread relevance of fault-tolerant and degradable systems to real-world domains such as telecommunications, commercial systems and defence.Read moreRead less
Design-Driven Requirements for Internet-Enabled System Development. The nature of Web system development is significantly different from conventional, software and IT development. Amongst other factors, there is substantial uncertainty in both clients' understanding of their needs and developers' understanding of the systems domain. We will develop an uncertainty model relevant to the development model relevant to the development of internet-enabled systems, and then use this model to adapt th ....Design-Driven Requirements for Internet-Enabled System Development. The nature of Web system development is significantly different from conventional, software and IT development. Amongst other factors, there is substantial uncertainty in both clients' understanding of their needs and developers' understanding of the systems domain. We will develop an uncertainty model relevant to the development model relevant to the development of internet-enabled systems, and then use this model to adapt the design process to support elicitation of requirements, as well as developing support for this adapted process. This will facilitate the development of systems that more accurately reflect clients' needs, and result in an understanding of what would be involved in reducing development costs.Read moreRead less
Ontology-based agent-oriented development methodologies. Establishing an industry strength unified agent-oriented methodology which focuses on interoperability and reusability will create stronger commitment to the new technology and stability in the commercial sector in Australia. Our methodology will create significant potential for Australian software companies, due to the added productivity and long term customer satisfaction through reusability, interoperability and pay-off of the developed ....Ontology-based agent-oriented development methodologies. Establishing an industry strength unified agent-oriented methodology which focuses on interoperability and reusability will create stronger commitment to the new technology and stability in the commercial sector in Australia. Our methodology will create significant potential for Australian software companies, due to the added productivity and long term customer satisfaction through reusability, interoperability and pay-off of the developed systems. This not only brings profits to Australian companies through the exploitation of this frontier technology, but also enhances the standard of living through increased satisfaction of the Australian public in their increasing use of software as they interact with today's computer-controlled world.Read moreRead less
Supporting co-evolution of business processes and Web systems. This research will provide significant benefit to the Australian Internet and e-commerce industries (valued by the ABS as in excess of $11b/year). It will result in improved products that better satisfy specific business needs (and hence improved competitiveness in a global market). Development cycles will shorten (as the likelihood of redevelopment decreases) and costs of development will fall. Finally, the models and tools to be ....Supporting co-evolution of business processes and Web systems. This research will provide significant benefit to the Australian Internet and e-commerce industries (valued by the ABS as in excess of $11b/year). It will result in improved products that better satisfy specific business needs (and hence improved competitiveness in a global market). Development cycles will shorten (as the likelihood of redevelopment decreases) and costs of development will fall. Finally, the models and tools to be developed will facilitate the transition of traditional organisations into the new economy, as the outcomes of this research will provide a transparent cost-effective approach for identifying and clarifying the evolving business domain and the requirements of companies.Read moreRead less
Building Peer-to-Peer Middleware Infrastructure with Web Services. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) computing is a framework defining the interactions between systems acting as both clients and servers. Web services technology is an evolving set of Web standards based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML), and is considered as the newest approach to distributed computing. In this project, we aim to build a new type of P2P architectural framework that is truly interoperable and distributed, being platform and la ....Building Peer-to-Peer Middleware Infrastructure with Web Services. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) computing is a framework defining the interactions between systems acting as both clients and servers. Web services technology is an evolving set of Web standards based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML), and is considered as the newest approach to distributed computing. In this project, we aim to build a new type of P2P architectural framework that is truly interoperable and distributed, being platform and language independent in an Internet-wide context. Using Web services and message queuing, this project also aims to develop a robust middleware infrastructure consisting of a set of tools and programming libraries to ease the development of verifiable P2P applications on heterogeneous platforms.Read moreRead less