Abstract
In cloud environments, resources should be acquired and released automatically and quickly at runtime. Therefore, ensuring the desired QoS is a great challenge for the cloud service provider. Moreover, it increases when we have large amount of data to be manipulated in this environment. Considering that, performance is an important requirement for most customers when they migrate their applications to the cloud. In this paper, we propose a model for measuring a Service Response Time estimated for different request types on large databases available in a cloud environment. This work allows the cloud service provider and its customers establish an appropriate SLA relative to performance expected of services available in the cloud. Finally, the model was evaluated in Amazon EC2 cloud infrastructure and the TPC-DS like benchmark was used for generating a database of structured data, considering that some cloud computing platforms support SQL queries directly or indirectly. This makes the proposed solution relevant for these kind of problems.

Abstract
A domain-specific language (DSL) aims to support software development by offering abstractions to a particular domain. It is expected that DSLs improve the maintainability of artifacts otherwise produced with general-purpose languages. However, the maintainability of the DSL artifacts and, hence, their adoption in mainstream development, is largely dependent on the usability of the language itself. Unfortunately, it is often hard to identify their usability strengths and weaknesses early, as there is no guidance on how to objectively reveal them. Usability is a multi-faceted quality characteristic, which is challenging to quantify beforehand by DSL stakeholders. There is even less support on how to quantitatively evaluate the usability of DSLs used in maintenance tasks. In this context, this paper reports a study to compare the usability of textual DSLs under the perspective of software maintenance. A usability measurement framework was developed based on the cognitive dimensions of notations. The framework was evaluated both qualitatively and quantitatively using two DSLs in the context of two evolving object-oriented systems. The results suggested that the proposed metrics were useful: (1) to early identify DSL usability limitations, (2) to reveal specific DSL features favoring maintenance tasks, and (3) to successfully analyze eight critical DSL usability dimensions.

Abstract

Abstract
A lens is an optical device which refracts light. Properly adjusted, it can be used to project sharp images of objects onto a screen— a principle underlying photography as well as human vision. Striving for clarity, we shift our focus to lenses as abstractions for bidirectional programming. By means of standard mathematical terminology as well as intuitive properties of bidirectional programs, we observe different ways to characterize lenses and show exactly how their laws interact. Like proper adjustment of optical lenses is essential for taking clear pictures, proper organization of lens laws is essential for forming a clear picture of different lens classes. Incidentally, the process of understanding bidirectional lenses clearly is quite similar to the process of taking a good picture. By showing that it is exactly the backward computation which defines lenses of a certain standard class, we provide an unusual perspective, as contemporary research tends to focus on the forward computation. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

Abstract
Typed models of connector/component composition specify interfaces describing ports of components and connectors. Typing ensures that these ports are plugged together appropriately, so that data can flow out of each output port and into an input port. These interfaces typically consider the direction of data flow and the type of values flowing. Components, connectors, and systems are often parameterised in such a way that the parameters affect the interfaces. Typing such connector families is challenging. This paper takes a first step towards addressing this problem by presenting a calculus of connector families with integer and boolean parameters. The calculus is based on monoidal categories, with a dependent type system that describes the parameterised interfaces of these connectors. As an example, we demonstrate how to define n-ary Reo connectors in the calculus. The paper focusses on the structure of connectors—well-connectedness—and less on their behaviour, making it easily applicable to a wide range of coordination and componentbased models. A type-checking algorithm based on constraints is used to analyse connector families, supported by a proof-of-concept implementation. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016.

Abstract
This paper proposes the concept of refraction, a principled means to lower the cost of managing reflective meta-data for pervasive systems. While prior work has demonstrated the bene fits of reflective component-based middleware for building open and reconfigurable applications, the cost of using remote reflective operations remains high. Refractive components address this problem by selectively augmenting application data flows with their reflective meta-data, which travels at low cost to reflective pools, which serve as loci of inspection and control for the distributed application. Additionally reflective policies are introduced, providing a mechanism to trigger reconfigurations based on incoming reflective meta-data. We evaluate the performance of refraction in a case-study of automatic con figuration repair for a real-world pervasive application. We show that refraction reduces network overhead in comparison to the direct use of reflective operations while not increasing development overhead. To enable further experimentation with the concept of refraction, we provide RxCom, an open-source refractive component model and supporting runtime environment.