Design of E-Services Transactions for Collaborative COnstruction Activities - Dest2Co
Coordinating Institution:
CRP Henri Tudor
Other Partner(s):
CRP Gabriel Lippmann ,
Centre de Recherche en Architecture et Ingénierie (F)
From: 01/01/2009
To: 31/07/2011
Budget: 405,000.00€
Contact(s):
Kubicki Sylvain
Summary
The Dest2Co project investigates service design techniques applicable in collaborative business environments. The aim is to define a methodology associated with a set of tools supporting the e-services design process. Business fields characterized by collaborative activities are numerous and require well-adapted software-based services to improve the efficiency of business collaborations. The Architecture, Engineering and Construction sector (AEC) is characteristic of such environments: construction projects involve numerous practitioners, for short durations, in various contractual contexts. In Luxembourg AEC sector, a service-driven innovation process has been carried out in previous projects.
Pilot-projects experiments led to state that every collaborative project is different, and one identified the need for a method enabling the design of services fitting specific requirements of a project context through the involvement of business, service and technical experts. In highly collaborative business contexts, services design is even more important than in other contexts as they are more complex and involve multiple, composed services. Moreover, these contexts are ideal for service composition and thus service reuse. The project aims at supporting the design of such services by reconciliating different viewpoints in the design process, following a model-driven approach. Three viewpoints have been derived from analyses of our previous service design projects. The Business Requirements Viewpoint details what we want to achieve. The Business Solution Viewpoint defines the solution from a business perspective. UML class and activity diagrams will be used for this viewpoint. The Technical Solution Viewpoint is the view of IT experts on the service. It is divided into two layers, a first layer refining the previous UML diagrams, and a second using more technical file formats (BPEL, WSDL, XML Schema). The Dest2Co methodology (see figure) defines how different actors (associated to their viewpoints) can design services for a single project situation by using different views. The views are refined and reused during the whole process but mainly consist in different facets of the same reality, i.e. services. The integrative aspect of this methodology is based on Model Driven Engineering techniques, by defining meta-models for each view, as well as for the business domain, and defining the relations between these meta-models. All the activities described in the process contribute to the refining of the services and domain models. To support this methodology, the project’s efforts will focus on adapting and integrating existing (open source) software tools. The Eclipse platform has been chosen as a basis for this tool integration.
Refereed Scientific Publications:
2 scientific publications in 2009:
1. Ramel, S., Grandry, E. and Dubois, E. (2009) Towards a Design Method Supporting the Alignment between Business and Services Software. 33rd Annual IEEE International Computer Software and Applications Conference, COMPSAC 2009. Seattle, WA. July 20-24, 2009.
2. Kubicki S., Halin G., Zignale D. and Guerriero A. (2009) Modeling role-specific practices to design user-adapted views for construction-dedicated IT services. 6th International Conference on Cooperative Design, Visualization and Engineering. September 20-23, 2009. Luxembourg. LNCS Volume 5738/2009, pp. 173-176.
Other Publications:
N/A