Emerging Trends in

Software Engineering

Prof. R. Mall
Dept. of CSE, IIT, Kharagpur

1
 Introduction

Technology developments occur:
 To adapt to new environments
 To respond to new challenges

Few important developments that have
occurred over the last decade or so:
 Desktops have become more powerful and
at the same time more affordable.
 Internet has become widely accepted.
 Mobile computing.
 Outsourcing has become prevalent.
2
 Background

Software market has two parts:
 Products (General purpose
software)
 Services (custom software)

Total business – appx. $1 Trillion
 Half in products and half services
 Services segment is growing fast

3
 Background cont…


SE goal is to develop software
to satisfy user needs.
 Either generic or one-off.

Customer needs are considered
sacrosanct and fixed:
 Vendor has to find the solution.

4
 Background: A Constraint on
Software Engineering Process

Business Process Change in Business Process

Time required = T2
Time required = T1
Change in the IT solution
supporting
Implementation in IT
the business process

5
 Background: Desired Goals

A. Reduce T1 (and improve quality)

B. Reduce T2

A requires:
 Process should efficiently capture
requirements of the business and then
efficiently convert it to code.

B requires:
 Implementation should be such that
business process changes can be easily
accommodated in the software solution.
6
 Challenges Being Faced

Delivery time requirements are
shortening:
 High business velocity requires this.
 Software is becoming a bottleneck in
implementing business process changes.

Businesses are getting tired of software
cost, late deliveries, poor quality, risk,…
 Hardware and software cost differentials
are becoming more and more glaring.
7
 Challenges Being Faced
cont…

Software sizes are further
increasing.

How software is to be effectively
developed in following contexts is not
clear:
 Distributed platforms
 Working with Internet
 Distributed development teams

8
 Noticeable Software
Engineering Technology Trends

Following software engineering
trends are easily noticeable:
 Client-server (or Component-based)
development
 Service-Oriented Architecture
(SOA)
 Software as a Service (SaaS)
9
 Client-Server Technology

Both clients and servers are pieces of
software.

Concepts of Clients and Servers are
nothing new --- have existed for
ages:
 Clients are consumers of service.
 Servers are providers of service.

Why is then a sudden interest seen in
client-server software architecture?
10
 Advantages of Client-Server
Compared to Traditional Software

Flexibility:
 Clients and servers can be easily attached and
removed.

Modularity

Concurrency

Fault-tolerance

Clients are cheap computers:
 Servers are expensive computers tucked away in
some AC rooms.
 To use a software you not need not buy
expensive server hardware and software.
11
 Client-Server versus
Traditional Software

The following two factors are possibly the
most relevant:

Component-based software development:
 To develop a hardware solution an electronic
engineer does not solder transistors and
resistors on a PCB --- uses off-the-shelf ICs.
 Why not do the same for software.

Current trend of mobile computing:
 Handhelds can only be clients due to low
processing and memory capabilities.

12
 Component Architectures

Two tier architecture: Most obvious

Server 1 Server m

Internet
Client 1 Client n


But does not work.

13
 What are the Problems with
the 2-tier Architecture?

Servers can be bottleneck.

How to locate servers?

Client-Server incompatibility:
 Analogy:House hunting in
Bangalore.

14
 Solution: 3-tier
Architecture
Server 1 Server m

Middleware
Internet
Middleware
Client 1 Client n

15
 Middleware Standards

CORBA versus COM/DCOM

CORBA (common object request
broker architecture)
 Being advocated by OMG

COM/DCOM:
 Being advocated by Microsoft

16
 CORBA Architecture
Server 1 Server m
Skeleton DSI Skeleton DSI

ORB
Object Adapter

Stub Stub
Client 1 Client n

17
 CORBA Architecture

Skeleton:
 Marshalls client requests

The servers register themselves with
the object-adapter.

The ORB delivers the client request to
the server.

The Skeleton marshalls the server
response.

DII/DSI for dynamic service invocation.
18
 IDL: Interface
Development Language

Interfaces between clients and
servers can be specified.

Similar to C++ or Java:
 But no executable statements.
Interface clock{
set-time(int hh, int mm, int ss);
get-time(int hh, int mm, int ss);
}
19
 How to Develop Component-
Based Applications?

Divide application into components.

Determine component interfaces:
 Define using IDL.

Get available components:
 Build the ones not available

Integrate the components and test

20
CORBA Implementations

Visigenic

Iona

Orbix

Java IDL …

21
 COM/DCOM

COM used when application runs on a
single machine:
 DCOM for distributed machine.

Concepts are similar to CORBA:
 Though terminologies are different.
 Proxy on client side.
 More usable than CORBA.

What is a component in COM/DCOM?
 A .exe or .dll component
 Created using VB or VC++
22
COM/DCOM versus CORBA

COM/DCOM strong on client side:
 CORBA on server side.
 Java Beans an attempt to bridge this
gap.

COM/DCOM more usable:
 If your application is to run only on
Microsoft operating systems, better use
COM/DCOM.
 If your application needs to run on
heterogeneous platforms, better use
CORBA. 23
 Service-Oriented
Architecture (SOA)

24
 SOA: Introduction

Service-orientation principles have
their roots in the object-oriented
designing.

Many claim that service-orientation
will replace object-orientation:
 Othersthink the two are
complementary paradigms.

25
 What is SOA?
 Build applications by composing software
services.
 What is a software service?
 Essentially software components.
 Typically implement functionality most
humans would recognize as a service.
 Examples of services:
 Filling out an online application
 Viewing an online bank-statement
 Placing an online booking
26
Service: More Formally

A service is a contractually
defined behavior:
 Implemented and provided by a
component for use by an
application developer.

27
 SOA vs. Component Model
 Several things common between
services and components:
 Multiple-use
 Non-context-specific
 Composable
 Encapsulated i.e., non-investigable
through its interfaces
 A unit of independent deployment and
versioning
 Loose coupling
28
SOA vs. Component Model
cont…

Several things different.

Compared to components:
 SOA's atomic-level objects are
often 100 to 1,000 times larger.

Services may be developed and
hosted separately.
 Possibly pay per use.
29
SOA vs. Component Model
cont…
 Instead of services embedding calls to
each other in their source code:
 They use defined protocols which
describe how services can talk to each
other.
 This architecture relies on a business
process expert:
 Links and sequences services, in a process
known as orchestration, to meet a new
business requirement.
30
 SOA vs. Component Model
cont…
 SOA targets fairly large chunks of
functionality to be strung together to
form new services:
 Built almost entirely from existing
software services.
 The larger the chunks:
 The fewer the interfacings required;
 Faster development;
 However, very large chunks may not
prove easy to reuse.
31
 SOA: Nitty Gritty

SOA is a collection of services:
 That communicate with each other.

The services are self-contained:
 Donot depend on the context or state
of the other service.

Each service works within a
distributed-system architecture.

32
 SOA : Nitty Gritty
cont…


A paradigm for utilizing distributed
capabilities:
 May be under the control of
different ownership domains.

Provides a uniform means:
 Tooffer, discover, interact with and
use capabilities to achieve desired
results.
33
 SOA: Nitty Gritty
cont…

SOA would fundamentally change the
way we construct software systems.
 SOA involves statically and dynamically
plugging-in services to build software.

SOA players:
 BEA Aqua logic, Oracle Web services
manager, HP Systinet Registry, MS .Net,
IBM Web Sphere, Iona Artrix, Java
composite application suite.
34
 SOA: Nitty Gritty
cont…

Views software as providing a set of services:
 Each service composed of smaller services.

Leverages the Internet and emerging
standardization on it for interoperability

Hopes that a market place for different
predefined services can emerge:
 Not tied to any specific vendor

An app can be built using these services:
 And building the “missing” ones.

35
 Principles of Service-
Orientation: Services
 Services:
 Abstract the underlying data and logic
 Composable
 Autonomous
 Share a formal contract
 Loosely coupled
 Stateless
 Discoverable

36
SOA Entities
Service
Consumer

Contract Registry

Service
Provider

37
 SOA Implementation

Web services can implement a
service-oriented architecture.

Web services make functional
building blocks
 Accessible over standard Internet
protocols
 Independent of platforms and
programming languages.
38
 Service Orchestration

Requires metadata in sufficient detail
to describe:
 The characteristics of the services,
 Also the data that drives them.

The services are typically described by
WSDL.

Communications protocols by SOAP.

Data and meta data by XML

39
 SOA Vision

Have a marketplace for services:
 It will automatically improve quality
and reduce prices.

To build an application:
 Use off-the-shelf services and
possibly build some.

Cost of building reduces;
 Also cost of ownership (which is quite
large for regular software) reduces. 40
 Great Promise of SOA

The cost of creating the n-th
application is near-zero,
 Asall of the software services
required already exists.
 Onlyorchestration required to
produce a new application.

41
 SOA Challenges

Building services and infrastructure

Composing services – formal theory
and algebra, languages, semantics

Testing and verification

Trust

Non Functional properties

Changes

Business level modeling and translation

Developing the marketplace 42
Software as a
Service (SaaS)

43
 Challenge Faced

Owning software is very expensive:
 An Rs. 50 Lakh software running on an
Rs. 1 Lakh computer is common place.

As with hardware, owning software is
the business tradition:
 Both products and services bought and
used.
 Most of IT budget now goes in supporting
the software assets.
44
 Background

To have water supply at home:
 Do you install system to pump water from
river directly to your home?

To get electricity supply:
 Do you install a thermal or hydro electric
generator?

It would lead to wastage:
 You do not need to have all the water pipes
open all the time.
 Unnecessarily expensive proposition. 45
 Background
cont…

Should you own Rational Suite
paying Rs. 50 Lakhs:
 If you use it only 10 hours every
month
 One hour of usage costs Rs. 100/-
 Also frees use from maintenance and
data storage costs --- Given that
maintenance is usually a severe
overhead.
46
 SaaS

Lets customers pay for what
they need and when:
 With price reflecting market
place supply and demand.

SaaS includes:
 Elements of outsourcing and
 Application service provisioning

47
 SaaS

SaaS is a model of software
delivery:
 Software owner provides
maintenance, daily technical
operation, and support for the
software.
 Services are provided to the
clients on amount of usage basis.
48
 SaaS vs. SOA

SaaS is a software delivery model:
 SOA is a software construction
model.

SaaS counters the concept of a
user as the owner:
 Owner is a vendor who hosts the
software and lets the users execute
on-demand charges per usage units.

49
 SaaS versus SOA

Despite significant differences:
 Espouse closely related architecture
models.

SaaS and SOA complement each other:
 SaaS helps to offer components for SOA
to use.
 SOA helps to help quickly realize SaaS.

Main enabler of SaaS and SOA:
 Internet and web services technologies.
50
 Key Characteristics

Network-based access and management of
commercially available (not custom) software.

Activities managed from central location and
not at customer site,
 Enabling customers to access applications
remotely via the Web.

Application delivery follows a one-to-many
model (single instance, multi-tenant
architecture):
 In contrast to a one-to-one model.
51
 Business Model

Shift "ownership" of the software:
 From the customer to a service provider.

Shift responsibility for hardware and
software management:
 From the customer to the provider

Reduce the cost of providing software
services:
 Through specialization and economy of
scale.
 Target the "long tail" of small customers52
Current Business Model

53
SaaS Business Model

54
 SaaS Architecture…
Client 1
Application
Meta-Model Instance Client 2
Play/Edit

Player
Client n

Edit
Data Designer

55
 Summary

Some of the basic assumptions of software
are changing

This is leading to some different paradigms
for software delivery.

Component-based development:
 Expected to reduce development time, cost and
at the same time improve quality.

SaaS is changing the way software is
delivered.

SOA conceives a component based assembly
model with independent component vendors.56