Enabling Design and Architecture Support for the Development of Internet of Things Applications

物联网(IoT)旨在连接大量对象和设备，以允许收集、聚合和分析数据，从而在智能城市、智能建筑、工业4.0和医疗保健等广泛领域开发更有效和高效的系统。物联网软件的设计要求以前所未有的水平处理分布性、异构性、实时性、动态性、智能性和规模性等特征，以及在许多情况下的高可靠性和安全性要求。为了构建物联网软件，微服务在行业中的使用越来越多。然而，尽管它们看起来是一个有用的抽象，但它们的有效开发、组成和部署，从而满足所需的异构性、适应性和性能的种类和水平，仍然是一个挑战。 为了应对这些挑战，该项目将调查使用UML-RT来以与微服务基础原则一致的方式来架构、实现和推理物联网软件。UML-RT是一种基于统一建模语言的构件化设计和开发方法，自20世纪90年代以来一直被用于开发电信和工业自动化等不同领域的工业嵌入式系统。工具支持是通过商业工具提供的，最近还通过一个名为Eclipse Papyrus-RT的开源工具提供。具体地说，该项目将通过支持(1)通过关键的物联网通信技术(如MQTT、CoAP和JSON)进行分发、异构性、部署和适配，以及(2)与开源Node-red物联网中间件基础设施的集成和互操作性，来扩展UML-RT和Papyrus-RT。 该项目的成果将使行业合作伙伴能够发挥竞争优势，并将其产品和服务扩展到不断增长的物联网行业。这项研究将推动软件建模的最新水平，特别是物联网软件的使用。改进的开发技术和工具将促进高效构建和维护复杂但高质量的物联网软件。

The Internet of Things (IoT) aims at connecting large numbers of objects and devices to allow the collection, aggregation, and analysis of data to enable the development of more effective and efficient systems in a wide variety of domains including smart cities, smart buildings, Industry 4.0, and health care. The design of IoT software requires dealing with characteristics such as distribution, heterogeneity, real-time, dynamism, intelligence and scale at unprecedented levels, as well as, in many cases, high dependability and security requirements. To structure IoT software, microservices are increasingly used in industry. However, while they appear to be a useful abstraction, their effective development, composition and deployment such that the required kinds and levels of heterogeneity, adaptation, and performance are satisfied, remains a challenge. To address these challenges, the project will investigate the use of UML-RT for architecting, implementing, and reasoning about IoT software in a way that is consistent with the principles underlying microservices. UML-RT is component-based design and development approach based on UML that has been used since the 1990ties to develop industrial embedded systems in different domains including telecom and industrial automation. Tool support is provided via commercial tools and, more recently, an open-source tool called Eclipse Papyrus-RT. Concretely, the project will extend UML-RT and Papyrus-RT with support for (1) distribution, heterogeneity, deployment, and adaptation via key IoT communication technologies such as MQTT, CoAP, and JSON, and (2) integration and interoperability with the open-source Node-RED IoT middleware infrastructure. The results of the project will allow the industrial partners to develop competitive advantages and extend their products and services towards the growing IoT industry. The research will advance the state-of-the-art in software modeling in general and its use for IoT software in particular. Improved development techniques and tools will facilitate the efficient construction and maintenance of complex, yet high-quality IoT software.