PH.D. PROGRAMME IN COMPUTER SCIENCE
THIRD YEAR REPORT
Candidate
Jacopo Soldani
Advisor
Prof. Antonio Brogi
Coordinator
Prof. Pierpaolo Degano
March 24
th, 2017
Computer Science Department
University of Pisa
Introduction
In this report, I illustrate the activities performed during the three years of Ph.D. programme in Computer Science. Namely, I report:
• Didactic activities, by illustrating which courses and seminar series I attended. • Research activities, by illustrating what I produced in these three years of research. • Other activities, by illustrating other activities we performed during these three years. I then conclude this report by summarizing my Ph.D.
Didactic Activities
In these three years, I attended the underneath listed Ph.D. courses and seminar series. • [Course] Specification Methods
• [Course] Ad-hoc sensor networks
• [Course] Coinductive methods in Computer Science
• [Seminar series] "Mauriana Pesaresi" seminars (formerly Ph.D. Lunchtime Seminars) • [Seminar series] AGD seminars
• [Seminar series] Oberseminar • [Seminar series] fACTORY Seminars
I also attended the Bertinoro International Spring School (BISS 2014), by successfully substaining the underneath listed exams.
• Big Data Analysis of Patterns in Media Content (held by Nello Cristianini, University of Bristol - UK) • An Introduction to Probabilistic and Quantum Programming (held by Ugo Dal Lago, University of
Bologna - Italy)
• Development of dynamically evolving and self-adaptive software (held by Carlo Ghezzi, Politecnico di Milano - Italy)
Research Activities
In these three years, I started my research activities on topics related to Software Engineering, Cloud
Computing, Service-Oriented Computing. My final goal was to provide a full-fledged support for the design of
cross-cloud applications by addressing the following three research challenges: 1. Detecting a suitable representation for multi-cloud applications.
2. Developing techniques for the reuse of existing applications and services.
3. Developing techniques for the analysis and verification of application specifications.
In this perspective, I spent three months at the Institut für Architektur von Anwendungssystemen (IAAS) of the University of Stuttgart. The objective of this stay was to cooperate with the IAAS institute in doing research on the underneath listed topics:
• Service oriented computing. • Software engineering. • Cloud computing.
More precisely, from May 1st, 2014 to July 31st, 2014, I strictly cooperated with the researchers at the
IAAS institute in trying to solve the problem of matching abstract specifications of cloud application components with existing applications. The objective of this work is to foster the reusability of application specification, and in particular of TOSCA specifications.
We also spent fifteen days (from September 20th, 2015 to October 4th, 2015) at the School of Computing of the Dublin City University. The objective of this stay has been to cooperate with the local researchers in doing research on the underneath listed topics:
• Software engineering, • Cloud computing,
• Standards for cloud interoperability, and • Lightweight virtualization.
More precisely, throughout the whole visit, I have cooperated with Prof. Dr. Claus Pahl in trying to solve the problem of integrating lightweight virtualization platforms (e.g., Docker) with TOSCA, an emerging standard for cloud interoperability.
In the end, the research activities carried out in these three years led to the publication of what follows:
Journal Papers
2017 • Brogi, P. Cifariello, J. Soldani. DrACO: Discovering Available Cloud Offerings. Computer Science: Research & Development. [In press]
• Brogi, M. Danelutto, D. De Sensi, A. Ibrahim, J. Soldani, M. Torquati. Analysing Multiple QoS Attributes in Parallel Design Patterns-based Applications. International Journal of Parallel Programming. [In press]
2016 • Brogi, J. Soldani. Finding available services in TOSCA-compliant clouds. Science of Computer Programming, volumes 115-116, pages 177-198, 2016.
• J. Soldani, T. Binz, U. Breitenbücher, F. Leymann, A. Brogi. TOSCA-MART: A Method for Adapting and Reusing Cloud Applications. Journal of Systems and Software, volume 113, pages 395-406, 2016.
• Brogi, A. Canciani, J. Soldani, P. Wang. A Petri net-based approach to model and analyze the management of cloud applications. LNCS Transactions on Petri Nets and other models of Concurrency, volume 11, pages 28-48, 2016.
2015 • A. Brogi, M. Fazzolari, A. Ibrahim, J. Soldani, P. Wang, J. Carrasco, J. Cubo, F. Duran, E. Pimentel, E. Di Nitto, and F. D'Andria. Adaptive management of applications across multiple clouds: The SeaClouds Approach. CLEI Electronic Journal, volume 18, number 1, pages 1-14, 2015.
2014 • Brogi, A. Ibrahim, J. Soldani, J. Carrasco, J. Cubo, E. Pimentel, and F. D'Andria. SeaClouds: a European project on seamless management of multi-cloud applications. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, volume 39, issue 1, pages 1-4, 2014.
Conference Papers
2017 • Brogi, A. Di Tommaso, J. Soldani. Validating TOSCA application topologies. 5th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software
Development (MODELSWARD 2017). [In press]
• Brogi, D. Neri, J. Soldani. DockerFinder: Multi-attribute search of Docker images. 5th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E 2017). [Accepted]
2016 • F. Bonchi, A. Brogi, A. Canciani, J. Soldani. Behaviour-aware matching of cloud applications. In Proceedings of the 10th IEEE International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Software Engineering (TASE), pages 117-124, 2016. • Brogi, A. Canciani, J. Soldani. Fault-aware application management protocols.
In: M. Aiello, E.B. Johnsen, S. Dustdar, I. Georgievski (eds.), Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing, 5th IFIP WG 2.14 European Conference, ESOCC 2016, Vienna, Austria, September 5-7, 2016, Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 9846, pages 219-234, 2016.
[“Best Paper Award” at ESOCC 2016.]
• Brogi, M. Danelutto, D. De Sensi, A. Ibrahim, J. Soldani, M. Torquati. Analysing Multiple QoS Attributes in Parallel Design Patterns-based Applications. HLPP 2016 (informal proceedings).
• Brogi, J. Carrasco, F. D'Andria, E. Di Nitto, M. Guerriero, D. Peréz, E. Pimentel, J. Soldani. SeaClouds: An Open Reference Architecture for Multi-cloud Governance. In B.Tekinerdogan, U. Zdun, and A. Babar (eds.), Software Architecture, 10th European Conference, ECSA 2016, Copenhagen, Denmark, November 28 -- December 2, 2016, Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 9839, pages 334-338, 2016
2015 • Brogi, A. Canciani, J. Soldani, P. Wang. Modelling the behaviour of
management operations in cloud-based applications. In: Moldt, D. (ed.) Petri Nets and Software Engineering. International Workshop, PNSE'15, Brussels, Belgium, June 22-23, 2015. Proceedings. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, volume 1372, pages 191--205. CEUR-WS.org.
• Brogi, A. Canciani, J. Soldani, P. Wang. Modelling and Analysing Cloud
Application Management. In S. Dustdar, F. Leymann, and M. Villari eds. Service Oriented and Cloud Computing, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 9306, pages 19-33, Springer, 2015.
• J. Soldani. Towards a full-edged support for designing cloud applications. In Proceedings of the PhD Symposium at the 4th European Conference on Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing, Tech. Report, Martin Luther
Other activities
I also assisted in teaching the Software Service Engineering course (of the Master Degree in Computer Science and Networking) for the academic years 2013/2014, 2014/2015, 2015/2016, and 2016/2017. More precisely, I performed what follows:
• Assisting during LAB lectures.
• Offering support to discuss LAB exercises and final project assignment.
University, Halle-Wittenberg, 2015.
2014 • S. Zenzaro, V. Gervasi, J. Soldani. WebASM: An Abstract State Machine Execution Environment for the Web. In Y.A. Ameur and K.D. Schewe eds, ABZ 2014, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 8477, pages 216-221, Springer, 2014
• Brogi, J. Soldani, and P. Wang. TOSCA in a nutshell: Promises and perspectives. In M. Villari, W. Zimmermann, and K.K. Lau eds, Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 8745, pages 171-186, Springer, 2014.
• Brogi, J. Carrasco., J. Cubo, F. D'Andria, A. Ibrahim, E. Pimentel, J. Soldani. EU Project SeaClouds: Adaptive Management of Service-Based Applications Across Multiple Clouds. In Proceedings of 4th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER '14), pages 758-763, 2014. • Brogi, J. Soldani. Reusing cloud-based services with TOSCA. In 44. Jahrestagung
der Gesellschaft für Informatik, INFORMATIK 2014. LNI 232, GI 2014, ISBN 978-3-88579-626-8, 2014.
• Brogi, J. Carrasco., J. Cubo, F. D'Andria, A. Ibrahim, E. Pimentel, J. Soldani. SeaClouds: Seamless adaptive multi-cloud management of service-based applications. In Proceedings of the XVII Ibero-American Conference on Software Engineering (CibSE '14), 2014.
2013 • Brogi, and J. Soldani. Matching cloud services with TOSCA. In C. Canal and M. Villari eds, Advances in Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing,
Communication in Computer and Information Science, volume 393, pages 218-232, Springer, 2013.
Books
2013 • J. Soldani. Matching cloud services with TOSCA (and generating adapters if needed). ISBN: 9783639816822. Edizioni Accademiche Italiane, 2013. •
Conclusions
In this report, I illustrated the didactic and research activities we performed during the three years of Ph.D. programme. More precisely, we shown that:
• I attended (and passed) 5 Ph.D. courses. • I attended 4 series of seminars.
• I spent 3 months abroad (as visiting researcher at the Institut für Architektur von Anwendungssystemen – IAAS – of the University of Stuttgart)
• I spent 15 days abroad (as visiting researcher at the School of Computing, Dublin City University) • I published more than 10 conference papers and more than 5 journal papers.
I also provided information about other activities performed in this period, namely the assisted teaching of the Software Service Engineering course.
