Former Research Areas (links lead to german version)

Cloud Application Portability

The project focused on portability and lifecycle considerations for PaaS (Platform as a Service).

Portability and Compatibility of service-oriented Software

The work builds on software quality standards of ISO/IEC that are currently under development. Portability and compatibility are interrelated with a variety of additional quality properties, such as installability, replaceability, adaptability, interoperability, and co-existence.

Measuring and Improving the Quality of BPMN Process Models

In our research project we elaborate on proposals for measuring and improving the quality of human-centric process models on different layers of abstraction. In order to improve the interoperability between modeling tools we perform an extensive analysis of the standard document to extract all rules and constraints for correct BPMN process models.

Comparative Framework for Process Runtimes

Within this research project, a comparative framework for process engines in general is developed. It focuses on the comparison of standard conformance, performance, error detection as well as automation.

Design Methods, Languages and Tools for complex, distributed and mobile Systems

The long-term goal of this project is the development, implementation and evaluation of methods helpful for the development of robust and easy-to-use software for complex systems in general. We put a focus on the specific problems typical for distributed systems here.

Robust and adaptive Service-oriented Architectures

Development of design methods, languages and middleware to ease the development of SOA-based B2B applications. We are especially interested in provable correct systems that allow for early design-evaluation due to rigorous development methods and tools. Additionally, we work on approaches to autonomic compoenents and container-support for such components in order to ensure robustness also at runtime.

Context-Models and Context-Support for small mobile devices

Investigation of methods and techniques for providing, representing and exchanging context information in networks of small mobile devices like, e.g. PDAs or smart phones. The focus is on the development of a truly distributed context model taking care of information reliability as well as privacy issues.

Peer-to-Peer Systems

Development of algorithms, techniques and middleware suitable for building applications based on únstructured as well as structured P2P systems. A specific focus is put on privacy as well as anonymity issues at the moment.

Agent and Multi-Agent Technology

Development of new approaches to use agents, especially Multi-Agent-Systems (MAS) and negotation techniques, for designing, organizing and optimizing complex distributed systems, esp. service-based architectures.

Security and Anti-Pattern

The project focusses on the investigation of Java-based middleware for architectural security flaws and to develop means to find and overcome such problems.