By means of a review of the available literature the authors draw several conclusions about the status quo of XML security. Furthermore, the current state and focuses of research as well as the existing challenges are derived. Trends to different application areas – e.g. use of XML security for mobile computing – are also outlined. Based on this information the analyzed results are discussed and a future outlook is predicted.

Software products, especially large applications, need to continuously evolve, in order to adapt to the changing environment and updated requirements. With both the producer and the customer unwilling to replace the existing application with a completely new one, adoption of design constructs and techniques which facilitate the application extension is a major design issue. In the current work we investigate the behavior of an object-oriented software application at a specific extension scenario, following three implementation alternatives with regards to a certain design problem relevant to the extension. The first alternative follows a simplistic solution, the second makes use of a design pattern and the third applies Aspect-Oriented Programming techniques to implement the same pattern. An assessment of the three alternatives is attempted, both on a qualitative and a quantitative level, by identifying the additional design implications needed to perform the extension and evaluating the effect of the extension on several quality attributes of the application.

The increasing trend toward complex software systems has highlighted the need to incorporate quality requirements earlier in the development cycle. We propose a new methodology for monitoring quality in the earliest phases of real-time reactive system (RTRS) development. The targeted quality characteristics are functional complexity, performance, reliability, architectural complexity, maintainability, and test coverage. All these characteristics should be continuously monitored throughout the RTRS development cycle, to provide decision support and detect the first signs of low or decreasing quality as the system design evolves. The ultimate goal of this methodology is to assist developers in dealing with complex user requirements and ensure that the formal development process yields a high-quality application. Each aspect of quality monitoring is formalized mathematically and illustrated using a train–gate–controller case study.

QoS-aware dynamic binding of composite services provides the capability of binding each service invocation in a composition to a service chosen among a set of functionally equivalent ones to achieve a QoS goal, for example minimizing the response time while limiting the price under a maximum value.

This paper proposes a QoS-aware binding approach based on Genetic Algorithms. The approach includes a feature for early run-time re-binding whenever the actual QoS deviates from initial estimates, or when a service is not available. The approach has been implemented in a framework and empirically assessed through two different service compositions.

Workflow management technology helps modulizing and controlling complex business processes within an enterprise. Generally speaking, a workflow management system(WfMS) is composed of two primary components, a design environment and a run-time system. Structural, timing and resource verifications of a workflow specification are required to assure the correctness of the specified system. In this paper, an incremental methodology is constructed to analyze resource consistency and temporal constraintsafter each edit unit defined on a workflow specification. The methodology introduces several algorithms for general and temporal analyses. The output returned right away can improve the judgment and thus the speed and quality on designing.