How to do high quality research on middleware?

Frank Eliassenprofessor

University of Oslo and Simula Research Laboratory

Oslo, Norway

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• Middleware systems promises to simplify development of a class of applications

• What is ‘high quality’?– impact such as industrial take-up?

– citations?

– high quality publication channels?

– developed software used by others?

• All relevant in the area of middleware

How do you define ’high quality’ in the area of middleware?

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• Theory, abstraction, design

– Denning et al, ‘Computing as a discipline’

• Middleware research is mostly in design?

– requirements

– specification

– system design and implementation

– system testing

• Algorithms design vs system development?

– are different wrt validation

What are different types of research projects in middleware?

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• If the hypothesis is that my system simplifies development, how to validate?

• Algorithms are simpler wrt validation

• Being first introducing a new middlewrae service ior feature also helps: suffice showing it works (feasibility)

Validation of different types of research in middleware?

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• Is there a recipe?

• What is ‘interesting’? Same as useful?

• It is a process– From initial idea or interests: Process of repeatedly

study of SotA and comparison to own idea, idea refinement and limitation of scope. Criteria: originalty, importance, significance (i.e., research opportunity)

• Own experience? – Exploit the team ...

How to identify an interesting topic?

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• Use scenarios for initial ideas

– Checking the usefulness of the idea

– Checking how existing approaches would handle the case

How to evaluate ideas?

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• A well motivated problem ...

• A precise goal (and subgoals) for the work

• Hypotheses about the predicted solution ... (basis for validation)

• Discussion of research method (validation)

• State-of-the-art study that concludes in relation to goal of work

• Requirements, design, analysis, experiments (depending on research paradigm applied)

• Analysis and discussion of results, including critical remarks, results in a wider scope, ...

• Conclusions, outlook

What are the essential components of a good thesis on middleware?

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• Different traditions

– Paper collection

– Monograph

• To some extent structure follows from research paradigm (theory, abstraction, design)

How to structure a thesis?

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1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Problem area

1.2 Problem statement

1.3 Research method

1.3.1 Alternative approaches

1.3.2 Method for this thesis

1.4 Overview solutions to the problem

1.6 Structure of the thesis

2 SURVEY STATE-OF-THE-ART

2.1 Background QoS characteristics ...

2.2 QoS specific elements

2.3 Comparison of ... platforms

2.4 Conclusions

Example monograph (design paradigm)

3 QOS ARCHITECTURE FOR MOBILE MIDDLEWARE

4 MODELS AND SPECIFICATIONS FOR QOS-AWARENESS

5 QOS-AWARE SERVICE PLANNING

6 FUNCTIONAL VALIDATION

7 PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENTS

8 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

8.1 Concluding discussion

8.1.1 QoS architecture

8.1.2 Models and specifications

8.1.3 Service planning mechanisms

8.2 Revisiting the problem statement

8.3 Research method and validity of the results

8.4 Scientific contributions

8.5 Future work

8.6 Concluding remarks

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1 Introduction

1.1 Thesis Context .

1.2 Thesis Motivation .

1.3 Research Topics and Goals

1.4 Research Method

1.5 Unaddressed Issues

1.6 Results and Implications

1.7 Thesis Organization

Example ’paper collection’ 5 Papers and Contributions

5.1 Overview of Papers

Paper I:

....

Paper VIII:

6 Conclusion and FurtherWork

6.1 Research Topics and Goals

6.2 Major Contributions

6.3 Critical Remarks

6.4 Further Work

II Research Papers

Paper I:

...

Paper VIII:

2 Many-to-Many Communication

2.1 Background .

2.2 - 2.6 Groups of approaches

2.7 Discussion

3 Multi-Receiver Video Streaming

3.1 Background

3-1 – 3.5 Groups of approaches

3.6 Discussion

4 Video Processing

4.1 Background

4.2 -4.7 Groups of approaches

4.8 Discussion

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Generic thesis structure • 1 Introduction

• 1.1 Background and motivation .

• 1.2 Goals and hypotheses .

• 1.3 Research Method

• 1.5 Limitations

• 1.6 Results and Implications

• 1.7 Thesis Organization

2 State of the art survey

2.1 Scope of survey .

2.2 Survey in relation to goal of thesis

2.3 Discussion and conclusions on related work (in particular limitations and opptunities for rearch)

3-N “Middle part” (depends on research paradigm used)

N Conclusion and Further Work

6.1 Research Topics and Goals

6.2 Major Contributions

6.3 Critical Remarks

6.4 Further Work

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• In the thesis?

• In a paper?

• Focus on the contribution

– Limitation of SotA and why important to improve

– What did you show in your work (how did you validate)

How to present your work in such a way that the contribution is more apparent?

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• Too ambitious in the beginning? Lack of focus ...

• Not planning thesis work with well-defined step stones?

• All the formal things need to be learned ...

Common mistakes?