The IoT fragmentation, issues and opportunities in software engineering research

The IoT creates opportunities for many, novel applications. However, it also create issues due to the fragmentation of the hardware and software running (on) the IoT. This fragmentation makes it difficult to integrate the diverse technologies of the various objects found in IoT systems. Diverse technologies induce interoperability issues while designing and developing various services and applications, hence, limiting the possibility of reusing the data, more specifically, the software (including frameworks, firmware, APIs, user interfaces) as well as of facing issues, like security threats, when developing new applications. Various objects have different capabilities in terms of memory, processing power, and connectivity. In this presentation, we highlight issues due to the lack of interoperability among technologies developed for IoT systems. We also provide guidelines for researchers and practitioners developing IoT systems for new applications. Within the Evidence-based Software Engineering paradigm, we report a SLR of both IoT interoperability issues and the state-of-practice of IoT technologies in the industry, highlighting the integration challenges related to the IoT.  We also introduce a possible research avenue to solve these issues through the miniaturization of software systems running (on) the IoT systems. Software miniaturization promises that developers could « write once and run everywhere » their software, shielding them from the IoT fragmentation.

√ Bio :

Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc is full professor at the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering of Concordia University since 2017, where he leads the Ptidej team on evaluating and enhancing the quality of the software systems, focusing on the Internet of Things and researching new theories, methods, and tools to understand, evaluate, and improve the development, release, testing, and security of such systems. Prior, he was faculty member at Polytechnique Montréal and Université de Montréal, where he started as assistant professor in 2003. In 2014, he was awarded the NSERC Research Chair Tier II on Patterns in Mixed-language Systems. In 2013-2014, he visited KAIST, Yonsei U., and Seoul National University, in Korea, as well as the National Institute of Informatics, in Japan, during his sabbatical year. In 2010, he became IEEE Senior Member. In 2009, he obtained the NSERC Research Chair Tier II on Software Patterns and Patterns of Software. In 2003, he received a Ph.D. in Software Engineering from University of Nantes, France, under Professor Pierre Cointe’s supervision. His Ph.D. thesis was funded by Object Technology International, Inc. (now IBM Ottawa Labs.), where he worked in 1999 and 2000. In 1998, he graduated as engineer from École des Mines of Nantes. His research interests are program understanding and program quality, in particular through the use and the identification of recurring patterns. He was the first to use explanation-based constraint programming in the context of software engineering to identify occurrences of patterns. He is interested also in empirical software engineering; he uses eye-trackers to understand and to develop theories about program comprehension. He has published papers in international conferences and journals, including IEEE TSE, Springer EMSE, ACM/IEEE ICSE, IEEE ICSME, and IEEE SANER. He was the program co-chair and general chair of several events, including IEEE SANER’15, APSEC’14, and IEEE ICSM’13.

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