Presentation at 9th Workshop on Distributed Software Development, Software Ecosystems and Systems-of-Systems - WDES 2015 Website: http://wdes2015.icmc.usp.br/Index_en Proceedings (per paper): http://www.lbd.dcc.ufmg.br/bdbcomp/servlet/Evento?id=825 Proceedings (volume): http://cbsoft.org/articles/0000/0530/WDES.pdf

1. A Systematic Mapping on the
Relations between Systems-of-
Systems and Software Ecosystems
Helvio Jeronimo Junior1
Cláudia Werner1
{jeronimohjr, werner}@cos.ufrj.br

2. 2
Content
• Motivation
• Objectives
• Research Method
– Research Questions (RQs)
– Search Procedures
– Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
– Studies Selection Process
• Results
• Conclusions

3. 3
Motivation
• The current scenario of software development:
– the development of software-intensive and large-scale
system
– software products and services with different technologies
to one or more software platforms
• This scenario has attracted the interest of two research
topics: Systems-of-Systems (SoS) (Maier, 1998) and
Software Ecosystems (SECO) (Messerschimitt & Szypersky,
2003)
• However, SoS and SECO are two research topics that seem
to have been still separately investigated, although they
can be treated in a complementary way (Santos et al, 2014)

4. 4
Objectives
• Main Objectives:
to identify the relations between these topics
(SoS and SECO) and support cooperative and
collaborative research
complementing the research performed by
Santos et al (2014)

5. 5
Research Method
• Research Questions (RQ):
– (RQ1) What are the main similar characteristics and/or
differences between SoS and SECO?
– (RQ2) What are the main areas studied from the
perspective of SoS and SECO?
– (RQ3) How can SECO platforms benefit from SoS mindset?
– (RQ4) How can SoS benefit from business and social
networks?
– (RQ5) What are the main challenges and limitations for
SoS from the perspective of SECO?

6. 6
• Search Procedures
– Electronic search using the Scopus search engine
– Manual search on 3 repositories
• International Workshop on Software Ecosystems
(IWSECO)
• ACM Workshop on Software Engineering for Systems-
of-Systems
• Workshop on Distributed Software Development,
Software Ecosystems and Systems-of-Systems
Research Method

7. 7
TITLE-ABS-KEY ((( "software ecosystem*" OR "software supply
network" OR "software vendor*" OR "software supply industry" OR
"industry platform*" OR "ecosystems" ) AND ( "system-of-systems" OR
"system of systems" OR "systems-of-systems" OR systems of systems) )
AND ( "features" OR "feature" OR "characteristic" OR "characteristics"
OR "difference" OR "differences" OR "similarity" OR "similarities" OR
"relationship" OR "implication" OR "consequence" OR "significance"
OR "benefits" OR "impacts" OR "business" OR "business networks"
OR "social" OR "social networks" OR "area" OR "subject area" OR
"subject field" OR "field"))
• Search Procedures
– The search string used in search engine
Research Method

8. 8
(1) only studies written in
English
(2) dealing and referencing any
of the subjects related to SECO
and SoS in their title, abstract or
keywords
(3) technical reports, master
and doctorate theses
(1) repeated studies found in
different sources
(2)duplicate studies reporting
similar results
(3) description of proceedings
(4) inaccessible studies
Inclusion Criteria Exclusion Criteria
Research Method

9. 9
• Studies Selection Process
Result of Search
Inclusion/exclusion
criteria applied
Papers selected
Automatic Search 71 15 8
Manual Search 7 3 3
Total 78 18 11
Table1. The summarization of the selection process to identify
relevant papers
Research Method

10. 10
Results
• (RQ1) What are the main similar characteristics and
differences between SoS and SECO?
the importance given to interaction and collaboration among the different
internal or external actors of the SECOs and SoS
multiple products over one or more technologial platform
prioritization of business goals and requirements, innovation, and
possible competitiveness (among players)
platforms, software and artifacts developed by internal and external
actors
Architectural stability
decentralized/distributed systems
9
6
9
2
2
1
Number
of
studies

11. 11
Results
• (RQ1) What are the main similar characteristics and
differences between SoS and SECO?
SECOs can be seen as an application domain for SoS
SoS is a type of SECO
Number
of
studies
1
1

12. 12
Results
• (RQ2) What are the main areas studied from the
perspective of SoS and SECO?
Technical aspects linked to
design of architecture
Some
Quality
Attributes
7
7
Reuse of software and
components
3
Evolution, assessment and
sustainability (platforms/software)
4
Interation and relationship
7

13. 13
Results
• (RQ3) How can SECO platforms benefit from SoS
mindset?
By adopting methods, mechanisms and techniques to
support the structuring of architecture platforms and
their software products
By exploring in a more detailed way concepts and
characteristics of SoS, such as those virtual and
collaborative categories
1
3
Number
of
studies

14. 14
Results
• (RQ4) How can SoS benefit from business and social
networks?
By enabling the creation of a community of internal actors
and from third parties that cooperate and share technical
knowledge
By providing a potential to structure collaborative
business models and processes in order to consider the
players’ perspectives of value
By providing opportunities to minimize and amortize the
costs, as well as technical and business risks
Number
of
studies
7
5
4

15. 15
Results
• (RQ5) What are the main challenges and limitations
for SoS from the perspective of SECO?
Reuse of software and
components
3
Software Licenses
2
Opening of platforms
and systems
4
Organizational strategies and
business models with partners
7

16. 16
Conclusions
• The findings reinforce and increase the scope of the
discussions presented by Santos et al. (2014a)
• The relationships between SoS and SECO are associated
to specific issues of the three dimensions (social,
technical and business) of a SECO
– regarding platforms, software products and their
architectures (challenges)
• However, SoS evolutionary development should also
take into account the business and social issues, and not
only the environment’s technical issues

17. 17
Conclusions
• Regarding the treats to validity of this study, the main
ones can be associated to:
– an eventual omission of studies and bias in the extraction
of data
– the possible existence of relevant papers that do not
mention the keywords that were chosen
– the number of electronic used databases, since only the
Scopus search engine was used in this systematic mapping
study

18. 18
The selected studies
ID Reference
S1 Da Silva Amorim, S. et al. (2014) “When Ecosystems Collide: Making Systems of Systems Work.” In:
Proceedings of the 2014 European Conference on Software Architecture Workshops. ACM, p. 29.
S2 Axelsson, J. et al. (2014) “Characteristics of software ecosystems for Federated Embedded Systems: A
case study”. Information and Software Technology, v. 56.11, pp.1457-1475.
S3 Lutz, M. et al. (2014) "Service Robot Control Architectures for Flexible and Robust Real-World Task
Execution: Best Practices and Patterns." In: Workshop Roboter-Kontrollarchitekturen.
S4 Papatheocharous, E. et al. (2013) “Issues and challenges in ecosystems for federated embedded systems.”
In: Proc. of the First International Workshop on Software Engineering for Systems-of-Systems (SESoS).
ACM, pp. 21-24.
S5 Delicato, F. C. et al. (2013) “Towards an IoT ecosystem” In: Proc. of the First International SESoS. ACM,
pp. 25-28.
S6 Mattmann, C. et al. (2012) “Developing an open source strategy for NASA earth science data systems.”
In: IEEE 13th International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration, pp. 687-693.
S7 Chen, H. M., Kazman, R. (2012) “Architecting ultra-large-scale green information systems." In: Green and
Sustainable Software (GREENS), 2012 First International Workshop on. IEEE, pp. 69-75.
S8 Hawryszkiewycz, I. T. (2011) “Open Modeling For Designing Community Ecosystems." In:
https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/research/handle/10453/19216. Last accessed on: Jun, 2015.
S9 Kazman, R. et al. (2012) “Scaling up software architecture analysis". Journal of Systems and Software,
85.7, pp. 1511-1519.
S10 Santos, R. et al. (2014) "On the Relations between Systems-of-Systems and Software Ecosystems." In:
WDES 2014, pp. 58-62.
S11 Lytra, I. et al. (2015) "Reusable Architectural Decision Models for Quality-driven Decision Support: A
Case Study from a Smart Cities Software Ecosystem. In: 3th International SESoS.

19. 19
A Systematic Mapping on the
Relations between Systems-of-
Systems and Software Ecosystems
Helvio Jeronimo Junior1
Cláudia Werner1
{jeronimohjr, werner}@cos.ufrj.br
Thank you!
Acknowledgment: