Method for Continuous Integration and Deployment Using a Pipeline Generator for Agile Software Projects

Lately, the software development industry is going through a slow but real transformation. Software is increasingly a part of everything, and, software developers, are trying to cope with this exploding demand through more automation. The pipelining technique of continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) has developed considerably due to the overwhelming demand for the deployment and deliverability of new features and applications. As a result, DevOps approaches and Agile principles have been developed, in which developers collaborate closely with infrastructure engineers to guarantee that their applications are deployed quickly and reliably. Thanks to pipeline approach thinking, the efficiency of projects has greatly improved. Agile practices represent the introduction to the system of new features in each sprint delivery. Those practices may contain well-developed features or can contain bugs or failures which impact the delivery. The pipeline approach, depicted in this paper, overcomes the problems of delivery, improving the delivery timeline, the test load steps, and the benchmarking tasks. It decreases system interruption by integrating multiple test steps and adds stability and deliverability to the entire process. It provides standardization which means having an established, time-tested process to use, and can also decrease ambiguity and guesswork, guarantee quality and boost productivity. This tool is developed with an interpreted language, namely Bash, which offers an easier method to integrate it into any platform. Based on the experimental results, we demonstrate the value that this solution currently creates. This solution provides an effective and efficient way to generate, manage, customize, and automate Agile-based CI and CD projects through automated pipelines. The suggested system acts as a starting point for standard CI/CD processes, caches Docker layers for subsequent usage, and implements highly available deliverables in a Kubernetes cluster using Helm. Changing the principles of this solution and expanding it into multiple platforms (windows) will be addressed in a future discussion.

Better automation of beamline control at HEPS

At the High Energy Photon Source (HEPS; Beijing, People's Republic of China), where up to 90 beamlines can be provided in the future, minimization of workload for individual beamlines and maximization of knowledge about one beamline that can be applied to other beamlines is essential to minimize the total complexity in beamline control. Presented in this paper are our efforts to achieve these goals by composing relatively simple utilities and mechanisms to automate tasks, while always remembering to keep our automation solutions simple and clear. After an introduction to our choice of basic software in EPICS-based beamline control, the issues encountered in introducing package management to EPICS modules, as well as solutions to them, are presented; the design and implementation of the packaging system is concisely discussed. After a presentation of our efforts to reduce the need for self-built multi-device EPICS `input/output controller' (IOC) applications by providing reusable modular IOC executables, implementation of easily maintainable multi-IOC setups through the separation and minimization of each user's IOC configurations is given. The ongoing project of comprehensive beamline services at HEPS to further simplify configuration management on multiple scales, ranging from individual beamline devices to all beamlines at HEPS, is introduced.

Design and Implementation of Cloud-Centric Configuration Repository for DIY IoT Applications

The Do-It-Yourself (DIY) vision for the design of a smart and customizable IoT application demands the involvement of the general public in its development process. The general public lacks the technical knowledge for programming state-of-the-art prototyping and development kits. The latest IoT kits, for example, Raspberry Pi, are revolutionizing the DIY paradigm for IoT, and more than ever, a DIY intuitive programming interface is required to enable the masses to interact with and customize the behavior of remote IoT devices on the Internet. However, in most cases, these DIY toolkits store the resultant configuration data in local storage and, thus, cannot be accessed remotely. This paper presents the novel implementation of such a system, which not only enables the general public to customize the behavior of remote IoT devices through a visual interface, but also makes the configuration available everywhere and anytime by leveraging the power of cloud-based platforms. The interface enables the visualization of the resources exposed by remote embedded resources in the form of graphical virtual objects (VOs). These VOs are used to create the service design through simple operations like drag-and-drop and the setting of properties. The configuration created as a result is maintained as an XML document, which is ingested by the cloud platform, thus making it available to be used anywhere. We use the HTTP approach for the communication between the cloud and IoT toolbox and the cloud and real devices, but for communication between the toolbox and actual resources, CoAP is used. Finally, a smart home case study has been implemented and presented in order to assess the effectiveness of the proposed work.

An efficient management system for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks have garnered considerable attention recently. Networks typically have many sensor nodes, and are used in commercial, medical, scientific, and military applications for sensing and monitoring the physical world. Many researchers have attempted to improve wireless sensor network management efficiency. A Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)-based sensor network management system was developed that is a convenient and effective way for managers to monitor and control sensor network operations. This paper proposes a novel WSNManagement system that can show the connections stated of relationships among sensor nodes and can be used for monitoring, collecting, and analyzing information obtained by wireless sensor networks. The proposed network management system uses collected information for system configuration. The function of performance analysis facilitates convenient management of sensors. Experimental results show that the proposed method enhances the alive rate of an overall sensor node system, reduces the packet lost rate by roughly 5%, and reduces delay time by roughly 0.2 seconds. Performance analysis demonstrates that the proposed system is effective for wireless sensor network management.