AFRYCA 3.0 - Cameroon

AFRYCA (acronym of A FRamework for the analYsis of Consensus Approaches) is a research-oriented software framework, for the study of different Consensus Models proposed by a variety of authors in specialized literature. The main goal of consensus models is to provide support and guidelines for conducting Consensus Reaching Processes (CRPs), in the resolution of Group Decision Making (GDM) problems. The software provides some existing consensus models to allow the user to solve GDM problems by simulating a CRP. Moreover, its flexible and extendable architecture facilitates the integration of new consensus models developed a posteriori.

AFRYCA has been developed as an Eclipse Rich Client Platform (Eclipse RCP) application, a platform to build and deploy component-based rich client applications. Specifically, AFRYCA has been developed based on the E4 branch, the next generation platform for building eclipse-based tools and rich client desktop applications. All of this results in multiple benefits for the developer and the end-user:

  • Component-based architecture easy to extend and adapt.
  • Cross-platform, with native user interfaces in each OS.
  • Execution in dependency injection container.
  • Preferences support.
  • Declarative styling using CSS files.

Release of AFRYCA 4.0 represents a turning point in its evolution with the integration of ASE and BIRT, which make AFRYCA a powerful tool for the analysis of CRPs for the end-user.

ASE (acronym of AFRYCA Scripting Environment) is a scripting environment based on the JSR specification 223: Scripting for the JavaTM Platform. ASE allows the interaction with the simulations results, the framework services and the application selections, faciliting the construction of code snippets that operate on them. The native language of the environment is Nashorn JavaScript implementation. In it, ASE adds environments to develop in Groovy, Scala, Ruby, Python and Lua. Additionally, if the statistical environment R is installed on the system, ASE facilitates its integration to be used as an additional programming environment.

BIRT (acronym of Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) is a platform used to create data visualizations and reports that can be embedded into Eclipse RCP applications. With the combination of ASE and BIRT it is possible to perform several simulations, analyze their results using a set of user-defined functions and visualize the results using the most appropriate graphical representation.