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Software Cost Estimation with resounding reliability,productivity and development effort is a challenging and onerous task. This has incited the software community to give much needed thrust and delve into extensive research in software effort estimation for evolving sophisticated methods. Estimation by analogy is one of the expedient techniques in software effort estimation field. However, the methodology utilized for the estimation of software effort by analogy is not able to handle the categorical data in an explicit and precise manner. A new approach has been developed in this paper to estimate software effort for projects represented by categorical or numerical data using reasoning by analogy and fuzzy approach. The existing historical data sets, analyzed with fuzzy logic, produce accurate results in comparison to the data set analyzed with the earlier methodologies.
A Classical Fuzzy Approach for Software Effort Estimation on Machine Learning Technique
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The nature of software re-engineering is to improve or transform existing software so it can be understood, controlled and reused as new software. Needs, the necessity of re-engineering software has greatly increased. The system software has become obsolete no longer used in architecture, platform they're running, stable and consistent they support the development and support needs change. Software re-engineering is vital to restore and reuse the things inherent in the existing software, put the cost of software maintenance to the lowest in the control and establish a basis for the development of software in the future.
The Study and Approach of Software Re-Engineering
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IT operates in dynamic environments with the need always to change and adapt. There is a need to improve performance. Many gaps were found when we conduct the IT audit and we tried to seek to close gaps in capabilities. One way to the close these gaps is the adoption of good practices in wide industry use. There are several sources for good practices including public frameworks and standards such as ITIL, COBIT, CMMI, eSCM-SP, PRINCE2, ISO 9000, ISO/IEC 20000 and ISO/IEC 27001, etc. The paper propose ITIL frameworks to ITD Company for improving capabilities in service management.
ITIL frameworks to ITD Company for improving capabilities in service management
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Embedded systems interaction with environment inherently complicates understanding of requirements and their correct implementation. However, product uncertainty is highest during early stages of development. Design verification is an essential step in the development of any system, especially for Embedded System. This paper introduces a novel adaptive design methodology, which incorporates step-wise prototyping and verification. With each adaptive step product-realization level is enhanced while decreasing the level of product uncertainty, thereby reducing the overall costs. The back-bone of this frame-work is the development of Domain Specific Operational (DOP) Model and the associated Verification Instrumentation for Test and Evaluation, developed based on the DOP model. Together they generate functionally valid test-sequence for carrying out prototype evaluation. With the help of a case study 'Multimode Detection Subsystem' the application of this method is sketched. The design methodologies can be compared by defining and computing a generic performance criterion like Average design-cycle Risk. For the case study, by computing Average design-cycle Risk, it is shown that the adaptive method reduces the product development risk for a small increase in the total design cycle time.
An Adaptive Design Methodology for Reduction of Product Development Risk
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We describe how to use refactoring tools to transform a Java program conforming to the Composite design pattern into a program conforming to the Visitor design pattern with the same external behavior. We also describe the inverse transformation. We use the refactoring tool provided by IntelliJ IDEA.
Refactoring Composite to Visitor and Inverse Transformation in Java
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Classical approaches like process algebras or labelled transition systems deal with static composition to model non-trivial concurrent or distributed systems; this is not sufficient for systems with dynamic architecture and with variable number of components. We introduce a method to guide the modelling and the dynamic composition of processes to build large distributed systems with dynamic adhoc architecture. The modelling and the composition are based on an event-based approach that favour the decoupling of the system components. The composition uses the sharing of abstract communication channels. The method is appropriate to deal with evolving processes (with mobility, mutation). The event-B method is used for practical support. A fauna and its evolution are considered as a working system; this system presents some specificities, its behaviour is not foreseeable, it has an adhoc (not statically fixed) architecture.
Dynamic Composition of Evolving Process Types
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Most developers use default properties of ASP.NET server controls when developing web applications. ASP.NET web applications typically employ server controls to provide dynamic web pages, and data-bound server controls to display and maintain database data. Though the default properties allow for fast creation of workable applications, creating a high-performance, multi-user, and scalable web application requires careful configuring of server controls and their enhancement using custom-made code. In providing commonly required functionality in data-driven ASP.NET web applications such as paging, sorting and filtering, our empirical study evaluated the impact of various technical approaches: automatic data binding in web server controls; data paging and sorting on web server; paging and sorting on database server; indexed and non-indexed database columns; clustered vs. non-clustered indices. The study observed significant performance differences between various technical approaches.
Empirical study of performance of data binding in ASP.NET web applications
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In the literature, the definition of product in a Software Product Line (SPL) is based upon the notion of consistency of the constraints, imposed by variability and traceability relations on the elements of the SPL. In this paper, we contend that consistency does not model the natural semantics of the implementability relation between problem and solution spaces correctly. Therefore, we define when a feature can be {\em derived} from a set of components . Using this, we define a product of the SPL by a <specification, architecture> pair, where all the features in the specification are derived from the components in the architecture. This notion of derivability is formulated in a simple yet expressive, abstract model of a productline with traceability relation. We then define a set of SPL analysis problems and show that these problems can be encoded as Quantified Boolean Formulas. Then, QSAT solvers like QUBE can be used to solve the analysis problems. We illustrate the methodology on a small fragment of a realistic productline.
Formalizing Traceability and Derivability in Software Product Lines
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The rapid development of IT&T technology had big impact on the traditional telecommunications market, transforming it from monopolistic market to highly competitive high-tech market where new services are required to be created frequently. This paper aims to describe a design approach that puts order management process (as part of enterprise application integration) in function of rapid service creation. In the text we will present a framework for collaborative order handling supporting convergent services. The design splits the order handling processes in convergent environments in three business process groups: order capture, order management and order fulfillment. The paper establishes abstract framework for order handling and provides design guidelines for transaction handling implementation based on the checkpoint and inverse command strategy. The proposed design approach is based in a convergent telecommunication environment. Same principles are applicable in solving problems of collaboration in function of order processing in any given heterogeneous environment.
Order Handling in Convergent Environments
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Software development is still based on manufactory production, and most of the programming code is still hand-crafted. Software development is very far away from the ultimate goal of industrialization in software production, something which has been achieved long time ago in the other industries. The lack of software industrialization creates an inability to cope with fast and frequent changes in user requirements, and causes cost and time inefficiencies during their implementation. Analogous to what other industries had done long time ago, industrialization of software development has been proposed using the concept of software factories. We have accepted this vision about software factories, and developed our own software factory which produces three-layered ASP.NET web applications. In this paper we report about our experience with using this approach in the process of software development, and present comparative results on performances and deliverables in both traditional development and development using software factories.
Rapid Application Development Using Software Factories
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A lot of works has been especially interested to the functional aspect of Web services. Nevertheless, it is necessary to describe their non-functional properties such as the security characteristics and the quality of service. The WS-Policy standard was recommended in 2007 to describe Web services policies including the non-functional properties. However, it doesn't provide any information of their meaning necessary for automatic processes. In this paper, we propose a Model Driven Architecture approach founded on W3C standards to generate WSDL language based files including semantic policies. We use a package of WSDL and WS-Policy profiles and transformations rules to generate Web services interfaces files including policies. We extend a XML schema profile according to SAWSDL standard to define semantic non-functional properties domains. This work contributes to minimize the development cost of Web services including semantic policies. Moreover, the generated services can be automatically processed in discovery, selection and negotiation tasks.
A MDA approach for defining WS-Policy semantic non-functional properties
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Object oriented software with low cohesive classes can increase maintenance cost. Low cohesive classes are likely to be introduced into the software during initial design due to deviation from design principles and during evolution due to software deterioration. Low cohesive class performs operations that should be done by two or more classes. The low cohesive classes need to be identified and refactored using extract class refactoring to improve the cohesion. In this regard, two aspects are involved; the first one is to identify the low cohesive classes and the second one is to identify the clusters of concepts in the low cohesive classes for extract class refactoring. In this paper, we propose metrics supplemented agglomerative clustering technique for covering the above two aspects. The proposed metrics are validated using Weyuker's properties. The approach is applied successfully on two examples and on a case study.
Identifying Clusters of Concepts in a Low Cohesive Class for Extract Class Refactoring Using Metrics Supplemented Agglomerative Clustering Technique
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This paper aims to discuss the pilot study and analysis of the current development and measurement practices in Jordanian small software firms. It is conducted because most developers build web applications without using any specific development method and don't know how to integrate the suitable measurements inside the process to improve and reduce defect, time and rework of the development life cycle. Furthermore the objectives of this pilot study are firstly; determine the real characteristics of small software firms in Jordan. Secondly, investigate the current development and measurement practices. Thirdly, examine the need of new development methodology for building web application in small software firms. Consequently, Pilot survey was conducted in Jordanian small software firms. Descriptive statistics analysis was used to rank the development and measurements methods according to their importance. This paper presents the data, analysis and finding based on pilot survey. These actual findings of this survey will contribute to build new methodology for developing web applications in small software firms taking to account how to integrate the suitable measurement program to the whole development process and also will provide useful information to those who are doing research in the same area.
Investigating the Awareness of Applying the Important Web Application Development and Measurement Practices in Small Software Firms
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In recent past every discipline and every industry have their own methods of developing products. It may be software development, mechanics, construction, psychology and so on. These demarcations work fine as long as the requirements are within one discipline. However, if the project extends over several disciplines, interfaces have to be created and coordinated between the methods of these disciplines. Performance is an important quality aspect of Web Services because of their distributed nature. Predicting the performance of web services during early stages of software development is significant. In Industry, Prototype of these applications is developed during analysis phase of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). However, Performance models are generated from UML models. Methodologies for predicting the performance from UML models is available. Hence, In this paper, a methodology for developing Use Case model and Activity model from User Interface is presented. The methodology is illustrated with a case study on Amazon.com.
General Methodology for developing UML models from UI
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In this paper, the basic ideal of the Event Space Theory and Analyzing Events are expatiated on. Then it is suggested that how to set up event base library in developing application software. Based above the designing principle of facing methodology. Finally, in order to explain how to apply the Event Space Theory in developing economic evaluation software, the software of "sewage treatment CAD" in a national "8th-Five Year Plan Research Project" of PRC is used as an example. This software concerns economic effectiveness evaluation for construction projects.
Event Space Theory and Its Application
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Code metrics are easy to define, but not so easy to justify. It is hard to prove that a metric is valid, i.e., that measured numerical values imply anything on the vaguely defined, yet crucial software properties such as complexity and maintainability. This paper employs statistical analysis and tests to check some "believable" presumptions on the behavior of software and metrics measured for this software. Among those are the reliability presumption implicit in the application of any code metric, and the presumption that the magnitude of change in a software artifact is correlated with changes to its version number. Putting a suite of 36 metrics to the trial, we confirm most of the presumptions. Unexpectedly, we show that a substantial portion of the reliability of some metrics can be observed even in random changes to architecture. Another surprising result is that Boolean-valued metrics tend to flip their values more often in minor software version increments than in major increments.
Empirical Confirmation (and Refutation) of Presumptions on Software
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The timed-based automata model, introduced by Alur and Dill, provides a useful formalism for describing real-time systems. Over the last two decades, several dense-time model checking tools have been developed based on that model. The paper considers the verification of real-time distributed commit protocols using dense-time model checking technology. More precisely, we model and verify the well-known timed two phase commit protocol in three different state-of-the-art real-time model checkers: UPPAAL, Rabbit, and RED, and compare the results.
Verifying Real-time Commit Protocols Using Dense-time Model Checking Technology
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Software testing is presented as a so-called theme within which different authors and groups have defined different subjects each of these subjects having a different focus on testing. A uniform concept of software testing is non-existent and the space of possible coherent perspectives on software testing, each fitting within the theme, is viewed as being spanned by five dimensions, each dimension representing two opposite views with a variety of intermediate views in between. Instruction sequences are used as a simple theoretical conceptualization of computer programs. A theory of instruction sequence testing may serve as a model for a theory of software testing. Instruction sequences testing is considered a new topic for which definitions may be freely contemplated without being restricted by existing views on software testing. The problem of developing a theory of instruction sequence testing is posed. A survey is given of motivations and scenarios for developing a theory of instruction sequence testing.
About Instruction Sequence Testing
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Fault localization is a process to find the location of faults. It determines the root cause of the failure. It identifies the causes of abnormal behaviour of a faulty program. It identifies exactly where the bugs are. Existing fault localization techniques are Slice based technique, Program- Spectrum based Technique, Statistics Based Technique, Program State Based Technique, Machine learning based Technique and Similarity Based Technique. In the proposed method Model Based Fault Localization Technique is used, which is called Probabilistic Program Dependence Graph . Probabilistic Program Dependence Graph (PPDG) is an innovative model that scans the internal behaviour of the project. PPDG construction is enhanced by Program Dependence Graph (PDG). PDG is achieved by the Control Flow Graph (CFG). The PPDG construction augments the structural dependences represented by a program dependence graph with estimates of statistical dependences between node states, which are computed from the test set. The PPDG is based on the established framework of probabilistic graphical models. This work presents algorithms for constructing PPDGs and applying fault localization.
Fault Localization for Java Programs using Probabilistic Program Dependence Graph
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Today's dynamic and iterative development environment brings significant challenges for software project management. In distributed project settings, "management by walking around" is no longer an option and project managers may miss out on key project insights. The TESNA (TEchnical Social Network Analysis) method and tool aims to provide project managers both a method and a tool for gaining insights and taking corrective action. TESNA achieves this by analysing a project's evolving social and technical network structures using data from multiple sources, including CVS, email and chat repositories. Using pattern theory, TESNA helps to identify areas where the current state of the project's social and technical networks conflicts with what patterns suggest. We refer to such a conflict as a Socio-Technical Structure Clash (STSC). In this paper we report on our experience of using TESNA to identify STSCs in a corporate environment through the mining of software repositories. We find multiple instances of three STSCs (Conway's Law, Code Ownership and Project Coordination) in many of the on-going development projects, thereby validating the method and tool that we have developed.
Identifying Coordination Problems in Software Development: Finding Mismatches between Software and Project Team Structures
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For each software project a plan is developed, according to a documented procedure, that covers the software activities and commitments. The requirements allocated to software form the basis for the software development plan. Estimates for critical computer resources are documented, reviewed, and agreed to. All affected groups and individuals understand the estimates and plans and commit to support them. Senior management reviews the estimates and plans before external commitments are made. Software risks associated with the cost, resources, schedule, and technical aspects of the project are identified and evaluated, and contingencies are documented. Planning and estimation data are collected for use in planning subsequent projects and for input in management oversight review meetings.
Requirements and the baseline plan
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When one chooses a main axis of structural decompostion for a software, such as function- or data-oriented decompositions, the other axes become secondary, which can be harmful when one of these secondary axes becomes of main importance. This is called the tyranny of the dominant decomposition. In the context of modular extension, this problem is known as the Expression Problem and has found many solutions, but few solutions have been proposed in a larger context of modular maintenance. We solve the tyranny of the dominant decomposition in maintenance with invertible program transformations. We illustrate this on the typical Expression Problem example. We also report our experiments with Java and Haskell programs and discuss the open problems with our approach.
Invertible Program Restructurings for Continuing Modular Maintenance
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This article attempts to describe specific mental techniques that are related to resolving very complex tasks in software engineering. This subject may be familiar to some software specialists to different extents; however, there is currently no common consensus and popular terminology for this subject area. In this article, the area is charted from a practical usability perspective. This article also proposes to treat software engineering itself as research on human thinking because software is meant to simulate thinking.
Deconcentration of Attention: Addressing the Complexity of Software Engineering
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We present a generalisation of King's symbolic execution technique called compact symbolic execution. It is based on a concept of templates: a template is a declarative parametric description of such a program part, generating paths in symbolic execution tree with regularities in program states along them. Typical sources of these paths are program loops and recursive calls. Using the templates we fold the corresponding paths into single vertices and therefore considerably reduce size of the tree without loss of any information. There are even programs for which compact symbolic execution trees are finite even though the classic symbolic execution trees are infinite.
Compact Symbolic Execution (technical report)
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Identification of non-functional requirements is important for successful development and deployment of the software product. The acceptance of the software product by the customer depends on the non-functional requirements which are incorporated in the software. For this, we need to identify all the non-functional requirements required by all stakeholders. In the literature not many approaches are available for this purpose. Hence, we have proposed a four layered analysis approach for identification of non-functional requirements. The proposed layered approach has many advantages over non-layered approach. As part of this approach some rules are also proposed to be used in each layer. The approach is applied successfully on two case studies. The identified non-functional requirements are validated using a check list and in addition the completeness of the identified non-requirements is computed using a metric.
Four Layered Approach to Non-Functional Requirements Analysis
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Recent distributed computing trends advocate the use of Representational State Transfer (REST) to alleviate the inherent complexity of the Web services standards in building service-oriented web applications. In this paper we focus on the particular case of geospatial services interfaced by the OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) specification in order to assess whether WPS-based geospatial services can be viewed from the architectural principles exposed in REST. Our concluding remarks suggest that the adoption of REST principles, to specially harness the built-in mechanisms of the HTTP application protocol, may be beneficial in scenarios where ad hoc composition of geoprocessing services are required, common for most non-expert users of geospatial information infrastructures.
Assessment of OGC Web Processing Services for REST principles
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STANSE is a free (available under the GPLv2 license) modular framework for finding bugs in C programs using static analysis. Its two main design goals are 1) ability to process large software projects like the Linux kernel and 2) extensibility with new bug-finding techniques with a minimal effort. Currently there are four bug-finding algorithms implemented within STANSE: AutomatonChecker checks properties described in an automata-based formalism, ThreadChecker detects deadlocks among multiple threads, LockChecker finds locking errors based on statistics, and ReachabilityChecker looks for unreachable code. STANSE has been tested on the Linux kernel, where it has found dozens of previously undiscovered bugs.
STANSE: Bug-finding Framework for C Programs
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According to different opponents and commercial giants in software industries, the open source style software development has enough capacity to complete successfully the large scale projects. But we have seen many flaws and loops in collaboration and handling of mega scale projects in open source environment. Perhaps the collaboration is a key of successful project development. In this article we have tries to identify different feasible and reliable solution to a better collaboration ways in the open source system development. Some of the issues also that are found in the development phase of the open source have been identified and a proposed solution by explaining Successful communities such as GNU, the Apache Software Foundation, and Eclipse Foundation is discusses in this research article. It must be kept in mind that to improvement the collaboration in open source environment both the development community and the people should be more creative.
Collaboration for enhancing the system development process in open source diligence
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Distributed software engineering is widely recognized as a complex task. Among the inherent complexities is the process of obtaining a system design from its global requirement specification. This paper deals with such transformation process and suggests an approach to derive the behavior of a given system components, in the form of distributed Finite State Machines, from the global system requirements, in the form of an augmented UML Activity Diagrams notation. The process of the suggested approach is summarized in three steps: the definition of the appropriate source Meta-Model (requirements Meta-Model), the definition of the target Design Meta-Model and the definition of the rules to govern the transformation during the derivation process. The derivation process transforms the global system requirements described as UML diagram activities (extended with collaborations) to system roles behaviors represented as UML finite state machines. The approach is implemented using Atlas Transformation Language (ATL).
A transformation approach for collaboration based requirement models
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The emergence of the digital media and computational tools has widened the doors for creativity. The cutting edge in the digital arts and role of new technologies can be explored for the possible creativity. This gives an opportunity to involve arts with technologies to make creative works. The interactive artworks are often installed in the places where multiple people can interact with the installation, which allows the art to achieve its purpose by allowing the people to observe and involve with the installation. The level of engagement of the audience depends on the various factors such as aesthetic satisfaction, how the audience constructs meaning, pleasure and enjoyment. The method to evaluate these experiences is challenging as it depends on integration between the artificial life and real life by means of human computer interaction. This research investigates "How Adriano fits for creative and interactive artwork installations?" using an artwork installation in the campus of NTNU (Norwegian University of Science & Technology). The main focus of this investigation has been to get an overview on the intersection between information technology and Arts. This gives an opportunity to understand various attributes like creativity, cooperation and openness of processes influencing the creative Artworks. The artwork is combination of Adriano and other auxiliary components such as sensors, LED's and speakers.
Arduino Tool: For Interactive Artwork Installations
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Component based development idea was floated in a conference name "Mass Produced Software Components" in 1968 [1]. Since then engineering and scientific libraries are developed to reuse the previously developed functions. This concept is now widely used in SW development as component based development (CBD). Component-based software engineering (CBSE) is used to develop/ assemble software from existing components [2]. Software developed using components is called component ware [3]. This paper presents different architectures of CBD such as ActiveX, common object request broker architecture (CORBA), remote method invocation (RMI) and simple object access protocol (SOAP). The overall objective of this paper is to support the practice of CBD by comparing its advantages and disadvantages. This paper also evaluates object oriented process model to adapt it for CBD.
The artifacts of component-based development
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Recent advances in computing systems have led to a new digital era in which every area of life is nearly interrelated with information technology. However, with the trend towards large-scale IT systems, a new challenge has emerged. The complexity of IT systems is becoming an obstacle that hampers the manageability, operability, and maintainability of modern computing infrastructures. Autonomic computing popped up to provide an answer to these ever-growing pitfalls. Fundamentally, autonomic systems are self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing, and self-protecting; hence, they can automate all complex IT processes without human intervention. This paper proposes an autonomic HTML web-interface generator based on XML Schema and Style Sheet specifications for self-configuring graphical user interfaces of web applications. The goal of this autonomic generator is to automate the process of customizing GUI web-interfaces according to the ever-changing business rules, policies, and operating environment with the least IT labor involvement. The conducted experiments showed a successful automation of web interfaces customization that dynamically self-adapts to keep with the always-changing business requirements. Future research can improve upon the proposed solution so that it supports the selfconfiguring of not only web applications but also desktop applications.
Autonomic html interface generator for web applications
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Currently, organizations are transforming their business processes into e-services and service-oriented architectures to improve coordination across sales, marketing, and partner channels, to build flexible and scalable systems, and to reduce integration-related maintenance and development costs. However, this new paradigm is still fragile and lacks many features crucial for building sustainable and progressive computing infrastructures able to rapidly respond and adapt to the always-changing market and environmental business. This paper proposes a novel framework for building sustainable Ecosystem- Oriented Architectures (EOA) using e-service models. The backbone of this framework is an ecosystem layer comprising several computing units whose aim is to deliver universal interoperability, transparent communication, automated management, self-integration, self-adaptation, and security to all the interconnected services, components, and devices in the ecosystem. Overall, the proposed model seeks to deliver a comprehensive and a generic sustainable business IT model for developing agile e-enterprises that are constantly up to new business constraints, trends, and requirements. Future research can improve upon the proposed model so much so that it supports computational intelligence to help in decision making and problem solving.
Building sustainable ecosystem-oriented architectures
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The concept of component-based development (CBD) is widely practiced in software (SW) development. CBD is based on reuse of the existing components with the new ones. The objective of this paper is to propose a novel process model for CBD. Importance of repository has also been discussed. A survey has been conducted to evaluate the proposed model. The results of the survey show that proposed process model can be efficiently implemented for CBD projects.
Survey-Based Analysis of the Proposed Component-Based Development Process
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The concept of agile process models has attained great popularity in software (SW) development community in last few years. Agile models promote fast development. Fast development has certain drawbacks, such as weak documentation and performance for medium and large development projects. Fast development also promotes use of agile process models in small-scale projects. This paper modifies and evaluates Extreme Programming (XP) process model and proposes a novel process model based on these modifications.
Evaluation of the Improved XP Software Development Model
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The concept of agile process models has attained great popularity in software (SW) development community in last few years. Agile models promote fast development. Fast development has certain drawbacks, such as weak documentation and performance for medium and large development projects. Fast development also promotes use of agile process models in small-scale projects. This paper modifies and evaluates Extreme Programming (XP) process model and proposes a novel process model based on these modifications.
An Improved XP Software Development Model
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Seamless and continuous support for long term organizational learning needs is essential for long lasting progress of the organization. Agile process model provides an excellent opportunity to cater that specific problem and also helps in motivation, satisfaction, coordination, presentation and technical skills enhancement of agile teams. This long term learning process makes organization to sustain their current successes and lead both organization and team members to successful and dynamic market leaders.
Seamless Long Term Learning in Agile Teams for Sustainable Leadership
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Quality assurance makes sure the project will be completed based on the previously approved specifications, standards and functionality. It is required without defects and possible problems. It monitors and tries to progress the development process from the start of the project. Software Quality Assurance (SQA) is the combination of the entire software development process, which includes software design, coding, source code control, code review, change management, configuration management and release management. In this paper we describe the solution for the key problems of software testing in quality assurance. The existing software practices have some problems such as testing practices, attitude of users and culture of organizations. All these tree problems have some combined problems such as shortcuts in testing, reduction in testing time, poor documentation etc. In this paper we are recommending strategies to provide solution of the said problems mentioned above.
Improvement of Key Problems of Software Testing in Quality Assurance
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Component-based development (CBD) is a name, with which software development professionals are quite familiar. There are several models which have been proposed for CBD in last few years. They contain good features but there are some improvement possibilities in them. The objective of this paper is to propose a process for CBD and to evaluate the effects of quality parameters on reusability. The validations of the proposed CBD model provide positive indication for software (SW) industry that it can be successfully implemented for CBD projects.
A Validation of the Proposed Component-Based Development Process
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Software (SW) development is a very tough task which requires a skilled project leader for its success. If the project leader is not skilled enough then project may fail. In the real world of SW engineering 65% of the SW projects fail to meet their objectives as in [1]. The main reason is lack of training of the project mangers. This extreme ratio of failure can be reduced by teaching SW project management (SPM) to the future project managers in the practical manner, so that they may be skillful enough to handle the project in a better way. This paper intends to propose a model to be used to teach SPM to the student of SW engineering to reduce the failure rate of projects.
A New Teaching Model For The Subject Of Software Project Management
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Software cost estimation (SCE) of a project is pivotal to the acceptance or rejection of the development of software project. Various SCE techniques have been in practice with their own strengths and limitations. The latest of these is object-oriented one. Currently object-oriented approach for SCE is based on Line of Code (LOC), function points, functions and classes etc. Relatively less attention has been paid to the SCE in component-based software engineering (CBSE). So there is a pressing need to search parameters/variables that have a vital role for the SCE using CBSE which is taken up in this paper. This paper further looks at level of significance of all the parameters/variables thus searched. The time is being used as an independent variable because time is a parameter which is almost, all previous in one. Therefore this approach may be in a way an alternate of all previous approaches. Infact the underlying research ultimately may lead towards SCE of complex systems, using CBSE, in a scientific, systematic and comprehensive way.
A Step Forward To Component-based Software Cost Estimation in Object-oriented Environment
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Agile models promote fast development. XP and Scrum are the most widely used agile models. This paper investigates the phases of XP and Scrum models in order to identify their potentials and drawbacks. XP model has certain drawbacks, such as not suitable for maintenance projects and poor performance for medium and large-scale development projects. Scrum model has certain limitations, such as lacked in engineering practices. Since, both XP and Scrum models contain good features and strengths but still there are improvement possibilities in these models. Majority of the software development companies are reluctant to switch from traditional methodologies to agile methodologies for development of industrial projects. A fine integration, of software management of the Scrum model and engineering practices of XP model, is very much required to accumulate the strengths and remove the limitations of both models. This is achieved by proposing an eXScrum model. The proposed model is validated by conducting a controlled case study. The results of case study show that the proposed integrated eXScrum model enriches the potentials of both XP and Scrum models and eliminates their drawbacks.
Empirical Evaluation of the Proposed eXScrum Model: Results of a Case Study
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Software has been playing a key role in the development of modern society. Software industry has an option to choose suitable methodology/process model for its current needs to provide solutions to give problems. Though some companies have their own customized methodology for developing their software but majority agrees that software methodologies fall under two categories that are heavyweight and lightweight. Heavyweight methodologies (Waterfall Model, Spiral Model) are also known as the traditional methodologies, and their focuses are detailed documentation, inclusive planning, and extroverted design. Lightweight methodologies (XP, SCRUM) are, referred as agile methodologies. Light weight methodologies focused mainly on short iterative cycles, and rely on the knowledge within a team. The aim of this paper is to describe the characteristics of popular heavyweight and lightweight methodologies that are widely practiced in software industries. We have discussed the strengths and weakness of the selected models. Further we have discussed the strengths and weakness between the two opponent methodologies and some criteria is also illustrated that help project managers for the selection of suitable model for their projects.
A Comprehensive Study of Commonly Practiced Heavy & Light Weight Software Methodologies
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The IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) that features in Next Generation Networks (NGN) offers the application developer (third party) abilities to map out applications over mobile telecommunication infrastructure. The IMS comes about with APIs useful for mobile application developers to create applications to meet end-users' demands and comply with the provider's infrastructure set up at the same time. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signaling protocol for this architecture. It is used for establishing sessions in IP network, making it an ideal candidate for supporting terminal mobility in to deliver the services with improved Quality of Services (QOS). The realization of IMS's virtues as far as software design is concerned is faced by lack of standardizations and methodologies throughout application development process. In this paper, we report on progress on ongoing research by our group toward putting together a platform as a testbed used for NGN application development. We examine a novel component based development model used for SIP based mobile applications. The developed model is to be used as framework for general purpose application development over the testbed. We apply this model on MObile Mass EXamination (MOMEX) system that is an application attracting the interest of educational authorities around the world due to its potential convenience.
A Framework for Next Generation Mobile and Wireless Networks Application Development using Hybrid Component Based Development Model
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Universities and Institutions these days' deals with issues related to with assessment of large number of students. Various evaluation methods have been adopted by examiners in different institutions to examining the ability of an individual, starting from manual means of using paper and pencil to electronic, from oral to written, practical to theoretical and many others. There is a need to expedite the process of examination in order to meet the increasing enrolment of students at the universities and institutes. Sip Based Mass Mobile Examination System (SiBMMES) expedites the examination process by automating various activities in an examination such as exam paper setting, Scheduling and allocating examination time and evaluation (auto-grading for objective questions) etc. SiBMMES uses the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) that is an IP communications framework providing an environment for the rapid development of innovative and reusable services Session Initial Protocol (SIP) is a signalling (request-response) protocol for this architecture and it is used for establishing sessions in an IP network, making it an ideal candidate for supporting terminal mobility in the IMS to deliver the services, with the extended services available in IMS like open APIs, common network services, Quality of Services (QoS) like multiple sessions per call, Push to Talk etc often requiring multiple types of media (including voice, video, pictures, and text). SiBMMES is an effective solution for mass education evaluation using mobile and web technology. In this paper, a novel hybrid component based development (CBD) model is proposed for SiBMMES.
Novel Component Based Development Model For Sip-Based Mobile Application
5,444
Please cite this as "Lorina Negreanu, Cristian Giumale, Alexandru Agache, Mihnea Muraru, Matei Popovici, Ciprian Dobre, A Formal Approach for the Development of Service-Oriented Applications, in Proc. of 18th International Conference on Control Systems and Computer Science (CSCS-18), Bucharest, Romania, 2011, pp. 804-810, ISSN: 2066-4451, Politehnica Press"
A Formal Approach for the Development of Service-Oriented Applications
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The Rational Unified Process a software engineering process is gaining popularity nowadays. RUP delivers best software practices for component software Development life cycle It supports component based software development. Risk is involved in every component development phase .neglecting those risks sometimes hampers the software growth and leads to negative outcome. In Order to provide appropriate security and protection levels, identifying various risks is very vital. Therefore Risk identification plays a very crucial role in the component based software development This report addresses incorporation of component based software development cycle into RUP phases, assess several category of risk encountered in the component based software. It also entails a survey method to identify the risk factor and evaluating the overall severity of the component software development in terms of the risk. Formula for determining risk prevention cost and finding the risk probability is also been included. The overall goal of the paper is to provide a theoretical foundation that facilitates a good understanding of risk in relation to componentbased system development
Risk Assessment Techniques and Survey Method for COTS Components
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Universities and Institutions these days' deals with issues related to with assessment of large number of students. Various evaluation methods have been adopted by examiners in different institutions to examining the ability of an individual, starting from manual means of using paper and pencil to electronic, from oral to written, practical to theoretical and many others. There is a need to expedite the process of examination in order to meet the increasing enrolment of students at the universities and institutes. Sip Based Mass Mobile Examination System (SiBMMES) expedites the examination process by automating various activities in an examination such as exam paper setting, Scheduling and allocating examination time and evaluation (auto-grading for objective questions) etc. SiBMMES uses the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) that is an IP communications framework providing an environment for the rapid development of innovative and reusable services Session Initial Protocol (SIP) is a signalling (request-response) protocol for this architecture and it is used for establishing sessions in an IP network, making it an ideal candidate for supporting terminal mobility in the IMS to deliver the services, with the extended services available in IMS like open APIs, common network services, Quality of Services (QoS) like multiple sessions per call, Push to Talk etc often requiring multiple types of media (including voice, video, pictures, and text). SiBMMES is an effective solution for mass education evaluation using mobile and web technology. In this paper, a novel hybrid component based development (CBD) model is proposed for SiBMMES. A Component based Hybrid Model is selected to the fact that IMS takes the concept of layered architecture one step further by defining a horizontal architecture where service enablers and common functions can be reused for multiple applications.
Novel Component-Based Development Model for SIP-Based Mobile Application (1202)
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In a global business context with continuous changes, the enterprises have to enhance their operational efficiency, to react more quickly, to ensure the flexibility of their business processes, and to build new collaboration pathways with external partners. To achieve this goal, they must use e-business methods, mechanisms and techniques while capitalizing on the potential of new information and communication technologies. In this context, we propose a standards, model and Web services-based approach for modeling and integrating agile enterprise business processes. The purpose is to benefit from Web services characteristics to enhance the processes design and realize their dynamic integration. The choice of focusing on Web services is essentially justified by their broad adoption by enterprises as well as their capability to warranty interoperability between both intra and inter-enterprises systems. Thereby, we propose in this chapter a metamodel for describing business processes, and discuss their dynamic integration by addressing the Web services discovery issue. On the one hand, the proposed metamodel is in line with the W3C Web services standards, namely, WSDL, SAWSDL and WS-Policy. It considers the use of BPMN standard to describe the behavioral aspect of business processes and completes their design using UML diagrams describing their functional, non-functional and semantic aspects. On other hand, our approach for integrating processes is in line with BPEL standard recommended to orchestrate Web services. To realize executable business processes, this approach recommends the use of semantic matching and selection mechanisms in order to produce agile systems.
Web Services-Enhanced Agile Modeling and Integrating Business Processes
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With the advent of WWW and outburst in technology and software development, testing the software became a major concern. Due to the importance of the testing phase in a software development life cycle, testing has been divided into graphical user interface (GUI) based testing, logical testing, integration testing, etc.GUI Testing has become very important as it provides more sophisticated way to interact with the software. The complexity of testing GUI increased over time. The testing needs to be performed in a way that it provides effectiveness, efficiency, increased fault detection rate and good path coverage. To cover all use cases and to provide testing for all possible (success/failure) scenarios the length of the test sequence is considered important. Intent of this paper is to study some techniques used for test case generation and process for various GUI based software applications.
Study Paper on Test Case generation for GUI Based Testing
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Boolean expressions are major focus of specifications and they are very much prone to introduction of faults, this survey presents various fault based testing techniques. It identifies that the techniques differ in their fault detection capabilities and generation of test suite. The various techniques like Cause effect graph, meaningful impact strategy, Branch Operator Strategy (BOR), BOR+MI, MUMCUT, Modified Condition/ Decision Coverage (MCDC) has been considered. This survey describes the basic algorithms and fault categories used by these strategies for evaluating their performance. Finally, it contains short summaries of the papers that use Boolean expressions used to specify the requirements for detecting faults. These techniques have been empirically evaluated by various researchers on a simplified safety related real time control system.
Fault Based Techniques for Testing Boolean Expressions: A Survey
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By abstracting Grid middleware specific considerations from clinical research applications, re-usable services should be developed that will provide generic functionality aimed specifically at medical applications. In the scope of the neuGRID project, generic services are being designed and developed which will be applied to satisfy the requirements of neuroscientists. These services will bring together sources of data and computing elements into a single view as far as applications are concerned, making it possible to cope with centralised, distributed or hybrid data and provide native support for common medical file formats. Services will include querying, provenance, portal, anonymization and pipeline services together with a 'glueing' service for connection to Grid services. Thus lower-level services will hide the peculiarities of any specific Grid technology from upper layers, provide application independence and will enable the selection of 'fit-for-purpose' infrastructures. This paper outlines the design strategy being followed in neuGRID using the glueing and pipeline services as examples.
Reusable Services from the neuGRID Project for Grid-Based Health Applications
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The deployment of a software product requires considerable amount of time and effort. In order to increase the productivity of the software products, reusability strategies were proposed in the literature. However effective reuse is still a challenging issue. This paper presents a framework studio for effective components reusability which provides the selection of components from framework studio and generation of source code based on stakeholders needs. The framework studio is implemented using swings which are integrated onto the Net Beans IDE which help in faster generation of the source code.
A Framework Studio for Component Reusability
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This volume contains the proceedings of the Seventh Workshop on Model-Based Testing (MBT 2012), which was held on 25 March, 2012 in Tallinn, Estonia, as a satellite event of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2012. The workshop is devoted to model-based testing of both software and hardware. Model-based testing uses models describing the required behavior of the system under consideration to guide such efforts as test selection and test results evaluation. Testing validates the real system behavior against models and checks that the implementation conforms to them, but is capable also to find errors in the models themselves. The first MBT workshop was held in 2004, in Barcelona. At that time MBT already had become a hot topic, but the MBT workshop was the first event devoted mostly to this topic. Since that time the area has generated enormous scientific interest, and today there are several specialized workshops and more broad conferences on software and hardware design and quality assurance covering model based testing. MBT has become one of the most powerful system analysis tools, one of the latest hot topic related is applying MBT in security analysis and testing. MBT workshop tries to keep up with current trends. In 2012 "industrial paper" category was added to the program and two industrial papers were accepted by the program committee.
Proceedings 7th Workshop on Model-Based Testing
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Information of many kinds is flowing in software projects and organizations. Requirements have to flow from the customer to the developers. Testers need to know the requirements as well. Boundary conditions and design decisions have to be at the right place at the right time. Information flow analysis with FLOW facilitates modeling of mode and route of the flow of information and experience independent of the development methodology. Experience often acts as a control factor, because experienced developers can process and route information more efficiently. Therefore, experience needs to be at the right place at the right time, too. However, most valuable experiences never get documented. Since information and experience is flowing in agile as well as in traditional environments, the FLOW method does not distinguish between agile and traditional, but only between how the flows are shaped. ---- In Softwareprojekten flie{\ss}en vielerlei Informationen. Anforderungen m\"ussen vom Kunden zu den Entwicklern gelangen. Auch Tester m\"ussen die Anforderungen kennen. Randbedingungen und Entwurfsentscheidungen m\"ussen zur rechten Zeit am rechten Ort sein. Die Informationsflussanalyse mit FLOW erm\"oglicht es, unabh\"angig von der Entwicklungsmethode zu modellieren, wie und auf welchem Wege Informationen und Erfahrungen flie{\ss}en. Erfahrungen spielen dabei oft die Rolle von Steuergr\"o{\ss}en, denn erfahrene Mitarbeiter k\"onnen Informationen kompetenter bearbeiten und weiterleiten. Auch die Erfahrungen m\"ussen in geeigneter Form zur rechten Zeit am rechten Ort sein. Viele Erfahrungen werden aber nie dokumentiert. Da Informationen und Erfahrungen sowohl in agilen als auch in traditionellen Umgebungen flie{\ss}en m\"ussen, wird in FLOW ein Modell aufgebaut, das nicht nach agil, traditionell oder anderen Bezeichnungen unterscheidet, sondern einzig danach, wie die Fl\"usse gestaltet sind.
FLOW-Methode - Methodenbeschreibung zur Anwendung von FLOW
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Security testing aims at validating software system requirements related to security properties like confidentiality, integrity, authentication, authorization, availability, and non-repudiation. Although security testing techniques are available for many years, there has been little approaches that allow for specification of test cases at a higher level of abstraction, for enabling guidance on test identification and specification as well as for automated test generation. Model-based security testing (MBST) is a relatively new field and especially dedicated to the systematic and efficient specification and documentation of security test objectives, security test cases and test suites, as well as to their automated or semi-automated generation. In particular, the combination of security modelling and test generation approaches is still a challenge in research and of high interest for industrial applications. MBST includes e.g. security functional testing, model-based fuzzing, risk- and threat-oriented testing, and the usage of security test patterns. This paper provides a survey on MBST techniques and the related models as well as samples of new methods and tools that are under development in the European ITEA2-project DIAMONDS.
Model-Based Security Testing
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Seamless model based development aims to use models during all phases of the development process of a system. During the development process in a component-based approach, components of a system are described at qualitatively differing abstraction levels: during requirements engineering component models are rather abstract high-level and underspecified, while during implementation the component models are rather concrete and fully specified in order to enable code generation. An important issue that arises is assuring that the concrete models correspond to abstract models. In this paper, we propose a method to assure that concrete models for system components refine more abstract models for the same components. In particular we advocate a framework for reusing testcases at different abstraction levels. Our approach, even if it cannot completely prove the refinement, can be used to ensure confidence in the development process. In particular we are targeting the refinement of requirements which are represented as very abstract models. Besides a formal model of our approach, we discuss our experiences with the development of an Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) system in a model driven development process. This uses extensions which we implemented for our model-based development tool and which are briefly presented in this paper.
Reusing Test-Cases on Different Levels of Abstraction in a Model Based Development Tool
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The Test Template Framework (TTF) is a model-based testing method for the Z notation. In the TTF, test cases are generated from test specifications, which are predicates written in Z. In turn, the Z notation is based on first-order logic with equality and Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory. In this way, a test case is a witness satisfying a formula in that theory. Satisfiability Modulo Theory (SMT) solvers are software tools that decide the satisfiability of arbitrary formulas in a large number of built-in logical theories and their combination. In this paper, we present the first results of applying two SMT solvers, Yices and CVC3, as the engines to find test cases from TTF's test specifications. In doing so, shallow embeddings of a significant portion of the Z notation into the input languages of Yices and CVC3 are provided, given that they do not directly support Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory as defined in Z. Finally, the results of applying these embeddings to a number of test specifications of eight cases studies are analysed.
Applying SMT Solvers to the Test Template Framework
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Test generation and test data selection are difficult tasks for model based testing. Tests for a program can be meld to a test suite. A lot of research is done to quantify the quality and improve a test suite. Code coverage metrics estimate the quality of a test suite. This quality is fine, if the code coverage value is high or 100%. Unfortunately it might be impossible to achieve 100% code coverage because of dead code for example. There is a gap between the feasible and theoretical maximal possible code coverage value. Our review of the research indicates, none of current research is concerned with exact gap computation. This paper presents a framework to compute such gaps exactly in an ISO-C compatible semantic and similar languages. We describe an efficient approximation of the gap in all the other cases. Thus, a tester can decide if more tests might be able or necessary to achieve better coverage.
Exact Gap Computation for Code Coverage Metrics in ISO-C
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We present a model-based testing approach to support automated test generation with domain-specific concepts. This includes a language expert who is an expert at building test models and domain experts who are experts in the domain of the system under test. First, we provide a framework to support the language expert in building test models using a full (Java) programming language with the help of simple but powerful modeling elements of the framework. Second, based on the model built with this framework, the toolset automatically forms a domain-specific modeling language that can be used to further constrain and guide test generation from these models by a domain expert. This makes it possible to generate a large set of test cases covering the full model, chosen (constrained) parts of the model, or manually define specific test cases on top of the model while using concepts familiar to the domain experts.
Using Built-In Domain-Specific Modeling Support to Guide Model-Based Test Generation
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Model-based mutation testing uses altered test models to derive test cases that are able to reveal whether a modelled fault has been implemented. This requires conformance checking between the original and the mutated model. This paper presents an approach for symbolic conformance checking of action systems, which are well-suited to specify reactive systems. We also consider nondeterminism in our models. Hence, we do not check for equivalence, but for refinement. We encode the transition relation as well as the conformance relation as a constraint satisfaction problem and use a constraint solver in our reachability and refinement checking algorithms. Explicit conformance checking techniques often face state space explosion. First experimental evaluations show that our approach has potential to outperform explicit conformance checkers.
Towards Symbolic Model-Based Mutation Testing: Combining Reachability and Refinement Checking
5,460
The notion of quiescence - the absence of outputs - is vital in both behavioural modelling and testing theory. Although the need for quiescence was already recognised in the 90s, it has only been treated as a second-class citizen thus far. This paper moves quiescence into the foreground and introduces the notion of quiescent transition systems (QTSs): an extension of regular input-output transition systems (IOTSs) in which quiescence is represented explicitly, via quiescent transitions. Four carefully crafted rules on the use of quiescent transitions ensure that our QTSs naturally capture quiescent behaviour. We present the building blocks for a comprehensive theory on QTSs supporting parallel composition, action hiding and determinisation. In particular, we prove that these operations preserve all the aforementioned rules. Additionally, we provide a way to transform existing IOTSs into QTSs, allowing even IOTSs as input that already contain some quiescent transitions. As an important application, we show how our QTS framework simplifies the fundamental model-based testing theory formalised around ioco.
Talking quiescence: a rigorous theory that supports parallel composition, action hiding and determinisation
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This paper introduces basic concepts of rule based test generation with mind maps, and reports experiences learned from industrial application of this technique in the domain of smart card testing by Giesecke & Devrient GmbH over the last years. It describes the formalization of test selection criteria used by our test generator, our test generation architecture and test generation framework.
Rule-based Test Generation with Mind Maps
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We are investigating on-line model-based test generation from non-deterministic output-observable Input/Output Extended Finite State Machine (I/O EFSM) models of Systems Under Test (SUTs). We propose a novel constraint-based heuristic approach (Heuristic Reactive Planning Tester (xRPT)) for on-line conformance testing non-deterministic SUTs. An indicative feature of xRPT is the capability of making reasonable decisions for achieving the test goals in the on-line testing process by using the results of off-line bounded static reachability analysis based on the SUT model and test goal specification. We present xRPT in detail and make performance comparison with other existing search strategies and approaches on examples with varying complexity.
Constraint-Based Heuristic On-line Test Generation from Non-deterministic I/O EFSMs
5,463
The paper presents the experience of the authors in model based testing of safety critical real-time control logic software. It describes specifics of the corresponding industrial settings and discusses technical details of usage of UniTESK model based testing technology in these settings. Finally, we discuss possible future directions of safety critical software development processes and a place of model based testing techniques in it.
Model-Based Testing of Safety Critical Real-Time Control Logic Software
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Hard times affecting world-wide economy have strong consequences and are challenging IT departments from all sorts of enterprises. Expensive software projects are replaced by component-based agile systems and paradigms like SOA, REST, cloud computing are the new buzz-words. Behind the canvas, the service concept plays a central role, which we try to reveal
On the Role of Service Concept in IT
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Because Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is one of the hottest topics that is currently gaining momentum, and the number of its adopters (both business and IT executives) is increasing in a tremendous manner, it is really a must to enlist important aspects related to it in order to allow these adopters to better understand the role that it can play in both software and business markets. These aspects varies from the definition of SOA and key components of it, different forms of support given by elite software vendors to it, its evolution history, the relationship between it and web services, the future expectations about its uses and benefits in different organizations, the relationship between SOA and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), and various applications that can use it to overcome limitations related to other traditional methods. Moreover, challenges that face SOA in software market should be addressed and discussed in order to be able to see the big picture and to look for better solutions for them.
Aspects of SOA: An Entry Point for Starters
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SOA brought new opportunities for the long expected agility, reuse and the adaptive capability of information technology to the ever changing business requirements and environments. The purpose of this paper is to describe the implementation of Medical Insurance Claim Process Model using SOA. We adopt Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to reduce the complexity among systems and solve data consistency problems among services. We choose n-tier and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as our system environment. This model can also establish a potentially new innovative market branch for the insurance industry.
An Interface using SOA Framework For Mediclaim Provider
5,467
Many companies include in their Information Systems (IS) several communicating heterogeneous middleware according to their technical needs. The need is the same when IS requires using context aware platforms for different aims. Moreover, users may be mobile and want to receive and send services with their PDA that more often supports Android based Human Man Interface. In this paper, we show how we extend Android to make it adaptable and open. We also present how we communicate between different heterogeneous context aware platforms as WComp and OpenORB by using Android and Web Services. We introduce a concrete case study to explain our approach.
Bridging the Gap between Technical Heterogeneity of Context-Aware Platforms: Experimenting a Service Based Connectivity between Adaptable Android, WComp and OpenORB
5,468
One of the goals of software design is to model a system in such a way that it is easily understandable. Nowadays the tendency for software development is changing from manual coding to automatic code generation; it is becoming model-based. This is a response to the software crisis, in which the cost of hardware has decreased and conversely the cost of software development has increased sharply. The methodologies that allowed this change are model-based, thus relieving the human from detailed coding. Still there is a long way to achieve this goal, but work is being done worldwide to achieve this objective. This paper presents the drastic changes related to modeling and important challenging issues and techniques that recur in MBSD.
Model based Software Develeopment: Issues & Challenges
5,469
Extraction of components pertaining to a particular domain not only reduces the cost but also helps in delivering a quality product. However, the advantages of the Component Level Interaction's (CLI's) are not clearly presented. In the first part of the paper the design of HR Portal application is described. Later the results are simulated using the Netbeans Profiler tool which exposes and highlights the performance characteristics of component based system pertaining to HR domain.
Performance Analysis of HR Portal Domain Components Extraction
5,470
Requirements Engineering Methods (REMs) support Requirements Engineering (RE) tasks, from elicitation, through modeling and analysis, to validation and evolution of requirements. Despite the growing interest to design, validate and teach REMs, it remains unclear what components REMs should have. A classification framework for REMs is proposed. It distinguishes REMs based on the domain-independent properties of their components. The classification framework is intended to facilitate (i) analysis, teaching and extension of existing REMs, (ii) engineering and validation of new REMs, and (iii) identifying research challenges in REM design. The framework should help clarify further the relations between REM and other concepts of interest in and to RE, including Requirements Problem and Solution, Requirements Modeling Language, and Formal Method.
Requirements Engineering Methods: A Classification Framework and Research Challenges
5,471
Web service compositions are gaining attention to develop complex web systems by combination of existing services. Thus, there are many works that leverage the advantages of this approach. However, there are only few works that use web service compositions to manage distributed resources. In this paper, we then present a formal model that combines orchestrations written in BPEL with distributed resources, by using WSRF.
BPEL-RF: A formal framework for BPEL orchestrations integrating distributed resources
5,472
Reliable and fast builds are essential for rapid turnaround during development and testing. Popular existing build systems rely on correct manual specification of build dependencies, which can lead to invalid build outputs and nondeterminism. We outline the challenges of developing reliable build systems and explore the design space for their implementation, with a focus on non-distributed, incremental, parallel build systems. We define a general model for resources accessed by build tasks and show its correspondence to the implementation technique of minimum information libraries, APIs that return no information that the application doesn't plan to use. We also summarize preliminary experimental results from several prototype build managers.
A model and framework for reliable build systems
5,473
Nowadays, application of Service Oriented Architecture is increasing rapidly; especially since introduction of distributed electronic services on the web. SOA software has a modular manner and works as a collaboration of independent software components. As a result, e-service approach is sufficient for software with independent components, each of which may be developed by a different company. Such software components and their cooperation form a composite service. Agile methodologies are the best candidate for developing small software components. Composite services and its building blocks are small pieces of software, making agile methodology a perfect fit for their development. In this paper, we introduce an agile method for service composition, inspired by agile patterns and practices. Therefore, across the agile manifesto, we can develop low cost, high quality composite services quickly using this method.
An Agile Method for E-Service Composition
5,474
Originator Control allows information providers to define the information re-dissemination condition. Combined with usage control policy, fine-grained 'downstream usage control' can be achieved, which specifies what attributes the downstream consumers should have and how data is used. This paper discusses originator usage control, paying particular attention to enterprise-level dynamic business federations. Rather than 'pre-defining' the information re-dissemination paths, our business process slicing method 'capture' the asset derivation pattern, allowing to maintain originators' policies during the full lifecycle of assets in a collaborative context. First, we propose Service Call Graph (SCG), based on extending the System Dependency Graph, to describe dependencies among partners. When SCG (and corresponding 'service call tuple' list) is built for a business process, it is analyzed to group partners into sub-contexts, according to their dependency relations. Originator usage control can be achieved focusing on each sub-context, by examining downstream consumers' security profiles with upstream asset providers' policies. Second, for analyzing SCG, we propose two 'slicing' strategies, namely 'asset-based' and 'request-based' slicing, to deal with the scenarios of both 'pre-processing' a business process scripts and 'on-the-fly' analyzing service compositions. Last, our implementation work involves a 'context manager' service for processing business processes defined in WS-BPEL. It can be composed with our former proposed policy negotiation and aggregation services to provide policy-based end-to-end security management. We also make experiments based on processing the sample processes that come with 'WS-BPEL2.0' specification.
Originator usage control with business process slicing
5,475
As per leading IT experts, today's large enterprises are going through business transformations. They are adopting service-based IT models such as SOA to develop their enterprise information systems and applications. In fact, SOA is an integration of loosely-coupled interoperable components, possibly built using heterogeneous software technologies and hardware platforms. As a result, traditional testing architectures are no more adequate for verifying and validating the quality of SOA systems and whether they are operating to specifications. This paper first discusses the various state-of-the-art methods for testing SOA applications, and then it proposes a novel automated, distributed, cross-platform, and regression testing architecture for SOA systems. The proposed testing architecture consists of several testing units which include test engine, test code generator, test case generator, test executer, and test monitor units. Experiments conducted showed that the proposed testing architecture managed to use parallel agents to test heterogeneous web services whose technologies were incompatible with the testing framework. As future work, testing non-functional aspects of SOA applications are to be investigated so as to allow the testing of such properties as performance, security, availability, and scalability.
Distributed, Cross-Platform, and Regression Testing Architecture for Service-Oriented Architecture
5,476
A self-healing application brings itself into a stable state after a failure put the software into an unstable state. For such self-healing software application, finding fix for a previously unseen fault is a grand challenge. Asking the user to provide fixes for every fault is bad for productivity, especially when the users are non-savvy in technical aspect of computing. If failure scenarios come into existence, the user wants the runtime environment to handle those situations autonomically. This paper presents a new technique of finding self-healing actions by matching a fault scenario to already established fault models. By profiling and capturing runtime parameters and execution pathWays, stable execution models are established and later are used to match with an unstable execution scenario. Experimentation and results are presented that showed that even with additional overheads; this technique can prove beneficial for autonomically healing faults and reliving system administrators from mundane troubleshooting situations.
Self-Healing by Means of Runtime Execution Profiling
5,477
Defect estimation and prediction are some of the main modulating factors for the success of software projects in any software industry. Maturity and competency of a project manager in efficient prediction and estimation of resource capabilities are one of the strategic driving forces towards the generation of high quality software. Currently, there are no estimation techniques developed through empirical analysis to evaluate the decision capability of a project manager towards resource allocation for effective defect management. This paper brings out an empirical study carried out in a product based software organization. Our deep investigation on several projects throws light on the impact of decision capability of project manager towards accomplishment of an aforementioned objective. The paper enables project managers to gain further awareness towards the significance of predictive positioning in resource allocation in order to develop high quality defect-free software products. It also enhances the maturity level of the company and its persistence in the competitive atmosphere.
An Analytical Approach for Project Managers in Effective Defect Management in Software Process
5,478
One of the prerequisites of any organization is an unvarying sustainability in the dynamic and competitive industrial environment. Development of high quality software is therefore an inevitable constraint of any software industry. Defect management being one of the highly influencing factors for the production of high quality software, it is obligatory for the software organizations to orient them towards effective defect management. Since, the time of software evolution, testing is deemed a promising technique of defect management in all IT industries. This paper provides an empirical investigation of several projects through a case study comprising of four software companies having various production capabilities. The aim of this investigation is to analyze the efficiency of test team during software development process. The study indicates very low-test efficiency at requirements analysis phase and even lesser test efficiency at design phase of software development. Subsequently, the study calls for a strong need to improve testing approaches using techniques such as dynamic testing of design solutions in lieu of static testing of design document. Dynamic testing techniques enhance the ability of detection and elimination of design flaws right at the inception phase and thereby reduce the cost and time of rework. It further improves productivity, quality and sustainability of software industry.
Analysis of Test Efficiency during Software Development Process
5,479
Service-based IT infrastructures are today's trend and the future for every enterprise willing to support dynamic and agile business to contend with the ever changing e-demands and requirements. A digital ecosystem is an emerging business IT model for developing agile e-enterprises made out of self-adaptable, self-manageable, self-organizing, and sustainable service components. This paper defines the specifications of a communication language for exchanging data between connecting entities in digital ecosystems. It is called ECL short for Ecosystem Communication Language and is based on XML to format its request and response messages. An ECU short for Ecosystem Communication Unit is also presented which interprets, validates, parses ECL messages and routes them to their destination entities. ECL is open and provides transparent, portable, and interoperable communication between the different heterogeneous distributed components to send requests, and receive responses from each other, regardless of their incompatible protocols, standards, and technologies. As future research, digital signature for ECL is to be investigated so as to deliver data integrity as well as message authenticity for the digital ecosystem.
Communication Language Specifications For Digital Ecosystems
5,480
This paper defines the specifications of a management language intended to automate the control and administration of various service components connected to a digital ecosystem. It is called EML short for Ecosystem Management Language and it is based on proprietary syntax and notation and contains a set of managerial commands issued by the system's administrator via a command console. Additionally, EML is shipped with a collection of self-adaptation procedures called SAP. Their purpose is to provide self-adaptation properties to the ecosystem allowing it to self-optimize itself based on the state of its execution environment. On top of that, there exists the EMU short for Ecosystem Management Unit which interprets, validates, parses, and executes EML commands and SAP procedures. Future research can improve upon EML so much so that it can be extended to support a larger set of commands in addition to a larger set of SAP procedures.
Management Language Specifications For Digital Ecosystems
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In dynamic and turbulent business environment, the need for success and survival of any organization is the ability of adapting to changes efficiently and cost-effectively. So, for developing software applications, one of the methods is Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) methodology and other is Agile Methodology. Since embracing changes is the indispensable concept of SOA development as well as Agile Development, using an appropriate SOA methodology able to adapt changes even during system development with the preservation of software quality is necessary. In this paper, a new approach consisted of five steps is presented to add agility to SOA methodologies. This approach, before any SOA-based development, helps architect(s) to determine Core Business Processes (CBPs) by using agile principals for establishing Core Architecture. The most important advantage of this approach according to the results of case study is possibility of embracing changes with the preservation of software quality in SOA developments.
An Approach for Agile SOA Development using Agile Principals
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This short paper describes early experiments to validate the capabilities of a component-based platform to observe and control a software architecture in the small. This is part of a whole process for resilient computing, i.e. targeting the adaptation of fault-tolerance mechanisms at runtime.
Experimenting with Component-Based Middleware for Adaptive Fault Tolerant Computing
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With the explosive growth of the number of services published over the Internet, it is difficult to select satisfactory web services among the candidate web services which provide similar functionalities. Quality of Service (QoS) is considered as the most important non-functional criterion for service selection. But this criterion is no longer considered as the only criterion to rank web services, satisfying user's preferences. The similarity measure (outputs-inputs similarity) between concepts based on ontology in an interconnected network of semantic Web services involved in a composition can be used as a distinguishing criterion to estimate the semantic quality of selected services for the composite service. Coupling the semantic similarity as the functional aspect and quality of services allows us to further constrain and select services for the valid composite services. In this paper, we present an overall service selection and ranking framework which firstly classify candidate web services to different QoS levels respect to user's QoS requirements and preferences with an Associative Classification algorithm and then rank the most qualified candidate services based on their functional quality through semantic matching. The experimental results show that proposed framework can satisfy service requesters' non-functional requirements.
Web service selection based on ranking of qos using associative classification
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Cohesion is a core design quality that has a great impact on posterior development and maintenance. By the nature of software, the cohesion of a system is diminished as the system evolves. God classes are code defects resulting from software evolution, having heterogeneous responsibilities highly coupled with other classes and often large in size, which makes it difficult to maintain the system. The existing work on identifying and decomposing God classes heavily relies on internal class information to identify God classes and responsibilities. However, in object-oriented systems, responsibilities should be analyzed with respect to not only internal class information, but also method interactions. In this paper, we present a novel approach for detecting God classes and decomposing their responsibilities based on the semantics of methods and method interactions. We evaluate the approach using JMeter v2.5.1 and the results are promising.
A Semantic-Based Approach for Detecting and Decomposing God Classes
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Many cost estimation models have been proposed over the last three decades. In this study, we investigate fuzzy ID3 decision tree as a method for software effort estimation. Fuzzy ID software effort estimation model is designed by incorporating the principles of ID3 decision tree and the concepts of the fuzzy settheoretic; permitting the model to handle uncertain and imprecise data when presenting the software projects. MMRE (Mean Magnitude of Relative Error) and Pred(l) (Prediction at level l) are used, as measures of prediction accuracy, for this study. A series of experiments is reported using ISBSG software projects dataset. Fuzzy trees are grown using different fuzziness control thresholds. Results showed that optimizing the fuzzy ID3 parameters can improve greatly the accuracy of the generated software cost estimate.
Investigating Effort Prediction of Software Projects on the ISBSG Dataset
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Recently, many healthcare organizations are adopting CRM as a strategy, which involves using technology to organize, automate, and coordinate business processes, in managing interactions with their patients. CRM with the Web technology provides healthcare providers the ability to broaden their services beyond usual practices, and thus offers suitable environment using latest technology to achieve superb patient care. This paper discusses and demonstrates how a new approach in CRM based on Web 2.0 will help the healthcare providers improving their customer support, avoiding conflict, and promoting better health to patient. With this new approach patients will benefit from the customized personal service with full information access to perform self managed their own health. It also helps healthcare providers retaining the right customer. A conceptual framework of the new approach will be discussed.
Evaluating CRM Implementation in Healthcare Organization
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Neutral landscapes and mutational robustness are believed to be important enablers of evolvability in biology. We apply these concepts to software, defining mutational robustness to be the fraction of random mutations that leave a program's behavior unchanged. Test cases are used to measure program behavior and mutation operators are taken from genetic programming. Although software is often viewed as brittle, with small changes leading to catastrophic changes in behavior, our results show surprising robustness in the face of random software mutations. The paper describes empirical studies of the mutational robustness of 22 programs, including 14 production software projects, the Siemens benchmarks, and 4 specially constructed programs. We find that over 30% of random mutations are neutral with respect to their test suite. The results hold across all classes of programs, for mutations at both the source code and assembly instruction levels, across various programming languages, and are only weakly related to test suite coverage. We conclude that mutational robustness is an inherent property of software, and that neutral variants (i.e., those that pass the test suite) often fulfill the program's original purpose or specification. Based on these results, we conjecture that neutral mutations can be leveraged as a mechanism for generating software diversity. We demonstrate this idea by generating a population of neutral program variants and showing that the variants automatically repair unknown bugs with high probability. Neutral landscapes also provide a partial explanation for recent results that use evolutionary computation to automatically repair software bugs.
Software Mutational Robustness
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Fast Abstracts at EDCC 2012 are short presentations, aiming to serve as a rapid and flexible mechanism to report on current work that may or may not be complete, introduce new ideas to the community, and state positions on controversial issues or open problems. This way, fast abstracts provide an opportunity to introduce new work, or present radical opinions, and receive early feedback from the community. Contributions are welcome from both academia and industry. The goal of the Student Forum is to encourage students to attend EDCC 2012 and present their work, exchange ideas with researchers and practitioners, and get early feedback on their research efforts. All papers were peer-reviewed by at least three program committee members, and the authors were provided with detailed comments on their work. In the end we had one accepted paper for the Student forum.
EDCC 2012 - Fast Abstracts & Student Forum Proceedings
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Software design is one of the most important and key activities in the system development life cycle (SDLC) phase that ensures the quality of software. Different key areas of design are very vital to be taken into consideration while designing software. Software design describes how the software system is decomposed and managed in smaller components. Object-oriented (OO) paradigm has facilitated software industry with more reliable and manageable software and its design. The quality of the software design can be measured through different metrics such as Chidamber and Kemerer (CK) design metrics, Mood Metrics & Lorenz and Kidd metrics. CK metrics is one of the oldest and most reliable metrics among all metrics available to software industry to evaluate OO design. This paper presents an evaluation of CK metrics to propose an improved CK design metrics values to reduce the defects during software design phase in software. This paper will also describe that whether a significant effect of any CK design metrics exists on total number of defects per module or not. This is achieved by conducting survey in two software development companies.
Evaluation of the Design Metric to Reduce the Number of Defects in Software Development
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Accurately estimating the software size, cost, effort and schedule is probably the biggest challenge facing software developers today. It has major implications for the management of software development because both the overestimates and underestimates have direct impact for causing damage to software companies. Lot of models have been proposed over the years by various researchers for carrying out effort estimations. Also some of the studies for early stage effort estimations suggest the importance of early estimations. New paradigms offer alternatives to estimate the software development effort, in particular the Computational Intelligence (CI) that exploits mechanisms of interaction between humans and processes domain knowledge with the intention of building intelligent systems (IS). Among IS, Artificial Neural Network and Fuzzy Logic are the two most popular soft computing techniques for software development effort estimation. In this paper neural network models and Mamdani FIS model have been used to predict the early stage effort estimations using the student dataset. It has been found that Mamdani FIS was able to predict the early stage efforts more efficiently in comparison to the neural network models based models.
Comparing Soft Computing Techniques For Early Stage Software Development Effort Estimations
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This dissertation discusses several problems loosely related, because they all involve a verification condition generator. The Boogie language is introduced; the architecture of a verification-generator is described. Then come more interesting parts. (1) Moving to a passive form representation can be seen as an automatic transformation into a pure functional language. How to formalize this transformation and what is its complexity? (2) How do various ways of describing the semantics of procedural languages (predicate transformers, operational semantics) relate to each other? (3) How to do incremental verification? That is, how to work less when re-verifying a program that changed only a little since the verifier was last run. (4) How to detect unreachable code, taking into account formal specifications?
The Design and Algorithms of a Verification Condition Generator
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One of the main challenges when verifying multi-threaded Java applications is the state space explosion problem. Due to thread interleavings, the number of states that the model checker has to verify can grow rapidly and impede the feasibility of verification. In the Java language, the source of thread interleavings can be the system under test as well as the Java Development Kit (JDK) itself. In our paper, we propose a method to minimize the state space explosion problem for applications verified under the Java PathFinder (JPF) model checker. Our method is based on abstracting the state of the application to a smaller domain and implementing application behavior using the Model Java Interface (MJI) of JPF. To show the capabilities of our approach, we have created a JPF extension called jpf-concurrent which abstracts classes from the Java Concurrency Utilities. Several benchmarks proved the usefulness of our approach. In all cases, our implementation was faster than the JDK implementation when running under the JPF model checker. Moreover, our implementation led to significantly smaller state spaces.
jpf-concurrent: An extension of Java PathFinder for java.util.concurrent
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Software evolves. After many revisions and improvements software gets retired and replaced. When replacement takes place, one needs to migrate the data from the old database into the new database, so the new application can replace the old application. Student administration application (SAA) currently used by European University (EURM) has been outgrown by the university, and needs replacement. iKnow application developed as part of the iKnow Tempus project is scheduled to replace the existing Student Administration application at EURM. This paper describes the problems that were encountered while migrating the data from the old databases of SAA to the new database designed for the iKnow application. The problems were resolved using the well-known solutions typical for an ETL process, since data migration can be considered as a type of ETL process. In this paper we describe the solutions for the problems that we encountered while migrating the data.
Migration of data for iKnow application at EURM - a case study
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This paper presents our proposal for the evolution of the metamodel for the Task Algebra in the Task Flow model for the Discovery Method. The original Task Algebra is based on simple and compound tasks structured using operators such as sequence, selection, and parallel composition. Recursion and encapsulation were also considered. We propose additional characteristics to improve the capabilities of the metamodel to represent accurately the Task Flow Model.
Towards a new metamodel for the Task Flow Model of the Discovery Method
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Nowadays, society has recognized that the lack of access to spatial data and tools for their analysis is the limiting factor of economic development. It came to the realization that without the single information space, which is implemented in the form of spatial data infrastructures, a progressive business development is impossible. Spatial data infrastructures will support a variety of tasks, which requires the binding of geospatial information from multiple sources. In the last few years, the rate of progress in spatial data collection was higher, than in management and analysis of data. Infrastructures allow the accumulated data to be available to large groups of users, and infrastructure of analysis allows the data to be effectively used for such tasks as municipal planning, science research, etc. Moreover, free access to the information resources and instruments of analysis will serve as an additional impulse to development of application models in corresponding areas of expertise. The goal of this paper is to indicate possible solutions to the client-side problems of spatial data analysis in distributed environments, using the developing application for data analysis as an example.
Development of application for discovering and binding to published geospatial processes in distributed environments
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This report describes and illustrates several modelling techniques proposed by Communication Analysis; namely Communicative Event Diagram, Message Structures and Event Specification Templates. The Communicative Event Diagram is a business process modelling technique that adopts a communicational perspective by focusing on communicative interactions when describing the organizational work practice, instead of focusing on physical activities1; at this abstraction level, we refer to business activities as communicative events. Message Structures is a technique based on structured text that allows specifying the messages associated to communicative events. Event Specification Templates are a means to organise the requirements concerning a communicative event. This report can be useful to analysts and business process modellers in general, since, according to our industrial experience, it is possible to apply many Communication Analysis concepts, guidelines and criteria to other business process modelling notations such as BPMN. Also, Message Structures can complement business process models created with other notations different than Communicative Event Diagram.
Communication Analysis modelling techniques
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Ecosystems are complex and dynamic systems. Over billions of years, they have developed advanced capabilities to provide stable functions, despite changes in their environment. In this paper, we argue that the laws of organization and development of ecosystems provide a solid and rich source of inspiration to lay the foundations for novel software construction paradigms that provide stability as much as openness.
Towards Ecology Inspired Software Engineering
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This paper introduces Dexpler, a software package which converts Dalvik bytecode to Jimple. Dexpler is built on top of Dedexer and Soot. As Jimple is Soot's main internal rep- resentation of code, the Dalvik bytecode can be manipu- lated with any Jimple based tool, for instance for performing point-to or flow analysis.
Dexpler: Converting Android Dalvik Bytecode to Jimple for Static Analysis with Soot
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