Contemporary Software Research Articles

State-of-the-Art Capabilities of Computer Graphics in Museum Lighting Modelling

Computer graphics and technologies have currently come a long way from engineering methods of environment and space parameter calculation. In the spheres of light engineering and lighting design, it is time to switch to modelling of illumination using mainly graphic lighting effects and imagery rather than digital values. Such transfer is impossible without trying to form the methodology and recommendations for 3D modelling of illumination. The authors of this article attempt to describe the key approaches to 3D modelling of museum illumination using contemporary software. The operating lighting installation of one of the halls of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts is used as an example. Based on the achieved results of the research, we tried to describe the methodology and to provide recommendations for quality design and modelling of illumination in any exhibition spaces. The described methodology may be useful both for lighting engineers, architects, designers, and for curators and museum employees. The former may use the methodology for technical approach and implementation of museum illumination while the latter may use it to find a common language with the former and to compile more accurate terms of reference for them.

Automation for CI/CD Pipeline for Code Delivery with Multiple Technologies

In contemporary software development, the use of diverse technologies is prevalent, introducing challenges in managing Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. This white paper investigates the complexities associated with deploying code written in multiple technologies within a unified CI/CD pipeline. It proposes a comprehensive solution for effective automation to enhance agility, efficiency, and reliability in software delivery.

Alternatives for testing of context-aware software systems in non-academic settings: results from a Rapid Review

Context-awareness challenges the engineering of contemporary software systems and jeopardizes their testing. The variation of context represents a relevant behavior that deepens the limitations of available software testing practices and technologies. However, such software systems are mainstream. Therefore, researchers in non-academic settings also face challenges when developing and testing contemporary software systems. To understand how researchers deal with the variation of context when testing context-aware software systems developed in non-academic settings. To undertake a secondary study ( Rapid Review ) to uncover the necessary evidence from primary sources describing the testing of context-aware software systems outside academia. The current testing initiatives in non-academic settings aim to generate or improve test suites that can deal with the context variation and the sheer volume of test input possibilities. They mostly rely on modeling the systems' dynamic behavior and increasing computing resources to generate test inputs to achieve this. We found no evidence of test results aiming at managing context variation through the testing lifecycle process. So far, the identified testing initiatives and strategies are not ready for mainstream adoption. They are all domain-specific, and while the ideas and approaches can be reproduced in distinct settings, the technologies are to be re-engineered and tailored to the context-awareness of contemporary software systems in different problem domains. Further and joint investigations in academia and experiences in non-academic settings can evolve the body of knowledge regarding the testing of contemporary software systems in the field.

Search-based detection of code changes introducing performance regression

• Detecting code changes responsible for performance regression is time-consuming. • Dynamic analysis is a credible source in detection performance regression but expensive. • Detecting performance regression problem formulated as optimization problem. • Detection rules generated by using a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm. In contemporary software development, developers commonly conduct regression testing to ensure that code changes do not affect software quality. Conducting performance regression testing after every code change is known to be expensive which emigres the need to direct the performance regression testing efforts on code changes that are most likely introducing performance regression. In this paper, we exploit code change metrics to identify the group introducing the regression based on a pre-trained detection rule. We present PRICE approach as a new formulation of detecting code changes introducing performance regression as an optimization problem using multi-objective evolutionary algorithms. PRICE evaluated using a set of 8000 commits, extracted from the Git project. Results show the effectiveness of our approach in accurately detecting performance regression introducing code changes. The average regression detection PRICE provides is 77% which is 22% more than the state-of-the-art deterministic approach. This improvement didn’t compromise the detection of the contradicted code changes that are not introducing a regression. PRICE provides detection of code changes not introducing a regression averaged 63%, which is also an improvement of 14% than the comparative approach. Using PRICE, we were able to explore new search spaces and provide competing results.

MetHoS: a platform for large-scale processing, storage and analysis of metabolomics data

BackgroundModern mass spectrometry has revolutionized the detection and analysis of metabolites but likewise, let the data skyrocket with repositories for metabolomics data filling up with thousands of datasets. While there are many software tools for the analysis of individual experiments with a few to dozens of chromatograms, we see a demand for a contemporary software solution capable of processing and analyzing hundreds or even thousands of experiments in an integrative manner with standardized workflows.ResultsHere, we introduce MetHoS as an automated web-based software platform for the processing, storage and analysis of great amounts of mass spectrometry-based metabolomics data sets originating from different metabolomics studies. MetHoS is based on Big Data frameworks to enable parallel processing, distributed storage and distributed analysis of even larger data sets across clusters of computers in a highly scalable manner. It has been designed to allow the processing and analysis of any amount of experiments and samples in an integrative manner. In order to demonstrate the capabilities of MetHoS, thousands of experiments were downloaded from the MetaboLights database and used to perform a large-scale processing, storage and statistical analysis in a proof-of-concept study.ConclusionsMetHoS is suitable for large-scale processing, storage and analysis of metabolomics data aiming at untargeted metabolomic analyses. It is freely available at: https://methos.cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de/. Users interested in analyzing their own data are encouraged to apply for an account.

Совершенствование организации метрологического обеспечения на основе методов исследования операций

The article considers the problem of improving the methods of organizing the metrological support of enterprises based on the methods of operation research as well as the problem of optimizing the traveling routes of metrological groups mathematically reduced to the classical traveling salesman problem. A brief overview of the methods used in this task is presented, and the relationships between them are shown. Solving the problems based on contemporary geographic information systems and standard software modules from the Python application libraries are proposed. Much attention is paid to simple methods for checking the correctness of the results obtained by standard methods, used by metrological service employees not specialized in the field of programming and geographic information systems, which increases the likelihood of errors. To identify errors occurring when working with geoinformation systems, allowing the matrix of distances between points to be determined, a simple formula borrowed from topography is proposed for calculating the distances between points with known coordinates. With a developed road network, the distances calculated in this way are close to the results obtained in geoinformation systems taking into account the location of highways. The results of solving the problem are given on the example of the organization of verification and repair of measuring instruments at food industry enterprises in the city of Chimkent and he Turkestan region of the Republic of Kazakhstan

Design and implementation of a smart beehive and its monitoring system using microservices in the context of IoT and open data

• It is essential to keep honey bees healthy for providing a sustainable ecological balance. • One way of keeping honey bees healthy is to be able to control the general conditions in a beehive and also outside of a beehive. • Monitoring systems have recently been implemented based on WSN and IoT to monitor the activities of honey bees in beehives as well. • Microservices-based monitoring system can be of great help to be able to control the activities of honey bees and more importantly to be able to keep them healthy in beehives. • We design and implement of a sustainable WSN-based beehive monitoring platform using microservice architecture in this paper. It is essential to keep honey bees healthy for providing a sustainable ecological balance. One way of keeping honey bees healthy is to be able to monitor and control the general conditions in a beehive and also outside of a beehive. Monitoring systems offer an effective way of accessing, visualizing, sharing, and managing data that is gathered from performed agricultural and livestock activities for domain stakeholders. Such systems have recently been implemented based on wireless sensor networks (WSN) and IoT to monitor the activities of honey bees in beehives as well. Scholars have shown considerable interests in proposing IoT- and WSN-based beehive monitoring systems, but much of the research up to now lacks in proposing appropriate architecture for open data driven beehive monitoring systems. Developing a robust monitoring system based on a contemporary software architecture such as microservices can be of great help to be able to control the activities of honey bees and more importantly to be able to keep them healthy in beehives. This research sets out to design and implementation of a sustainable WSN-based beehive monitoring platform using a microservice architecture. We pointed out that by adopting microservices one can deal with long-standing problems with heterogeneity, interoperability, scalability, agility, reliability, maintainability issues, and in turn achieve sustainable WSN-based beehive monitoring systems.

Mitigating Issues With/of/for True Personalization.

A common but false perception persists about the level and type of personalization in the offerings of contemporary software, information systems, and services, known as Personalization Myopia: this involves a tendency for researchers to think that there are many more personalized services than there genuinely are, for the general audience to think that they are offered personalized services when they really are not, and for practitioners to have a mistaken idea of what makes a service personalized. And yet in an era, which mashes up large amounts of data, business analytics, deep learning, and persuasive systems, true personalization is a most promising approach for innovating and developing new types of systems and services—including support for behavior change. The potential of true personalization is elaborated in this article, especially with regards to persuasive software features and the oft-neglected fact that users change over time.

Natural language modelled and printed in 3D: a multi-disciplinary approach

Natural language is a high-dimensional form that evolved through innovation and repetition over millennia. We tend to imagine language in the shape dictated by our writing system, as words on a page, or as sound. The aim of this paper is to explore how one aspect of this high-dimensional form could be rendered in 3D. Contemporary software developed for the production of film and video animation became a tool for us to model natural language. The paper begins with an overview of historical material about features of language and computational design that became relevant for our project. The whole system and structure of a language, its grammar has been compared to a geometry for centuries, as principles that define its shape. One aspect of this complex configuration was selected for 3D modelling; evidentiality. This aspect of every language points at the evidence for what people are saying. The paper lays out the research trajectory that allowed us to conceive of evidentiality as a third dimension, which is often lost in translation. We offer a step-by-step account of our methodology and 3D design process. Our findings consist of four introductory prototypes and digital 3D images, each one designed on the basis of a short language sample. The portrayal of a language excerpt as a digitally frozen shape enabled us to print natural language in 3D. Such 3D language objects not only extend the legacy of form-finding within computational design, but also allows for spatial intuition to help us get a more solid grasp of languages we may not speak.

Deploying Machine Learning Models Using Progressive Web Applications: Implementation Using a Neural Network Prediction Model for Pneumonia Related Child Mortality in The Gambia.

BackgroundTranslating research outputs into practical tools for medical practitioners is a neglected area and could have a substantial impact. One of the barriers to implementing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications is their practical deployment in the field. Traditional web-based (i.e., server sided) applications are dependent on reliable internet connections, which may not be readily available in rural areas. Native mobile apps require device specific programming skills as well as contemporary hardware and software, with often rapid and unpredictable platform specific changes. This is a major challenge for using AI/ML tools in resource-limited settings.MethodsAn emerging technology, progressive web applications (PWAs), first introduced by Google in 2015, offers an opportunity to overcome the challenges of deploying bespoke AI/ML systems. The same PWA code can be implemented across all desktop platforms, iOS and Android phones and tablets. In addition to platform independence, a PWA can be designed to be primarily offline.ResultsWe demonstrate how a neural network-based pneumonia mortality prediction triage tool was migrated from a typical academic framework (paper and web-based prototype) to a tool that can be used offline on any mobile phone—the most convenient deployment vehicle. After an initial online connection to download the software, the application runs entirely offline, reading data from cached memory, and running code via JavaScript. On mobile devices the application is installed as a native app, without the inconvenience of platform specific code through manufacturer code stores.DiscussionWe show that an ML application can be deployed as a platform independent offline PWA using a pneumonia-related child mortality prediction tool as an example. The aim of this tool was to assist clinical staff in triaging children for hospital admission, by predicting their risk of death. PWAs function seamlessly when their host devices lose internet connectivity, making them ideal for e-health apps that can help improve health and save lives in resource-limited settings in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3).

Resources Consumption Accounting, Cost Reduction For Customers, and Competitive Advantage: An Iraqi Case Study

Accuracy and quality of customer cost information depend on the selection and execution of a contemporary strategy to cost accounting and administration that is responsive to fierce competition between economic units and incorporates resource consumption accounting. RCA, the latest generation of cost accounting and contemporary management software, enables managers to make informed choices and establish effective plans. This research intends to illustrate the influence of resource consumption accounting in rationalizing customer costs in the bags / Hilla facility by lowering product prices, detecting idle energy, and identifying the factory's best customers. In the Al-Hilla / Al-Hilla / Al-Hilla plant, a case-study technique was applied. Through this process, an evaluation of the laboratory's actual expenses and the application of resource consumption accounting are made using the laboratory's existing data for the year 2018. The research concluded that the effectiveness of customer cost analysis is contingent on the technique used and that accounting for resource consumption is one of the most effective and accurate methods for cost rationalization. The resource consumption accounting highlights the economic unit is resources, the entwined relationships between them, and their optimum usage. Furthermore, it finds idle (untapped) energy and eliminates it from goods and services to minimize prices. Thus, the researcher's most significant suggestions affirm that enough attention is given to the application of resource consumption, accounting for their contribution to attaining this aim.

Analyzing Customer Profitability Using Resource Consumption Accounting For Improving Firm Performance

Accuracy and quality of customer cost information depend on the selection and execution of a contemporary strategy to cost accounting and administration that is responsive to fierce competition between economic units and incorporates resource consumption accounting. RCA, the latest generation of cost accounting and contemporary management software, enables managers to make informed choices and establish effective plans. This research intends to illustrate the influence of resource consumption accounting in rationalizing customer costs in the bags / Hilla facility by lowering product prices, detecting idle energy, and identifying the factory's best customers. In the Al-Hilla / Al-Hilla / Al-Hilla plant, a case-study technique was applied. Through this process, an evaluation of the laboratory's actual expenses and the application of resource consumption accounting are made using the laboratory's existing data for the year 2018. The research concluded that the effectiveness of customer cost analysis is contingent on the technique used and that accounting for resource consumption is one of the most effective and accurate methods for cost rationalization. The resource consumption accounting highlights the economic unit is resources, the entwined relationships between them, and their optimum usage. Furthermore, it finds idle (untapped) energy and eliminates it from goods and services to minimize prices. Thus, the researcher's most significant suggestions affirm that enough attention is given to the application of resource consumption, accounting for their contribution to attaining this aim.

Secure software development: industrial practice - a review

The current state of application assets with respect to their development, functionality, scalability, user friendliness, and compatibility with legacy systems has witnessed an unprecedented degree of positive improvements. This induced increase in productivity and value has been a product of the technological innovations within and around the software development landscape. Owing to specific software development practices including software reusability, Object Oriented Programming (OOP), encapsulation, and portability, all sectors of the economy have come to embrace software products that have helped to drive business transactions. Nonetheless, the proliferation of software which has driven up the velocity, veracity and volume of data associated with transactions has become a goldmine for grabs. Hackers and adversaries alike have thus capitalized on this development to exploit the potential threats and vulnerabilities associated with software products. Insecure software is global issue, and one that impacts individuals, organizations and governments. Data loss is both a security and privacy issue, with compliance, regulatory and legal concerns, and bad actors are relentless in their efforts to steal, deface, alter/manipulate, destroy, and compromise software systems. Organizations should therefore embrace secure code principles, threat modeling, and institute a Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC) practice that will aid the embedment of security into the development phase, to contain the risks, threats, and vulnerabilities that are inherent in software development. This paper demonstrates an effort to provide and arm organizations with the necessary tools, processes, and mechanisms that can be leveraged to combat cyber-threats and enforce Information Assurance (IA) within and around enterprise application assets. Beginning with an overview of the contemporary software development practices witnessed in diverse organizations, including financial, energy, aviation, commerce, nuclear, defense, and several other Critical Infrastructure (CI) organizations, the tenets of a composite, structured and robust. SSDLC has been presented to promote a defense-in-depth security for enterprise organizations.

Reuse in Contemporary Software Engineering Practices – An Exploratory Case Study in A Medium-sized Company

Background: Software practice is evolving with changing technologies and practices such as InnerSource, DevOps, and microservices. It is important to investigate the impact of contemporary software engineering (SE) practices on software reuse. Aim: This study aims to characterize software reuse in contemporary SE practices and investigate its implications in terms of costs, benefits, challenges, and potential improvements in a medium-sized company. Method: We performed an exploratory case study by conducting interviews, group discussions, and reviewing company documentation to investigate software reuse in the context of contemporary SE practices in the case company. Results: The results indicate that the development for reuse in contemporary SE practices incurs additional coordination, among other costs. Development with reuse led to relatively fewer additional costs and resulted in several benefits such as better product quality and less development and delivery time. Ownership of reusable assets is challenging in contemporary SE practice. InnerSource practices may help mitigate the top perceived challenges: discoverability and ownership of the reusable assets, knowledge sharing and reuse measurement. Conclusion: Reuse in contemporary SE practices is not without additional costs and challenges. However, the practitioners perceive costs as investments that benefit the company in the long run.

An Exploration of npm Package Co-Usage Examples from Stack Overflow: A Case Study

Third-party package usage has become a common practice in contemporary software development. Developers often face different challenges, including choosing the right libraries, installing errors, discrepancies, setting up the environment, and building failures during software development. The risks of maintaining a third-party package are well known, but it is unclear how information from Stack Overflow (SO) can be useful. This paper performed an empirical study to explore npm package co-usage examples from SO. From over 30,000 SO question posts, we extracted 2,100 posts with package usage information and matched them against the 217,934 npm library package. We find that, popular and highly used libraries are not discussed as often in SO. However, we can see that the accepted answers may prove useful, as we believe that the usage examples and executable commands could be reused for tool support.

Constructing a software requirements specification and design for electronic IT news magazine system

Requirements engineering process intends to obtain software services and constraints. This process is essential to meet the customer's needs and expectations. This process includes three main activities in general. These are detecting requirements by interacting with software stakeholders, transferring these requirements into a standard document, and examining that the requirements really define the software that the client needs. Functional requirements are services that the software should deliver to the end-user. In addition, functional requirements describe how the software should respond to specific inputs, and how the software should behave in certain circumstances. This paper aims to develop a software requirements specification document of the electronic IT news magazine system. The electronic magazine provides users to post and view up-to-date IT news. Still, there is a lack in the literature of comprehensive studies about the construction of the electronic magazine software specification and design in conformance with the contemporary software development processes. Moreover, there is a need for a suitable research framework to support the requirements engineering process. The novelty of this paper is the construction of software specification and design of the electronic magazine by following the Al-Msie'deen research framework. All the documents of software requirements specification and design have been constructed to conform to the agile usage-centered design technique and the proposed research framework. A requirements specification and design are suggested and followed for the construction of the electronic magazine software. This study proved that involving users extensively in the process of software requirements specification and design will lead to the creation of dependable and acceptable software systems.

Requirements Engineering Technology for the IoT Software Systems

Contemporary software systems (CSS) – such as the internet of things (IoT) based software systems – incorporate new concerns and characteristics inherent to the network, software, hardware, context awareness, interoperability, and others, compared to conventional software systems. In this sense, requirements engineering (RE) plays a fundamental role in ensuring these software systems' correct development looking for the business and end-user needs. Several software technologies supporting RE are available in the literature, but many do not cover all CSS specificities, notably those based on IoT. This research article presents RETIoT (Requirements Engineering Technology for the Internet of Things based software systems), aiming to provide methodological, technical, and tooling support to produce IoT software system requirements document. It is composed of an IoT scenario description technique, a checklist to verify IoT scenarios, construction processes, and templates for IoT software systems. A feasibility study was carried out in IoT system projects to observe its templates and identify improvement opportunities. The results indicate the feasibility of RETIoT templates' when used to capture IoT characteristics. However, further experimental studies represent research opportunities, strengthen confidence in its elements (construction process, techniques, and templates), and capture end-user perception.

Exploring the effects of team coordination and power distance on effective software process tailoring: a theoretical perspective

PurposeSoftware process tailoring (SPT) plays a critical role in contemporary software development. Because SPT determines how a software project proceeds, its effectiveness should be investigated. Specifically, SPT is a collaborative yet highly conflictual process, and the existing literature has paid little or no attention to how team members coordinate and to how power distance (PD) influences coordination under this conflictual situation for the purpose of fostering SPT effectiveness.Design/methodology/approachA propositional research method is utilized by reviewing the extant literature regarding SPT, team coordination and PD. Accordingly, several propositions are developed to theorize the contributive and moderating effects of team coordinative capabilities and PD on SPT effectiveness.FindingsThis study advances the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of the four distinct coordination capabilities in performing SPT, which will help software firms comprehend the moderating effects of PD on the relationships among coordinative capabilities and SPT effectiveness.Originality/valueThis study extends coordination theory and reveals four coordination capabilities that nurture SPT effectiveness. Moreover, this study demonstrates how power plays a role in the coordination of a team through the collaborative yet divergent SPT decision process to yield an integrative tailoring solution. In particular, we take a fresh viewpoint of PD considering the member-member relationship in exploring its moderating effects in the SPT context.

Domain Usability Evaluation

Contemporary software systems focus on usability and accessibility from the point of view of effectiveness and ergonomics. However, the correct usage of the domain dictionary and the description of domain relations and properties via their user interfaces are often neglected. We use the term domain usability (DU) to describe the aspects of the user interface related to the terminology and domain. Our experience showed that poor domain usability reduces the memorability and effectiveness of user interfaces. To address this problem, we describe a method called ADUE (Automatic Domain Usability Evaluation) for the automated evaluation of selected DU properties on existing user interfaces. As a prerequisite to the method, metrics for formal evaluation of domain usability, a form stereotype recognition algorithm, and general application terms filtering algorithm have been proposed. We executed ADUE on several real-world Java applications and report our findings. We also provide proposals to modify existing manual usability evaluation techniques for the purpose of domain usability evaluation.

Gravitational search algorithm based strategy for combinatorial t-way test suite generation

Due to different users' requirements, contemporary software has become feature-rich in terms of input functions (i.e., parameters) and selections (i.e., values). Exhaustive testing on sophisticated software systems is impractical as far as testing time and cost are concerned. Various test case design strategies have been proposed in the literature, such as equivalence class partitioning, boundary value analysis and decision tables. Unlike earlier works, combinatorial t-way testing supports the detection of faults caused by two or more input parameter interactions and thus efficiently minimizes the size of the test suite. Over the past few years, metaheuristic algorithms have appeared to be the most common choice for researchers since their effectiveness proves to offer optimal/near-optimal results. However, generating a t-way test suite is an NP-hard problem, and no single t-way strategy can guarantee to show superiority to others for all types of system configurations. Hence, this paper presents a new t-way strategy based on the Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA), known as the Gravitational Search Test Generator (GSTG). The primary contribution of this paper is that GSA has adapted for the first time to t-way test data generation. The benchmarking results showcase that GSTG obtains competitive results in most system configurations compared to other existing strategies and addresses higher combination coverage (i.e., t ≤ 10).