Application Development Cycle Research Articles

Exploring how experienced and unexperienced professionals use a privacy threat modeling methodology

Online Social Networks (OSNs) have become one of the principal technological phenomena of the Web, gaining an eminent popularity among its users. With the growing worldwide expansion of OSN services, people have devoted time and effort to maintaining and manipulating their online identity on these systems. However, the processing of personal data through these networks has exposed users to various privacy threats. Consequently, new solutions need to be developed for addressing the threat scenarios to which a user is potentially exposed. In this sense, this paper proposes PTMOL (Privacy Threat MOdeling Language), an approach for modeling privacy threats in OSN domain. The proposed language aims to support the capture, organization and analysis of specific privacy threats that a user is exposed to when sharing assets in a social application, also enabling the definition of countermeasures to prevent or mitigate the effects of threat scenarios. The first language version has undergone a preliminary empirical study that identified its validity as a modeling language. The results indicate that the use of the language is potentially useful for identifying real privacy threats due to its exploratory and reflexive nature. We expect to contribute to support designers in making more preemptive decisions about user privacy risk, helping them to introduce privacy early in the development cycle of social applications.

Pembangunan Aplikasi Pembelajaran Mudah Alih (M-Learning) Adik-Adik Solat untuk Meningkatkan Pengalaman Pembelajaran dalam Solat

Prayer (Solat) is an act of worship that is a pillar of Islam. It is an obligation for a Muslim that must be performed. Many verses of the Qur'an and hadith emphasize the importance of educating prayer from an early age. The learning of prayer is learned starting at the pre-school level and usually using the face-to-face method. However, at this time with the diversity of the latest technology and the experience of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, a learning method that is more innovative and can be implemented independently is very desirable to be implemented. This also gives a new breath to the teaching and learning of prayer. This paper would like to discuss the development of the Adik-Adik Solat M-Learning Application. The ADDIE methodology is used in the application development cycle process. To identify the level of acceptance of the application as well as to know the characteristics of the application that contribute to the improvement of the learning experience, a survey was conducted on a group of school students. The application of learning methods that emphasize visual, audio, and kinesthetic (VAK) approaches was identified to provide an enhancement to the learning experience. This application has great potential to be commercialized and expanded to other fields in the future.

Clickable Object Detection Network for a Wide Range of Mobile Screen Resolutions

Recently, as the development cycle of applications has been shortened, it is important to develop rapid and accurate application testing technology. Since application testing requires a lot of cost, mobile component detection technology using deep learning is essential to prevent the use of expensive human resources. In this paper, we shall propose a Clickable Object Detection Network (CODNet) for mobile component detection in a wide range of mobile screen resolutions. CODNet consists of three modules: feature extraction, deconvolution and prediction modules in order to provide performance improvement and scalability. The Feature Extraction module uses squeeze and excitation blocks to efficiently extract features and change the ratio of the input image to 1:2 most close to that of mobile screen. Deconvolution module provides feature map of various sizes by upsampling feature map through top-down pathway and lateral connections. The prediction module selects an anchor size suitable for the mobile environment using the Anchor Transfer block, among the set of anchor candidates obtained through the analysis of mobile dataset. Moreover, we shall improve object detection performance by building a new mobile screen dataset consisting of data collected from various resolutions and operating systems. We shall show that our model achieves competitive performance in mean average precision on our dataset compared to the other models.

A WoT Platform for Supporting Full-Cycle IoT Solutions from Edge to Cloud Infrastructures: A Practical Case.

Internet of Things (IoT) learning involves the acquisition of transversal skills ranging from the development based on IoT devices and sensors (edge computing) to the connection of the devices themselves to management environments that allow the storage and processing (cloud computing) of data generated by sensors. The usual development cycle for IoT applications consists of the following three stages: stage 1 corresponds to the description of the devices and basic interaction with sensors. In stage 2, data acquired by the devices/sensors are employed by communication models from the origin edge to the management middleware in the cloud. Finally, stage 3 focuses on processing and presentation models. These models present the most relevant indicators for IoT devices and sensors. Students must acquire all the necessary skills and abilities to understand and develop these types of applications, so lecturers need an infrastructure to enable the learning of development of full IoT applications. A Web of Things (WoT) platform named Labs of Things at UNED (LoT@UNED) has been used for this goal. This paper shows the fundamentals and features of this infrastructure, and how the different phases of the full development cycle of solutions in IoT environments are implemented using LoT@UNED. The proposed system has been tested in several computer science subjects. Students can perform remote experimentation with a collaborative WoT learning environment in the cloud, including the possibility to analyze the generated data by IoT sensors.

Really Small Shoe Boxes: On Realistic Quantum Resource Estimation

The reliable resource estimation and benchmarking of quantum algorithms is a critical component of the development cycle of viable quantum applications for quantum computers of all sizes. Determining resource bottlenecks in algorithms, especially when resource intensive error correction protocols are required, is crucial to reduce the cost of implementing viable algorithms on actual quantum hardware.

A novel model-based approach to support development cycle of robotic arm applications

The robotic-manipulator has, as aim, the integration of robots into people's quotidian issues. To this purpose, there are a great number of physical devices, such as sensors, actuators, auxiliary elements, tools. which can be incorporated into a robot. That is why integration, reuse, flexibility and adaptability are crucial characteristics demanded by current robotic applications. Using Model Driven Engineering (MDE) software development methodology that promotes an intensive use of models-systems' abstractions-, the complexity inherent to the robotic application design can be reduced. This work explores the advantages of the use of (MDE) to provide support to development cycle of such type of applications. So, in this paper, a modeling approach, where the model is the key concept, is developed to generate automatically the target code. In addition, using this concept, the design of the robotic-arm application could be done independently of robotics' communication middleware.

Model Driven Design Support for Mixed-Criticality Distributed Systems

Nowadays, it is more and more usual that applications provide critical and non-critical functionalities, the so-called mix-criticality applications. One of the main challenges for developing such applications is to isolate both application types, in such a way that non-critical functionalities do not interfere with the critical ones. The use of virtualization techniques like hypervisors can help to meet this objective. Indeed, a hypervisor is a software layer that provides hardware virtualization allowing different functionalities to be executed in different partitions which are temporally and spatially isolated. In this context, this paper proposes the use of modeling techniques to generate an initial set of constraints to the partition design necessary for a set of critical functionalities that coexist with non-critical ones. Furthermore, the proposed modeling approach supports all the development cycle of the component-based non-critical applications, from the design to the automatic generation of the skeleton code of their components.

COEUS: “semantic web in a box” for biomedical applications

BackgroundAs the “omics” revolution unfolds, the growth in data quantity and diversity is bringing about the need for pioneering bioinformatics software, capable of significantly improving the research workflow. To cope with these computer science demands, biomedical software engineers are adopting emerging semantic web technologies that better suit the life sciences domain. The latter’s complex relationships are easily mapped into semantic web graphs, enabling a superior understanding of collected knowledge. Despite increased awareness of semantic web technologies in bioinformatics, their use is still limited.ResultsCOEUS is a new semantic web framework, aiming at a streamlined application development cycle and following a “semantic web in a box” approach. The framework provides a single package including advanced data integration and triplification tools, base ontologies, a web-oriented engine and a flexible exploration API. Resources can be integrated from heterogeneous sources, including CSV and XML files or SQL and SPARQL query results, and mapped directly to one or more ontologies. Advanced interoperability features include REST services, a SPARQL endpoint and LinkedData publication. These enable the creation of multiple applications for web, desktop or mobile environments, and empower a new knowledge federation layer.ConclusionsThe platform, targeted at biomedical application developers, provides a complete skeleton ready for rapid application deployment, enhancing the creation of new semantic information systems. COEUS is available as open source at http://bioinformatics.ua.pt/coeus/.

Study on the Intelligent Fault Diagnostic Flat for the Shipboard Equipment Based on the Virtual Instrument and Wavelet Neural Network

Virtual instrument (VI) is an integration of the most recent PC technology, advanced testing technique and strong software package, and the VI system development is the modern technology trend in the automatic test and fault diagnosis domain, etc. Firstly, the intelligent fault diagnostic flat for the shipboard equipment is developed, applied the VI technology, wavelet neural network and database, in order to update entirely the testing means. Secondly, the modularization and universalization are proposed in its database-based design concept, realized the software and hardware design, and it broke through conventional check diagnosis patterns, resolved difficult to overcome problems brought on adopting existing conventional fashions examined and repaired the shipboard equipment, greatly shortened the maintenance cycle. Lastly, it was proved by experiments that the flat system has merits, such as high testing precision, strong flexibility and reliability and extensibility, and economical practicability. Also it can reduce the application development cycle and cost, and is of some values for developing the other fault diagnostic instrument.

Fault Grey Diagnostic System Based on Virtual Instrument

Take example for the fault diagnostic system for shipboard chemical defense equipment, it is developed, applied virtual instrument technology, grey system theory, and database, in order to update entirely the means of the equipment testing. The modularization and universalization are proposed in its database-based design concept, realizing the design of software and hardware. The ODBC technique is applied for the interconnection of databases to ensure the generality and flexibility of the system. The system mode the best of virtual instrument platform and grey diagnosis method, broke through conventional check diagnosis patterns for warships chemical defense equipment, solved the problems of state prediction and trouble-mode recognition of warships chemical defense equipment. It has been proved by experiments that the system has merits both high accuracy and economical practicability. Also it can reduce the application development cycle and cost.

Accessible design and testing in the application development process: considerations for an integrated approach

Accessible design principles should permeate virtually all phases of the application development cycle, using existing “best practices of software engineering” for accessibility purposes. This paper proposes a methodology for accessible design and testing that includes proven tools of software engineering, namely use cases and scenarios, to capture functional requirements. Guidelines developed through user testing and heuristics are made real using personas to exemplify accessibility requirements, reflecting a diversity of user capabilities and use contexts. For implementation and testing, test cases containing accessibility checkpoints are generated, based on the guidelines. Complementary to this methodology, expert reviews and user testing should be conducted for evaluation of the developed products and further refinement of the development process.

A Common Medium for Programming Operations-Research Models

Operations research is an interdisciplinary science that develops scientific methods for modeling and solving decision-making problems. Arguably, the two most established and commonly practiced OR methodologies are mathematical programming (also called optimization) and discrete-event system simulation (called simulation). Mathematical programming describes a decision problem as decision variables and as mathematical functions of variables that capture the objective and problem constraints. For dynamic systems that are too complex to allow exact, closed-form solutions in continuous time, simulation can identify and describe events of interest and model their occurrences at discrete points in time. Python can glue together independent software environments to improve the software development cycle for sophisticated operations-research applications, which integrate different modeling methodologies.

Investigation of IS professionals’ intention to practise secure development of applications

It is well known that software errors may lead to information security vulnerabilities, the breach of which can have considerable negative impacts for organizations. Studies have found that a large percentage of security defects in e-business applications are due to design-related flaws, which could be detected and corrected during applications development. Traditional methods of managing software application vulnerabilities have often been ad hoc and inadequate. A recent approach that promises to be more effective is to incorporate security requirements as part of the application development cycle. However, there is limited practice of secure development of applications (SDA) and lack of research investigating the phenomenon. Motivated by such concerns, the goal of this research is to investigate the factors that may influence the intention of information systems (IS) professionals to practise SDA, i.e., incorporate security as part of the application development lifecycle. This study develops two models based on the widely used theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and theory of reasoned action (TRA) to explain the phenomenon. Following model operationalization, a field survey of 184 IS professionals was conducted to empirically compare the explanatory power of the TPB-based model versus the TRA-based model. Consistent with TPB and TRA predictions, attitude and subjective norm were found to significantly impact intention to practise SDA for the overall survey sample. Attitude was in turn determined by product usefulness and career usefulness of SDA, while subjective norm was determined by interpersonal influence, but not by external influence. Contrary to TPB predictions, perceived behavioural controls, conceptualized in terms of self-efficacy and facilitating conditions, had no significant effect on intention to practise SDA. Thus, a modified TRA-based model was found to offer the best explanation of behavioural intention to practise SDA. Implications for research and information security practice are suggested.

Modeling Master/Worker applications for automatic performance tuning

Parallel application development is a very difficult task for non-expert programmers, and therefore support tools are needed for all phases of this kind of application development cycle. This means that developing applications using predefined programming structures (frameworks/skeletons) should be easier than doing it from scratch. We propose to take advantage of the intrinsic knowledge that these programming structures provide about the application in order to develop a dynamic and automatic tuning tool. We show that using this knowledge the tool could efficiently make better tuning decisions. Specifically, we focus this work on the definition of the performance model associated to applications developed with the Master/Worker framework.

A generic concept for the implementation of medical image retrieval systems

This paper presents a technical framework to support the development and installation of system for content-based image retrieval in medical applications (IRMA). A strict separation of feature extraction, feature storage, feature comparison, and the user interfaces is suggested. This allows to reuse implemented components in different retrieval algorithms, which improves software quality, shortens the development cycle for applications, and allows to introduce standardized end-user interfaces. Based on the proposed framework, the IRMA engine has been established, which is currently used to evaluate content-based retrieval methods on a collection of 20,000 medical and 135,000 non-medical images.

Interaction Builder: A Rapid Prototyping Tool for Developing Web-Based MMI Applications

We have developed Interaction Builder (IB), a rapid prototyping tool for constructing web-based Multi-Modal Interaction (MMI) applications. The goal of IB is making it easy to develop MMI applications with speech recognition, life-like agents, speech synthesis, web browsing, etc. For this purpose, IB supports the following interface and functions: (1) GUI for implementing MMI systems without the details of MMI and MMI description language, (2) functionalities of handling synchronized multimodal inputs/outputs, (3) a test run mode for run-time testing. The results of evaluation tests showed that the application development cycle using IB was significantly shortened in comparison with the time using a text editor both for MMI description language experts and for beginners.

Java for network management applications

Java preserves much of C++, and offers compelling benefits: it is object-oriented, portable and relatively easy to master and maintain. These, and other benefits, can greatly speed the development cycle for Web-based network management applications. This article discusses these issues, and gives an overview of Java's relevance for network managers. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Java for network management applications

Java preserves much of Cpp, and offers compelling benefits: it is object-oriented, portable and relatively easy to master and maintain. These, and other benefits, can greatly speed the development cycle for Web-based network management applications. This article discusses these issues, and gives an overview of Java’s relevance for network managers. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The operations research development cycle

Numerous recent laments that operations research (OR) has lost its problem solving origins are reviewed. This study verifies these claims by examining popular introductory OR textbooks, and finds that they are overwhelmingly devoted to OR algorithms rather than the problem solving process. It is proposed that the complete Systems Development Life Cycle used in developing business information systems can serve as a suitable model for a (13-step) OR Application Development Cycle. A proposed alternate approach for the traditional “tools oriented” syllabus of the introductory OR course is modeled after the management information systems course in Systems Analysis and Design. Coverage of the complete development cycle from problem observation through complete implementation serves as the “backbone” of the course. In a broader context, it is observed that research reported in professional journals tends to report the solutions to problems, rather than the problem solving process.