Configuration Management Research Articles

РАЗРАБОТКА АЛГОРИТМА ОРГАНИЗАЦИИ ИНФРАСТРУКТУРЫ ИНФОРМАЦИОННОЙ БЕЗОПАСНОСТИ С ПРИМЕНЕНИЕМ СИСТЕМЫ УПРАВЛЕНИЯ КОНФИГУРАЦИЕЙ SALTSTACK ПРИ ПЕРЕДАЧЕ ДАННЫХ ПО ВОЛОКОННО-ОПТИЧЕСКОЙ ЛИНИИ СВЯЗИ

In the article an approach to organization of information security infrastructure using the configuration management system is considered, which allows reducing of service labor costs, acceleration of installation, tuning of information and technical services and the software on virtual and physical servers. An analytical review and qualitative comparison of the most common similar currently existing systems are presented, taking into account the characteristics directly related to safe storage of information and interaction between the servers and the choice of the most suitable system for this work. A theoretical description of the security infrastructure building algorithm and examples of software implementation using the SaltStack configuration management system are given. Software for processing of vulnerability scanner reports is developed.

A Risk-based Framework for Operational Task Analysis at Nuclear Power Plants

The paper presents a dynamic risk-based framework for operational task analysis at nuclear power plants. The dynamic operational risk assessment system is focused on the system configuration management and human error identification. The potential risk sources could be identified using a reliability/risk-based mapping scheme. The risks arising from system functional impairment and/or human errors are mapped out by the noteworthy difference between the curved timeline of average plant risk and point-in-time risk profile. The system modeling process is augmented with structural-functional perspective for facilitating Living Probabilistic Risk Assessment (Living PSA) update, analysis and management. The dynamic operational risk assessment framework forms a well-founded basis for development of Living PSA program and applications.

Landscaping systematic mapping studies in software engineering: A tertiary study

ContextA number of Systematic Mapping Studies (SMSs) that cover Software Engineering (SE) are reported in literature. Tertiary studies synthesize the secondary studies to provide a holistic view of an area. ObjectivesWe synthesize SMSs in SE to provide insights into existing SE areas and to investigate the trends and quality of SMSs. MethodologyWe use Systematic Literature Review protocol to analyze and map the SMSs in SE, till August 2017, to SE Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK). ResultsWe analyze 210 SMSs and results show that: (1) Software design and construction are most active areas in SE; (2) Some areas lack SMSs, including mathematical foundations, software configuration management, and SE tools; (3) The quality of SMSs is improving with time; (4) SMSs in journals have higher quality than SMSs in conferences and are cited more often; (5) Low quality in SMSs can be attributed to a lack of quality assessment in SMSs and not reporting information about the primary studies. ConclusionThere is a potential for more SMSs in some SE areas. A number of SMSs do not provide the required information for an SMS, which leads to a low quality score.

Implantação do módulo de Gestão da Configuração do framework ITIL: um estudo de caso

Este trabalho se baseia no funcionamento de um dos modelos de gestão de serviços de TI mais utilizados pelas organizações de todo o mundo, o ITIL. Com o objetivo de expandir o conhecimento na área, a principal proposta deste artigo é expor experiências, pontos de vistas, críticas e valor agregado gerados durante e após a implantação do módulo de Gestão da Configuração da ITIL em um órgão público brasileiro. Por ser um caso de sucesso, o principal objetivo é mensurar o nível de satisfação do usuário direto e indireto do módulo em questão, explorando os principais benefícios de uma implantação baseada nas melhores práticas do campo, além de propor melhorias e sugestões aos processos de implantação futuros.

DevOps security improvements through effective use of container technology

The move toward cloud-native deployments will diminish the use of traditional server-based, hypervisor-driven virtualisation that delivers virtual machines (VM). As a result, the adoption of application-centric, container-based virtualisation will escalate. Containers and VMs are similar in their goals: to isolate an application and its dependencies into a self-contained unit that can run anywhere.1 Since cloud deployments are heavily geared towards agility, optimisation and automation, container-based technologies are riding the wave of rapid adoption, particularly in DevOps-oriented environments. Containers provide great flexibility for DevOps teams to tool up for frictionless service delivery life cycles. This presents an almost unprecedented opportunity to embed security into the software delivery pipeline, rather than graft on security checks, container monitoring and policy for access controls as an afterthought.2 Containers are not without problems, however. From a security perspective, if left unchecked, the technology is susceptible to many issues including supply chain risks and many forms of vulnerabilities originating from poor configuration and operational management. This could result in production environment compromise through targeted cyberattacks. This paper addresses the key activities to achieve hygiene in high-velocity, security-focused DevOps deployments.

Graph-analytic model of parameters of unified construction products on the requirements of environmental safety

The methodology concept of building parametric series of unified building products is presented. The purpose of the work is to create a method that would enable consideration of environmental safety requirements at the stage of design of the size range of the building products line. Method simplicity is based on the assumption of linear correlation of building products use parameters and required environmental parameters. Existing lifecycle assessment methods are intended for the analysis of one-off products rather than a set (line) of similar unified products. The problem is that the known product lifecycle assessment methods and line product configuration management methods yield mutually exclusive results. This work proposes the data presentation method that combines graphic construction of a parametric series of unified products and graphic construction of environmental requirements to products and their manufacturing and operation techniques. The work uses the known map imposition method as an environmental assessment method. Imposing a layer with graphic information about interrelated design and operational parameters of a product on a layer of information on acceptable exposure of these products manufacture and operation processes helps the product designer choose parameters of the unified product that meet environmental requirements from a host of options.

Configuration Approach to Researching Regional Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

The article deals with the development of entrepreneurship at the regional level. The necessity of taking into account the context and its impact on the practice of managing the development of entrepreneurship in the region is justified. For the study of entrepreneurship with the influence of the regional context considered, it is proposed to use the ecosystem approach, which allows focusing on the specific context of business development. Based on the analysis of foreign and domestic sources, the author’s definition of the concept of “regional entrepreneurial ecosystem” is given. It is proved that, due to the uniqueness of each regional entrepreneurial ecosystem, it is advisable to use the configuration approach, which ensures that the diversity and variability of the regional context are taken into account. It is proposed to consider each regional entrepreneurial ecosystem as a set of nine configuration subsystems. The estimation of the configuration profiles implies using area or volume values, formed, in aggregate, by the parameters characterizing the configuration. A methodology for identifying the configuration profile of a given subsystem in a regional entrepreneurial ecosystem is developed. Based on the methodology in question, the efficiency of the configuration profiles of state institutions regulating entrepreneurship in the 85 subjects of the Russian Federation is identified. The approach substantiated in the article makes it possible to develop practical mechanisms for effective management of regional entrepreneurial ecosystem configurations, which, in turn, would contribute to more dynamic and predictable growth of business and investment activities in Russian regions.

Strategies to Reduce Rework in Software Development on IT Organization Case Study of: PT. XYZ

Today’s world, developing an application that meets exactly the need of organizational business is getting tougher and more challenging, with the additional complexity of business flow and the increasing and diversity of the data that an organization has. In addition, the customers are more demanding than before in term of using an information system or software application and within an instant result which gives an extra pressure for those who work as an application developer. Rework of the software application tends to contain very negative impact to the company because it is impacting the cost for the organization. This paper is trying to resolve the problem that causes a lot of rework occurred in the case study provided. By finding out the root cause of the problem, the literature study is conducted in order to have some recommendations to be applied to the case study given. After having a discussion by conducting interview session with the expert, the result in form of a recommendation is then defined. As the final result, it is decided that the best and most appropriate recommendation to be applied is by implementing System Configuration Management (SCM) and the SMC tools chosen is Team Foundation Server or usually called as TFS.

A Survey of the Application of Association Rules in Library Services

The article analyzes the application of association rules at libraries both at home and abroad on the application of related documents in libraries, and analyzes them from the application of association rules in digital library personalized recommendation services, library resource configuration management and reader behavior analysis. The status of application, and put forward the prospects for its future development.

A novel framework for optimization of size and control strategy of lithium-ion battery based off-grid renewable energy systems

This paper proposes a new methodology to find the most economic system configuration and energy management strategy for Li-ion battery based off-grid renewable energy systems. A system level macroscopic model and a microscopic battery lifetime prediction model are incorporated into the optimization framework to simulate hourly performance of the system. Due to the computational efficiency of the model, optimization is carried out using enumerative method (evaluating all the possible combinations of components and control strategies) to ensure finding the global optimum solution of the problem. To investigate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology, the optimization results are compared with a baseline scenario which is an installed PV-battery system to provide electricity for an isolated house situated near Zaragoza, Spain. Results indicate that the optimized scenario leads to 9.7% reduction in the levelized cost of energy and 48.6% improvement in the battery service period in comparison with the baseline scenario. Moreover, by considering a 0.5% unmet load, the economic feasibility of the system and the battery longevity are enhanced to 14.6% and 78.4%, respectively. Finally, to evaluate the effect of battery unit price and future trends on the optimization results, sensitivity analysis is performed.

An empirical evaluation of an advanced version control tool in conflict detection and resolution

ABSTRACTDistributed Software Development (DSD) is drawing a lot of attention from the research community due to its increasing significance. However, distance becomes a barrier in communication and coordination in such kind of development. Many tools have been used to help coordination in DSD. One such tool is Software Configuration Management (SCM) which has become an integral part of DSD. Although it coordinates the developers’ effort, it has the limitation of not detecting conflicts at an early stage. Therefore, the Advance Version Control (AVC) tool has been designed and implemented to enhance the functionality of the version control system in a distributed environment. It performs versioning of files as well as detects the conflicts at an early stage and informs the concerned developers about conflicting changes. It provides code sharing to mutually resolve the inconsistencies. It also provides a communication medium because, sometimes, communication between conflicting developers can also solve the problem.This paper presents the results from an empirical evaluation of tool AVC. To measure the effectiveness of the tool, a metric suite is designed. Also, two experiments have been performed among the developers to check the efficiency of the tool. This work has been carried out as an extension of the work done in the paper [Kaur I, Singh H. Advanced Version Control (AVC): a paradigm shift from version control to conflict management. IJCA. June 2017;167(10):7–15].

Processos urbanos e gestão local: os casos de Ribeirão Preto e Piracicaba entre o empresariamento urbano e o Estatuto da Cidade

Resumo Este artigo resulta de estudo comparativo de processos urbanos no interior paulista a partir da vigência do Estatuto da Cidade (Lei Federal n. 10.257/2001, marco regulatório dos artigos 182 e 183 da Constituição Federal de 1988). Consideram-se variáveis principais: i) os impactos urbanos da reestruturação produtiva da agroindústria canavieira; e ii) as ações dos grupos privados e do poder público municipal na configuração urbana e na gestão da cidade. O processo de financeirização da economia mundial, hegemônico desde 1990, impôs a redução do Estado, acirrou a competitividade internacional, resultando em amplo processo de reestruturação produtiva e na internacionalização do agronegócio brasileiro, impactando fortemente as localidades integradas pelas cadeias produtivas das commodities. As cidades assumiram protagonismo, tendo suas vantagens locacionais largamente utilizadas pelo poder público e pelos grupos privados na atração dos negócios, caracterizando o empresariamento urbano. Paradoxalmente, a implantação do Estatuto da Cidade subordinou a dinâmica urbana à função social da propriedade e à inclusão urbana. Essa contradição foi analisada tomando como referências dois municípios sedes de regiões canavieiras paulistas: Piracicaba (mais antiga) e Ribeirão Preto (mais dinâmica) nas últimas décadas. Por meio da análise dos dados demográficos, socioeconômicos e do gasto público, constatou-se que o empresariamento urbano tem sido a marca das gestões municipais, à revelia dos parâmetros estabelecidos pelo Estatuto da Cidade e da regulamentação estabelecida pelos planos diretores, que têm sido sistematicamente modificados para atender aos imperativos econômicos e da expansão imobiliária.

Enhancement of Finger Millet Productivity through Land Configuration and Nitrogen Management under Sodic Soil

Enhancement of Finger Millet Productivity through Land Configuration and Nitrogen Management under Sodic Soil

Model-based management strategy for resource efficient design and operation of an aquaponic system

Aquaponics is a technique that combines aquaculture with hydroponics, i.e. growing aquatic species and soilless plants in a single system. Commercial aquaponics is still in development. The main challenge consists in balancing the conditions required for the growth of multiple species, leading to dynamic a system with high complexity. Mathematical models improve our understanding of the complex dynamics in aquaponics, and thus support the development of efficient systems.We developed a water and nutrient management strategy for the production of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) and tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) in an existing INAPRO aquaponic demonstration system in Abtshagen, Germany. This management strategy aims for improved water and nutrient efficiency. For this purpose, we developed a system-level mathematical model and simulation.In our simulations, we found that the existing configuration and water management of the Abtshagen aquaponic system results in an excessive amount of water discharged from the RAS. Therefore, sending more nutrient-rich water from fish to plants can help reducing water and fertilizer consumption. However, this water transfer may lead to excess concentrations of some nutrients, which could stress fish, plants or both. For the Abtshagen system, our simulations predicted excess concentrations of total suspended solids (TSS) for the fish, and sodium (Na+) and ammonium nitrogen (NH4+-N) for the plants. Furthermore, our simulations predicted excess calcium (Ca2+) and magnesium (Mg2+) for plants, due to the use of local fresh water with relatively high concentrations of those ions.Based on our simulations, we developed an improved management strategy that achieves a balance between resource efficiency and water quality conditions. This management strategy prevents excess levels of TSS for fish, and Na+ and NH4+-N for plants. Under the improved management strategy, simulated water requirements (263 L/kg fish and 22 L/kg tomato) were similar to current commercial RAS and greenhouse horticulture. Simulated fertilizer requirements for plants of N, Ca and Mg (52, 46 and 9 mg/kg tomato, respectively) were one order of magnitude lower than in high efficient commercial closed greenhouse production.

A knowledge-transfer-based learning framework for airspace operation complexity evaluation

A sector is a component airspace whose operation is allocated to an air traffic controller. The operation complexity of a sector plays a critical role in the current Air Traffic Management system, e.g. it determines the workload volume of air traffic controllers and serves as a reliable index for airspace configuration and traffic flow management. Therefore, accurately evaluating the sector operation complexity is a problem of paramount importance in both practice and research. Due to numerous interacting factors, traditional methods based on only one single complexity indicator fail to accurately reflect the true complexity, especially when these factors are nonlinearly correlated. In light of these, the attempt to use machine learning models to mine the complex factor-complexity relationship has prevailed recently. The performance of these models however relies heavily on sufficient samples. The high cost of collecting ample data often results in a small training set, adversely impacting on the performance that these machine learning models can achieve. To overcome this problem, this paper for the first time proposes a new sector operation complexity evaluation framework based on knowledge transfer specifically for small-training-sample environment. The proposed framework is able to effectively mine knowledge hidden within the samples of the target sector, i.e. the sector undergoes evaluation, as well as other sectors, i.e. non-target sectors. Moreover, the framework can properly handle the integration between the knowledge derived from different sectors. Extensive experiments on real data of 6 sectors in China illustrate that our proposed framework can achieve promising performance on complexity evaluation when only a small training set of the target sector is available.

Issues and Challenges on Implementing Software Configuration Management in Public University

Issues and Challenges on Implementing Software Configuration Management in Public University

A State of the Art: Software Configuration Management Tools for Global Software Development

Global Software Development (GSD) has emerged widely in today’s software development environment. The emergence of GSD has create difficulty to several technical areas such as Requirement Engineering, Validation and Verification; not to mention Software Configuration Management (SCM) practices. To date, many SCM tools has been proposed by the researchers to reduce the difficulties faced by GSD project developers when dealing with SCM practices. Therefore, there is a need to update on the current trend of SCM tools in GSD context in order to assist practitioners in selecting the best tools for their project. To perform the study, Systematic Mapping Studies (SMS) has been used to identify and provide an overview of the SCM tools which has been developed specifically for GSD environment. This paper contributes the following: 1) This paper synthesized the SCM tools in GSD and 2) Current trend of SCM tools in today’s software development environment also is identified.

The optimal structure planning and energy management strategies of smart multi energy systems

Multi energy system is considered an effective pattern to improve the energy efficiency and reduce energy supply cost by integrating multi energy carriers. Face abundance energy convertor and storage devices with various characteristics, how to select the types and capacities of devices, how to connect and manage the selected devices are core challenging problems to design the optimal structures of new multi energy systems. A generic optimal planning framework and model is proposed to design multi energy systems, which can obtain both the optimal structure configuration and energy management strategies. The optimal planning problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming model with the objective to minimize the overall cost. Three different energy system schemes are compared to demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed optimal planning model. Simulation results show that the multi energy system designed by the proposed planning model (scheme 3) shows better economic and environmental performances than the conventional centralized energy system (scheme 1) and the typical combined cooling, heating and power systems (scheme 2). Compared with scheme 1, the total annual and carbon emission costs of scheme 3 decrease by 35.21% and 55.34%, respectively. While, compared to scheme 2, the total annual and carbon emission costs of scheme 3 decrease by 14.53% and 26.14%, respectively. Moreover, the robustness and performances of the optimization planning model are demonstrated through sensitivity and comparative analyses.

What happened to my application? Helping end users comprehend evolution through variation management

Context: Millions of end users are creating software applications. These end users typically do not have clear requirements in mind; instead, they debug their programs into existence and reuse their own or other persons’ code. These behaviors often result in the creation of numerous variants of programs. Current end-user programming environments do not provide support for managing such variants.Objective: We wish to understand the variant creation behavior of end user programmers. Based on this understanding we wish to develop an automated system to help end user programmers efficiently manage variants.Method: We conducted an on-line survey to understand when and how end-user programmers create program variants and how they manage them. Our 124 survey respondents were recruited via email from among non-computer science majors who had taken at least one course in the computer science department at our university; the respondents were involved in the Engineering, Sciences, Arts, and Management fields. Based on the results of this survey we identified a set of design requirements for providing variation management support for end users. We implemented variation management support in App Inventor – a drag and drop programming environment for creating mobile applications. Our support, AppInventorHelper, is meant to help end-user programmers visualize the provenance of and relationships among variants. We conducted a think-aloud study with 10 participants to evaluate the usability of AppInventorHelper. The participants were selected on a first-come, first-served basis from those who responded to our recruitment email sent to list-servers. They were all end users majoring in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, or physics. None had formal training in software engineering methods, but all had some experience with visual programming languages.Results: Our (user study) results indicate that AppInventorHelper can help end users navigate through variants and find variants that could be utilized cost-effectively as examples or actual code upon which to build new applications. For example, in one of our empirical studies end users explored variants of a paint application in order to find a variant that could easily be extended to incorporate a new feature.Conclusions: Our survey results show that end users do indeed reuse program variants and suggest that understanding the differences between variants is important. Further, end users prefer running code and looking at outputs, accessing source code and meta information such as filenames, referring to the creation and update dates of programs, and having information on the authors of code. When selecting variants users prefer to look at their major features such as correctness, similarity and authorship information. End users rely primarily on memory to track changes. They seldom make use of online or configuration management tools. Hence, integrated domain-specific variation management tools like AppInventorHelper can significantly help improve users’ interactions with the system. A key contribution of our work is a set of design requirements for end-user programming environments that facilitate the management and understanding of the provenance of program variants.

Worked out Results of IPCCR Framework for AMS Projects

The IPCCR framework that was designed to reduce CAPEX and OPEX of Application Support and Maintenance Projects, has helped to understand Incident, Problem, Change, Configuration and Release and directly impacts the costs that are accrued. Using Proper Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Configuration Management and Release Management, which are the key ingredients of ITIL V3.2 and DevOps reduces the costs of Capital Expenses and Operational Expenses. The important concept of Known Error Database will subsequently reduce the Operational Expenses as much as possible.