Project Repository Research Articles

SemCASS: technical competence assessment within software development teams enabled by semantics

The environment surrounding organisations is characterised by an increasing necessity of competent personnel that need to be assessed. Moreover, personnel factors are capital for software development projects. Given the importance of people in certain sectors, this paper introduces SemCASS, a tool based on semantic technologies to feed competence evaluation with competence evidences within software development projects. These evidences are taken from two different sources. On the one hand competence facts derived from the analysis of project repositories using natural language processing techniques. On the other hand, standard competence evidences collected using mobile technologies. SemCASS benefits from the standardisation of personnel performance metrics related to software development teams as well as the capital importance of competence ontologies and semantic reasoning as basic support of new knowledge management efforts. Due to these set of features, the reliability and precision of the competence assessment will increase drastically.

The gputools package enables GPU computing in R

By default, the R statistical environment does not make use of parallelism. Researchers may resort to expensive solutions such as cluster hardware for large analysis tasks. Graphics processing units (GPUs) provide an inexpensive and computationally powerful alternative. Using R and the CUDA toolkit from Nvidia, we have implemented several functions commonly used in microarray gene expression analysis for GPU-equipped computers. R users can take advantage of the better performance provided by an Nvidia GPU. The package is available from CRAN, the R project's repository of packages, at http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/gputools More information about our gputools R package is available at http://brainarray.mbni.med.umich.edu/brainarray/Rgpgpu

Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management. 2nd ed

Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management. 2nd ed

The State and Profile of Open Source Software Projects in health and medical informatics

Purpose Little has been published about the application profiles and development patterns of open source software (OSS) in health and medical informatics. This study explores these issues with an analysis of health and medical informatics related OSS projects on SourceForge, a large repository of open source projects. Methodology A search was conducted on the SourceForge website during the period from May 1 to 15, 2007, to identify health and medical informatics OSS projects. This search resulted in a sample of 174 projects. A Java-based parser was written to extract data for several of the key variables of each project. Several visually descriptive statistics were generated to analyze the profiles of the OSS projects. Results Many of the projects have sponsors, implying a growing interest in OSS among organizations. Sponsorship, we discovered, has a significant impact on project success metrics. Nearly two-thirds of the projects have a restrictive license type. Restrictive licensing may indicate tighter control over the development process. Our sample includes a wide range of projects that are at various stages of development (status). Projects targeted towards the advanced end user are primarily focused on bio-informatics, data formats, database and medical science applications. Conclusion We conclude that there exists an active and thriving OSS development community that is focusing on health and medical informatics. A wide range of OSS applications are in development, from bio-informatics to hospital information systems. A profile of OSS in health and medical informatics emerges that is distinct and unique to the health care field. Future research can focus on OSS acceptance and diffusion and impact on cost, efficiency and quality of health care.

Effort modeling and programmer participation in open source software projects

This paper develops models for programmer participation and effort estimation in open source software projects and employs the results to assess the efficiency of open source software creation. Successful development of such models will be important for decision makers of various kinds. We propose hypotheses based on a prior case study on manpower function and effort modeling. A large data set retrieved from a project repository is used to test these hypotheses. The main results are that if Norden–Rayleigh-based approaches are used, they need to be complemented in order to account for the addition of new features during a product life cycle, and that programmer-participation based effort models result in distinctly lower estimations of effort than those based on output metrics, such as lines of code.

Monitoring the “health” status of open source web‐engineering projects

PurposeIn response to the increasing number of open‐source software (OSS) project initiatives and the increasing demand of OSS products as alternative solutions by industries, it is important for particular stakeholders such as the project host/supporter project‐leading teams, and prospective customers to determine whether a project initiative is likely to be sustainable and is worth supporting. This paper aims to propose a concept of “health” indicators and an evaluation process that can help to get a status overview of OSS projects in a timely fashion and predict project survivability based on the project data available on web repositories.Design/methodology/approachFor initial empirical evaluation of the concept, the indicators are applied to well‐known web‐based OSS projects (Apache Tomcat and Apache HTTP Server) and the results are compared with challenged projects (Apache Xindice and Apache Slide). The results are discussed with OSS experts to investigate the external validity of the indicators.FindingsFrom a software project management point of view, a typical web‐based OSS project can be viewed as a web‐engineering process, since most OSS projects exploit the benefits of a web platform and enable the project community to collaborate using web‐based project tools and repositories such as mailing lists, bug trackers, and versioning systems (CVS/SVN) to deliver web systems and applications. These repositories can provide rich collections of process data, and artifacts which can be analyzed to better understand the project status.Originality/valueThe paper provides information of value about open‐source solutions.

Firms' Participation in Open Source Projects: Empirical Evidence and Research Agenda

The Open Source (OS) software has progressively gained economic importance in recent years, and more and more commercial firms are getting involved, to various extents, in the OS movement. While a number of studies have investigated motivations and business models of OS-based software companies, very few works have examined whether and how firms actively participate to open projects. This paper contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the role and the activities of software houses in community developed projects. The research also proposes an original methodology of large-scale primary data collection from OS project repositories and linked Web sites. The findings show how different today's OS movement is from its origins and how important firm involvement has become, not only numerically but also for the deepness of its impact on community projects. Finally, further research developments are suggested.

Mobile multimodal extensions to collaborative Web-based systems

The development of leading-edge multimodal (e.g., concurrent text, voice, and video capabilities) mobile applications as a technology that holds promise for the construction industry is described. Because of the complexity of the products, the relatively short execution time frame, and the number of parties involved, the information exchanged throughout an architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) project is extensive. Efficiently managing this information exchange is a significant impediment to increasing the overall productivity of the industry. The technology focus of this paper extends today's tools by addressing one of the unique characteristics of the industry: the need for mobility of real-time information in an integrated and collaborative environment. Mobile computing devices have the capabilities and characteristics for wide use in real-time communication of project information to project repositories or between project participants. As the industry moves away from the desktop and laptop Web paradigms toward the mobile Web paradigm, the availability of real-time complete information exchange with the project information repository presents new opportunities for decision-making in the AEC industry. To facilitate more widespread use of the solution applications described, extensive usability research in light of the various processes in the AEC industry is needed; a preliminary framework for this purpose is presented.Key words: project information management, collaborative information systems, mobile computing, multimodal functionality.

Information modelling for case-based construction planning of highway bridge projects

In practice, construction planning and control draws on large-scale project and corporate data repositories, which are often unstructured. This article argues that the development of a large-scale data repository should be the precursor to any case-based reasoning system development. The article presents a large number of conceptual object models, which were developed to identify the attributes and relationships between product and planning information comprehensively, using bridges as a representative product. The models were used to develop a large information repository implemented in a database management system to facilitate real world project information collation, organisation, and management to reflect the large-scale nature of construction projects in practice. The database acts as a source of cases and sub-cases that are retrieved and mapped into a case-base. These cases are considered individually for indexing, matching, retrieval, and validation purposes, facilitating the re-use of parts of multiple cases to construct new project plans. A prototype software model, CBRidge Planner, which was developed and tested with real world project cases to demonstrate the approach is presented.

Transitional portfolios: orchestrating our professional competence.

Reflective professional development results from thoughtful planning of goals and meeting learning objectives. With rapid changes in health care resulting in major reevaluation and even modification of the role and functions of an occupational therapy practitioner, producing a historical record of competencies in order to learn from one's own experience and to plan for change is essential. A new use of the portfolio is presented to show that a portfolio can be more than the typical repository of completed projects. The transitional portfolio is introduced as a tool for one to self-direct professional development through thoughtful engagement with artifacts created during one's career in relationship to professional goals and desired roles. The transitional portfolio process is holistic, flexible, and reflective. It can serve as a way to document accumulated knowledge and skill acquisition as well as facilitate thoughtful, planned reflection on one's career development in occupational therapy. This article describes the use of transitional portfolios to connect professional development learning experiences, accomplishments, and future opportunities for occupational therapy practitioners.