Software Development Concepts Research Articles

PSII-10 Development of an interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate course in precision livestock farming systems

Abstract The modern livestock industry is increasingly adopting data, technologies, and automation into daily husbandry and management routines and decisions. These advances in precision livestock farming (PLF) enable improved financial margins, sustainability, efficiency, and animal productivity and welfare. However, there is currently a gap between the engineers and data scientists designing the technologies and the animal scientists and caretakers using them. At North Carolina State University a novel course on PLF Systems for undergraduate and graduate students was developed in the Department of Animal Science. Through lecture delivery, livestock production scenarios, scientific literature, and data-based homework assignments students explored data collection, management, analysis, and data-based decision making. Students gained hands-on experience with a variety of sensor types and signal processing through lab-based activities. Basic hardware and software development concepts were explored during an Arduino-based microcontroller activity. The course was developed and refined using student feedback to include additional sensor and lab-based days and additional in-class supported activities utilizing Excel for data manipulation, processing, and presentation. Self-reported student learning results were collected across two semesters (19 students; 18 Animal Science, 1 Biological Engineering) with84% of students indicated the course was effective in increasing their ability to evaluate and implement technology in livestock production systems and 74% of students reported increased knowledge of coding and software, as well as their ability to clean, analyze, and make sense of raw data. The topics and delivery methods implemented in this course could inform the basis for development of similar interdisciplinary PLF courses at other academic institutions.

Using Third-Party Components’ Metadata to Analyze Cross-cutting Concerns

Context: Modularity is a key concept in software development. Well-modularized systems are easier to maintain and evolve, but achieving good modularity is difficult. Concerns that are important, but not central to a systems' main business rules, frequently end up scattered and entangled throughout several software modules. Those so called cross-cutting concerns are a major source of loss of modularity and code decay in software systems. Motivation: Studies on cross-cutting concerns often resort to manual identification of concerns, but manual identification is effort demanding, does not scale, and tends to be imprecise. Automatic approaches are therefore very attractive when the codebase is extensive. In modern systems, developers implement modules to address central business rules, but they tend to add third-party components in the codebase to materialize concerns related to other secondary aspects. Logging, database access, and tests automation are examples of concerns that are usually implemented with the help of imported components and are prone to scatter and tangle throughout the codebase. Aims: This paper proposes a method to track this type of cross-cutting concern. Our work takes advantage of the addition of metadata about components to track them. The method scales by automating the identification and analysis of concerns scattered throughout the software codebase. We define a new metric, Dedication to Concern (DtC), to measure how much source code modules focus on implementing the identified concerns. Working Method: We describe our method to mine cross-cutting concerns from the metadata related to the use of components. The method is instantiated as a tool, architectural knowledge suite (AKS). The tool is used to analyze concerns in a set of large Java projects. The results are used to feed an action research study, during which software development specialists analyze the AKS outputs to evaluate and evolve the method. Conclusion: The semi-automated approach is feasible and scalable, and can be used to analyze secondary concerns that are currently being imported into modern software systems via third-party components.

Virtual Tool Used for Temperature Monitoring through I2C Protocol

Temperature monitoring is very important both for large geographical and industrial environments, but equally for equipment or subassemblies in a technological process. Monitoring in all cases is important to prevent accidents or the occurrence of major defects. In this paper, a temperature monitoring solution is proposed for a number of up to 8 measurement points located at distances of up to 2 m by means of intelligent integrated sensors capable of transmitting information through the I2C industrial protocol. A flexible hardware structure and software development concept are presented to offer local information and to be integrated into a hierarchical temperature monitoring network.

Development of geoinformation competencies among students majoring in History and Geography (44.03.05 Pedagogical Education)

This paper provides basic principles for the development and use of geoinformation software and methodological complexes of pedagogical education in the organization of distance learning at the university. The relevance of the topic of the work is due to the need to optimize the educational process at the university when studying a number of academic disciplines involving the use of geoinformation systems. In the context of increasingly and actively developing distance learning technologies, the use of traditional methodological techniques in the educational process reduces the effectiveness of cartographic and geoinformation competencies development among students, primarily due to the inability to use computer classes and other elements of the educational environment of the university. The main attention in this work is paid to the principles of development and use of educational and methodological geoinformation projects based on information from Earth remote sensing data, electronic maps, attribute tables and specialized databases. The basic concept of geoinformation software and methodological complexes development is based on the theory of neogeography. The paper presents the authors interpretation of the term geoinformation competence, which correlates with the main planned learning outcomes in the context of the requirements of the Federal State Educational Standard. The proposed methods and approaches allow a modern university teacher to effectively manage the process of creating educational and scientific projects of geographical orientation by students. Free software and source data are supposed to be used as they allow obtaining high-quality cartographic materials of modern level and contribute to students geoinformation competencies development. The research results are used to organize the educational process among students majoring in pedagogical education in the aspect of geoinformation competencies development. The authors have carried out a comparative analysis and evaluation of the effectiveness of modern geoinformation tools for the use of specialized GIS, software and methodological complexes and web services by teachers and students. As a result of the work, recommendations are given on the organization of the educational process, which contribute to geoinformation competencies development among students - prospective teachers in the context of distance learning at a modern university.

Industrial area environmental monitoring based on transducers with MODBUS communication

The monitoring of environmental parameters in industrial areas where potential sources of pollution exist is very important from the point of view of prevention of environmental accidents. In this paper, we propose a solution for the monitoring of the environmental parameters with the local acquisition through specific environmental and movement sensors and data transmission to a higher hierarchical level through the use of MODBUS communications. A flexible hardware structure and software development concept are presented to offer local information and to be integrated into an environmental quality monitoring network.

Perancangan Sistem Pembelajaran Daring Menggunakan Model ADDIE

ABSTRACT
 The design of the online learning system is not only focused on the software aspect alone but also must pay attention to the teaching materials that will be managed to suit the characteristics and needs of students. This study designed an online learning system using the ADDIE model (Analysis, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate). ADDIE is a model commonly used to design learning. The stages in this model are very similar to the Waterfall model in the field of software engineering. By using the ADDIE model, it is hoped that it will produce an online learning system that is in accordance with the pedagogical aspects of students and technologically in accordance with the concept of software development. The results of the system design are implemented using Moodle for database practicum lectures. Based on the learning outcomes, 100% of students passed the database practicum with an average level of understanding of 94.86%. In conclusion, the ADDIE model can be applied to design an online learning system according to the characteristics of students.
 
 Keywords: online learning system, ADDIE, waterfall, Moodle, database

Implementasi Extreme Programming (XP) Agile Software Development pada Pengembangan Sistem Informasi KELUARGAKU

The Pusat Pelayanan Keluarga Sejahtera (PUSYANRA) Lancang Kuning, is a service unit established by the Badan Kependudukan dan Keluarga Berencana Nasional (BKKBN) Representative of Riau Province. PUSYANRA has several main tasks as consultants and educates families in Indonesia to become prosperous families. So far, the activities of PUSYANRA Lancang Kuning run randomly and are documented manually, so there are several problems in monitoring activities, displaying activities publicly and compiling annual and monthly reports. One of the things that can be done to optimize these needs is to develop a web-based information system. The information system can be a place to display information as well as a media to educate the public according to the needs of PUSYANRA Lancang Kuning to maximize information and education in implementing PUSYANRA's work program. In addition, regarding reports, activity management and others, web application technology can help administrators to make it easier to carry out their duties. Another problem is the use of this Information System is needed in a fairly short time, because community services continue to run all the time. For the concept of software development with Agile method is a suitable method applied in this case. Based on the development process that has been carried out, this research shows that the Agile Software Development concept can be used properly. As well as the benefits of the Information System can be felt well by all users, so that the KELUARGAKU Information System can help PUSYANRA Lancang Kuning in carrying out its work program better.

Event-driven Programming in Programming Education

During the past two decades, event-driven programming (EDP) has emerged as a central and almost ubiquitous concept in modern software development: Graphical user interfaces are self-evident in most mobile and web-based applications, as well as in many embedded systems, and they are most often based on reacting to events. To facilitate both teaching practice and research in programming education, this mapping review seeks to give an overview of the related knowledge that is already available in conference papers and journal articles. Starting from early works of the 1990s, we identified 105 papers that address teaching practices, present learning resources, software tools or libraries to support learning, and empirical studies related to EDP. We summarize the publications, their main content, and findings. While most studies focus on bachelor’s level education in universities, there has been substantial work in K-12 level, as well. Few courses address EDP as their main content—rather it is most often integrated with CS1, CS2, or computer graphics courses. The most common programming languages and environments addressed are Java, App Inventor, and Scratch. Moreover, very little of deliberate experimental scientific research has been carried out to explicitly address teaching and learning EDP. Consequently, while so-called experience reports, tool papers, and anecdotal evidence have been published, this theme offers a wide arena for empirical research in the future. At the end of the article, we suggest a number of directions for future research.

Socio-Technical Congruence as an Emerging Concept in Software Development: A Scientometric Analysis and Critical Literature Review

Ample evidence in the literature emphasizes using socio-technical congruence (STC) to address coordination issues in distributed software development. The recent decades have shown a progressive growth in STC, resulting in an increasing number of research studies in the scientific corpora. However, no existing study has systematically analyzed and illustrated the research patterns, latest trends, and evolution in STC. This study aims to explore the knowledge structure and create evolutionary trajectories from STC publications. To achieve this aim, a scientometric analysis is performed that combined a critical literature review (CLR) of STC-related published research in the Web of Science and Scopus databases from 2000 to 2020. The scientometric analysis is conducted through four scientometric techniques: 1) co-word network analysis; 2) co-author network analysis; 3) co-citation analysis; 4) document clustering with timeline analysis. The study outcomes will help understand and visualize STC’s research status quo. CLR is objectively conducted to recognize the latest research topics, themes, and salient features of STC research in software development. A total of 306 bibliographic data are analyzed to generate study-related networks and density visualizations. The results reveal an evolution in the STC field from its conception to the recent developments of STC models and other related factors. This study primarily contributes to the literature by providing a systematic view related to STC research to assist software practitioners in identifying applications and key research areas. Moreover, the combination of scientometric analysis and CLR reveals key researchers, journals and conferences, institutions, prominent contributing countries, and six major research themes, including “community structure” and “socio-technical congruence” as the most prominent ones.

Analytic hierarchy process‐based prioritization framework for vendor's reliability challenges in global software development

AbstractThe concept of global software development was adopted by software organizations for the purpose of delivering quality software products at a reduced cost. Software reliability became one of the eminent challenges in the global software development. The main objective of this research paper is to develop a classification of the challenging factors in the global software development process faced by vendor organizations. The classification of the challenges depends on the data gathered through systematic literature review and implementation of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). A total of 18 challenges were explored through systematic literature review and mapped into five categories, that is, capability, reliance, delivery, management, and distinction. The explored issues played a major role for assisting the researcher and designer for mitigating the challenges during “AHP based prioritization framework for Vendor's Reliability challenges in Global Software Development”. Taking the AHP approach, we tried to fill this research gap by exploring and prioritizing the challenges that could negatively impact the vendor reliability of a specific organization. The classification of the explored challenges provided a framework that was used to deal with the issues associated with software reliability in the global software environment, which provided the vital role for the success of software organizations.

A User Interface (UI) and User eXperience (UX) evaluation framework for cyberlearning environments in computer science and software engineering education

Despite the widespread availability and increasing use of cyberlearning environments, there remains a need for more research about their usefulness in undergraduate education, particularly in STEM education. The process of evaluating the usefulness of a cyberlearning environment is an essential measure of its success and is useful in assisting the design process and ensuring user satisfaction. Unfortunately, there are relatively few empirical studies that provide a comprehensive test of the usefulness of cyberlearning in education. Additionally, there is a lack of standards upon whose usefulness evaluators agree.In this research, we present multiple user studies that can be used to assess the usefulness of a cyberlearning environment used in Computer Science and Software Engineering courses through testing its usability and measuring its utility using user interface and user experience evaluations. Based on these assessments, we propose an evaluation framework to evaluate cyberlearning environments. To help illustrate the framework utility and usability evaluations, we explain them through an example SEP-CyLE (Software Engineering and Programming Cyberlearning Environment). The evaluation techniques used are cognitive walkthroughs with a think-aloud protocol and a heuristic evaluation survey. We further use a network-based analysis to find the statistically significant correlated responses in the heuristic evaluation survey with regard to the students’ perceptions of using SEP-CyLE.Our goal is to improve cyberlearning practice and to emphasize the need for evaluating cyberlearning environments with respect to its designated tasks and its users using UI/UX evaluations. Our experiments demonstrated participants were able to utilize SEP-CyLE efficiently to accomplish the tasks we posed to them and to enhance their software development concepts, specifically, software testing. We discovered areas of improvement in the visibility and navigation of SEP-CyLE's current design. We provide our recommendations for improving SEP-CyLE and provide guidance and possible directions for future research on designing cyberlearning environments for computer education.

Patterns in Mainstream Programming Games


 
 
 Studies have found serious games to be good tools for programming education. As an outcome from such research, several game solutions for learning computer programming have appeared. Most of these games are only used in the research field where only a few are published and made available for the public. There are however numerous examples of programming games in commercial stores that have reached a large audience.This article presents a systematic review of publicly available and popular programming games. It analyses which fundamental software development concepts, as defined by the ACM/IEEE Computer Science Curricula, are represented in these games and identifies game design patterns used to represent these concepts.This study shows that fundamental programming concepts and programming methods have a good representation in mainstream games. There is however a lack of games addressing data structures, algorithms and design. There is a strong domination of puzzle games. Only two of the 20 studied games belong to a different genre. The eleven game design patterns identified in this study have potential to contribute to future efforts in creating engaging serious games for programming education.
 
 

Requirement change management challenges in GSD: An analytical hierarchy process approach

AbstractMajority of software development firms are adopting the concepts of global software development (GSD) in order to develop high‐quality and low‐cost products. However, the requirements change management (RCM) becomes a significant challenge in the GSD environment because of the unavailability of proper RCM framework and taxonomy. The objective of this study is to develop a taxonomy of the challenging factors of the RCM process in GSD. The taxonomy is developed based on the results of the data collected during the survey study and the implementation of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Total 25 challenging factors are identified and mapped into four core categories, ie, “organizational management,” “team,” “technology,” and “process.” Moreover, the AHP analysis is performed to prioritize the challenging factors and their categories. The prioritization process highlight that “process” is the most significant category of the RCM challenging factors. The taxonomy developed in this study provides a robust framework to tackle problems associated with RCM activities in GSD environment, which is significant to the success and progression of GSD firms.

A low cost solution to monitor environmental parameters in industrial area perimeters

The monitoring of environmental parameters in active industrial areas where there exist potential sources of pollution, and even more so in the area of decommissioned or closure mining activities, is very important from the point of view of prevention of environmental accidents. In this paper, we propose a solution for the monitoring of the environmental parameters with the local acquisition and processing of the data and the transmission of alarm signals to a higher hierarchical level through the use of radio communications. A flexible hardware structure and software development concept are presented to be integrated into the national air quality monitoring network.

Process of Requirement Mining Using Agile Technique

Requirement engineering is a process in pursuit to develop a software system that can recognize, evaluate, manuscript and legalized its necessitates. Recent studies have promoted the concept of software development using agile software approaches. Several techniques have been adopted to introduce a software that is proficient enough to meet the customer requirements. This quick agile alteration requires an organization to be improved on continuous basis in their approaches to develop Requirement Engineering software. These agile alterations are beneficial due to its minimum cost strategy of change through software process. In case the project is poorly managed and the cost ratio over it is high it could mess up the entire project and the system showed its failure and problems stays remain. This work introduces a strengthen approach that concentrates on requirements and related information so as to limit and mitigate the effects of change in an agile process based on the identified challenges associated to agile development.

Systematic literature review and empirical investigation of motivators for requirements change management process in global software development

AbstractMost software development firms have adopted the concepts of global software development (GSD) to develop high‐quality and low‐cost products. However, GSD is not a straightforward process. It is associated with many challenges that are mostly related to requirements change management (RCM). In this study, we explore the motivators that contribute to managing RCM activities in the GSD environment. We extracted a total of 25 motivators using the systematic literature review (SLR) approach and conducted a survey study to empirically evaluate the findings of the SLR. The results of the applied Spearman's statistical test show that the findings of the SLR and survey study had a positive moderate correlation (rs(25) = 0.566). We further analyzed the reported motivators according to organization size. Finally, we developed taxonomies of the identified motivators based on the framework proposed by Ramasubbu and the project management body of knowledge. We believe that the taxonomies provide a robust framework for tackling the challenges of RCM, which is significant for the success and evolution of GSD firms.

A scala based framework for developing acceleration systems with FPGAs

Abstract Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) in heterogeneous computing have been attracting more and more attention. Development of acceleration systems based on FPGAs involves the cooperation of both hardware and software developers. However, although most hardware acceleration systems are motivated by software developers, software developers are difficult to participant in the system building because of the steep learning curve of the hardware concept and design tools. Moreover, due to the complexity of hardware-software integration in traditional ways, end-to-end performance is hard to evaluate before trivial engineering effort. To address these concerns, we propose an open-source Domain-Specific Language (DSL) based framework called VeriScala 1 to support hardware defining in a high-level language, programmatical testing, and rapid acceleration system deploying. By adopting DSL embedded in Scala language, we introduce modern software development concepts into hardware design and provide a familiar environment to software developers. And by building a stack of middle layers from hardware to software, we provide reduced hardware abstraction and communication interface to facilitate both software and hardware development and system deployment. Through the evaluation of some basic components and real-world demos, we show that VeriScala provides a practical approach to rapid prototyping of hardware acceleration systems.

Towards Development of Software Testing Competency Framework to Empower Software Testers’ Profession

Separation of job functions between developers and testers due to enforcement of Software Quality Assurance (SQA) concept in software development has created worldwide demands for highly skillful software testers. This job function separation is to ensure that the systems or applications being developed are transparent at its testing activities. This will eventually lead to better quality of software products that will minimize impact or issues regarding software or system errors, bugs or faults. The aim of this article is to discuss on the current nature of software testing industry for identification of competencies issues or challenges related to software testers. This paper is intended to propose a software testing competency development framework as a job profiling, competencies assessment, training needs and professional career development for software testers. It is targeted that the proposed competency development framework will benefit software tester as individual, public or private agencies as organizations and education institutions as academia.

Developing software systems to Big Data platform based on MapReduce model: An approach based on Model Driven Engineering

Context: The need to analyze a large volume and variety of data for the purpose of extracting information has been promoting investments in Big Data, e.g., for storage, analysis and, more recently, methodologies and approaches for software system development for Big Data platforms. The application of software engineering for Big Data is recent and emerging, so in the literature we find a number of challenges and opportunities related to Big Data, but few practical approaches. ObjectiveIn this paper, we propose a practical approach based on MDE (Model Driven Engineering) to support the semi-automated development of software systems for Big Data platform that use MapReduce model. MethodThe proposed approach consists of framework, process, metamodels, visual Alf, transformation definitions written in ATL and Eclipse IDE plug-in. The proposed framework uses concepts of MDE, Weaving and software development based on Y. Our proposed process guides the use of our approach. A graphical notation and extended metamodel for Alf (i.e. visual Alf) assign executable behavior for UML or DSLs. An Eclipse IDE plug-in implements our approach. ResultsWe show the applicability of the proposed approach through an illustrative example. ConclusionOur approach brings a contribution because the development of software systems is assisted by models which preserves the business logic and adds Big Data features throughout the development process.

THE IMPACT OF FACTORS OF SUCCESS ON THE IN-HOUSE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT FOR PRESERVING TACIT KNOWLEDGE: SURVEY

Pair-programming is aimed to provide knowledge-intensive organisations to better manage their knowledge value. There are multiple ways to capture organization’s knowledge and make it available to all their members while it is not easy to capture/share the tacit knowledge among the stakeholders. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of pair-programming on the in-house software development for preserving tacit knowledge. We conducted a survey to study the impact of these five factors on the tacit knowledge sharing between the developers within the in-house software development environment.This paper is firstly exploring the definition of the knowledge and introducing the types of knowledge those are explicit and tacit knowledge. We discuss the in-house software development concept in which the non-IT organizations may need to develop their own software internally with no need to have a third party software development organization. For tacit knowledge sharing, we considered four factors reviewed in other researches and we added to them the pair programming as a practice. Case study is local bank in Palestine. Based on the results we have, it is confirmed the hypothesis of a positive effect of working in pairs on the process of knowledge sharing.