Software Engineering Approach Research Articles

Translating between Alloy specifications and UML class diagrams annotated with OCL

Model-driven engineering (MDE) is a software engineering approach based on model transformations at different abstraction levels. It prescribes the development of software by successively transforming the models from abstract (specifications) to more concrete ones (code). Alloy is an increasingly popular lightweight formal specification language that supports automatic verification. Unfortunately, its widespread industrial adoption is hampered by the lack of an ecosystem of MDE tools, namely code generators. This paper presents a model transformation from Alloy to UML class diagrams annotated with OCL (UML+OCL) and shows how an existing transformation from UML+OCL to Alloy can be improved to handle dynamic issues. The proposed bidirectional transformation enables a smooth integration of Alloy in the current MDE contexts, by allowing UML+OCL specifications to be transformed to Alloy for validation and verification, to correct and possibly refine them inside Alloy, and to translate them back to UML+OCL for sharing with stakeholders or to reuse current model-driven architecture tools to refine them toward code.

An Approach to Enhance Security of Cloud Computing Services using Software Engineering Model

Cloud computing has great prospective of benefitting rigorous computational supremacy to the civilization society at reduced price. It facilitates consumers amid restricted computational assets to subcontract their bulky computational work assignments to the cloud, and cost-effectively have the benefit of the immense computational supremacy, bandwidth, storage, and even suitable software that can be pooled in a pay-per-use manner. Regardless of the tremendous acceptance, security and privacy is the primary and major hindrance that stops the broad acceptance of this endowed computing sculpt, particularly for consumers whilst their private data or information are possessed and produced during the computation. Delighting the cloud since an inherently timid insecure computing stage from the perspective of the cloud consumers, in this work we devise cloud computing life cycle model to facilitate not only to defend confidential information by permitting computations with encrypted records, but also shield consumers from malevolent performances by permitting the validation of the computational outcome. Such a scheme of broad-spectrum of protected computational subcontracting lately shown to be viable in hypothesis, but to devise method to facilitate practically efficient also remains as an extremely challenging task. Focusing on engineering and computing approach for minimization tasks, this paper proposes widely applicable method through proper design of the secure model for implementing the security measures in the cloud life cycle model using the software engineering approach.

Relational Analysis of Software Developer’s Quality Assures

Software engineering approach ensures the quality of software and the delivery of the product on to time to their client. The development process is facing many challenges to optimize the resource and provide the delivery on time. Each phase of the development has its unique functionality. Software development model and the architectural approaches are differ that will creates an impact in the quality of the delivery .however the role and their skill sets are vital role in the developmental process and to meet the deadlines of the development tasks. The developer's skills and the developmental tasks inline to the functional domain and its relational process are determine the quality factors such minimum error, functional correctness and user satisfactory. This research attempted observes the functional process of the development sector and determine the influencing factor and its associative relationship. The data from the industry and its descriptive analysis with the determined factors are discussed as part of the paper. I. Introduction The success factor of any software development system highly depends upon the architecture of the software development model, technical reliability used in it, pre-planning and preparatory works done and the effective implementation of the specified works in a time driven manner along with the developers completion. In the same way Software architecture forms the backbone for building successful software-intensive systems. Architecture largely permits or precludes a system's quality attributes such as performance or reliability. In general, a critical issue in the design and construction of any complex software system is based on its architecture implementation by the developers. The right architecture is the key to software project success. Conversely, the wrong one is a sure road to failure. A good architecture can help ensure that a system will satisfy key requirements in such areas as performance, reliability, portability, scalability, and interoperability. This paper attempted to relate the software architecture and its development model along with the developers role. The developer efficiency and related factors are addressed to develop the model for effective software development process and its metrics. Software development process is a sequence of activities. These activities are dependent with one another in each level. These activities are related in the next phase. It is a chain of activities involved to determine the resource allocation, utilization and coating process. These relationship activities are used to determine the software process reusability and maintenance. This dependent and independent activities are varies as per the architecture in the software model of development phases. This research process tinted to determine the dependent and regression process values to identify the model and architecture. These create an effect in the cost, development, resource identification and optimization etc. II. Software Engineering Measures

The Implementing of Customer Management System in E-Commerce

Using ASP.NET as a development tool is in order to develop this small trading company customer management system. This article appeared in recent years by trading on the domestic management system software analysis, combined with work experience, according to the software engineering approach to the small trading company customer management system, a system analysis, overall design, detailed design. Uses the popular client / server mode, select the database performance SQL, using efficient tools VISUAL STUDIO 2005, to complete the small trading company customer management system software design and development.

Model Validation in Ontology Based Transformations

Model Driven Engineering (MDE) is an emerging approach of software engineering. MDE emphasizes the construction of models from which the implementation should be derived by applying model transformations. The Ontology Definition Meta-model (ODM) has been proposed as a profile for UML models of the Web Ontology Language (OWL). In this context, transformations of UML models can be mapped into ODM/OWL transformations. On the other hand, model validation is a crucial task in model transformation. Meta-modeling permits to give a syntactic structure to source and target models. However, semantic requirements have to be imposed on source and target models. A given transformation will be sound when source and target models fulfill the syntactic and semantic requirements. In this paper, we present an approach for model validation in ODM based transformations. Adopting a logic programming based transformational approach we will show how it is possible to transform and validate models. Properties to be validated range from structural and semantic requirements of models (pre and post conditions) to properties of the transformation (invariants). The approach has been applied to a well-known example of model transformation: the Entity-Relationship (ER) to Relational Model (RM) transformation.

Agile software development practices: evolution, principles, and criticisms

PurposeAgile software development is an emerging approach in software engineering, initially proposed and promoted by a group of 17 software professionals who practice a set of “lightweight” methods, and share a common set of values of software development. They consolidated their thoughts, and defined these methods as “agile”. The approaches are based on experiences and best practices from the past by the above‐mentioned group of 17 software professionals. The purpose of this article is to outline the history and evolution of agile software development practices, their principles, and the criticisms as reported by the software development community.Design/methodology/approachA comprehensive literature review was undertaken to do this research.FindingsBased on the literature review, this paper provides a comprehensive document that helps the practitioners working in the area of the agile software development.Originality/valueThis article will provide comprehensive material for the researchers in the area of agile software development. It will also be very useful for the practitioners practicing software development in the area of agile software development.

Applying Software Engineering Methodology for Designing Biomedical Software Devoted To Electronic Instrumentation

Problem statement: Significant effort goes into the development of bio medical software, which is integrated with computers/processors, sens ors and electronic instrumentation devoted to a specific application. However, the scientific work on electronic instrumentation controlled by biomedical software has not emphasized software development, instead focusing mainly on electronics engineering. The development team is rarely composed of Software Engineering (SE) experts. Usually, a commercial automated tools environment is not used due to its high cost and complexity for researchers from other areas to understand. Approach: This present study reports how the SE approach was applied to design and develop biomedical software, which is part of a Computerized Electronic Instrumentation (CEI). This CEI comprise s software and an electronic instrumentation based on a force sensor and electrogoniometer to mo nitor the hand exertion of computer user during typing task. The aim is to serve as a guideline for academic researchers who are not expert in softwar e engineering methodology but usually develop their o wn software to run with their CEI. The specification of the requirements, presented as use case, includes the context diagram, the data flow diagram, the entity relationship diagram and test p rocedure. The Unified Modelling Language from the Enterprise Architect tool was used. The developed s oftware and the electronic instrumentation were tested together. Results: A sample of the interface screen shows how the out comes could be plotted in an integrated manner. By comparing the values with other values obtained by manual calculations and with those provided by sensor manufacturer, the rep eatability of test procedure validated the results. Reliable electronic instrumentation when working with unreliable software can become unreliable. Conclusion: Applying software engineering methodology principles provided a simple and clear documentation that was helpful to establish the tes t procedures and the re-work.

Vorgehen zur agentenbasierten Modellierung eines schweizerischen Waldenergieholzmarktes

Procedure to develop an agent-based model of a Swiss forest wood fuel market It is helpful to develop agent-based model based on a structured procedure. The chosen traditional software engineering approach is mainly composed of five phases: 1) the analysis of the observed system; 2) the model development; 3) the detailed design; 4) the actual software implementation; and 5) the model's evaluation. The different phases are briefly described by the respective goals, tasks and expected results. This contribution shows the development of a Swiss forest wood fuel market with specific examples for each phase. The essential work steps and intermediate results are demonstrated from the start to a fully developed agent-based model. Finally it is demonstrated how to carry through scenario analyses for the modeled forest wood fuel market. The simulation example shows first that, as is to be expected, a reduction of the wood supply leads to increasing forest wood fuel prices. Second, it shows how the decision behavior of wood suppliers can additionally modify the price of forest wood fuel in a situation of scarce supply, whereas this effect is smaller in a situation of balanced supply and demand.

THE 3C COOPERATION MODEL APPLIED TO THE CLASSICAL REQUIREMENT ANALYSIS

Aspects related to the users' cooperative work are not considered in the traditional approach of software engineering, since the user is viewed independently of his/her workplace environment or group, with the individual model generalized to the study of collective behavior of all users. This work proposes a process for software requirements to address issues involving cooperative work in information systems that provide distributed coordination in the users' actions and the communication among them occurs indirectly through the data entered while using the software. To achieve this goal, this research uses ergonomics, the 3C cooperation model, awareness and software engineering concepts. Action-research is used as a research methodology applied in three cycles during the development of a corporate workflow system in a technological research company. This article discusses the third cycle, which corresponds to the process that deals with the refinement of the cooperative work requirements with the software in actual use in the workplace, where the inclusion of a computer system changes the users’ workplace, from the face to face interaction to the interaction mediated by the software. The results showed that the highest degree of users' awareness about their activities and other system users contribute to a decrease in their errors and in the inappropriate use of the system

Applying a smoothing filter to improve IR-based traceability recovery processes: An empirical investigation

ContextTraceability relations among software artifacts often tend to be missing, outdated, or lost. For this reason, various traceability recovery approaches—based on Information Retrieval (IR) techniques—have been proposed. The performances of such approaches are often influenced by “noise” contained in software artifacts (e.g., recurring words in document templates or other words that do not contribute to the retrieval itself). AimAs a complement and alternative to stop word removal approaches, this paper proposes the use of a smoothing filter to remove “noise” from the textual corpus of artifacts to be traced. MethodWe evaluate the effect of a smoothing filter in traceability recovery tasks involving different kinds of artifacts from five software projects, and applying three different IR methods, namely Vector Space Models, Latent Semantic Indexing, and Jensen–Shannon similarity model. ResultsOur study indicates that, with the exception of some specific kinds of artifacts (i.e., tracing test cases to source code) the proposed approach is able to significantly improve the performances of traceability recovery, and to remove “noise” that simple stop word filters cannot remove. ConclusionsThe obtained results not only help to develop traceability recovery approaches able to work in presence of noisy artifacts, but also suggest that smoothing filters can be used to improve performances of other software engineering approaches based on textual analysis.

Stroke manager service for improved post-acute continuity of care

Stroke is one of the leading causes of adult disability being responsible for enormous societal healthcare costs. The inter-institutional post-acute stroke processes suffer from information discontinuity and information asymmetries between stakeholders in the healthcare service network (HSN). A central coordination of the HSN's information flow is a promising approach. Because of disease-specific characteristics or differing legal regulations existing concepts cannot easily be adapted. Therefore, we investigated the current post-acute stroke workflow, the involved technologies and legal regulations. Using a combined service engineering and software engineering approach, we developed a novel stroke manager service that supports the patient along the post-acute care pathway. We identified requirements for such a stroke manager service, its supporting IT-infrastructure and legal issues. This paper presents the requirements for an effective post-stroke management, the complex inter-institutional workflow of the novel stroke manager service and the corresponding stroke manager IT-infrastructure. Domain experts evaluated the requirements confirming the demand for more coordination along the patient's complete medical pathway. The feasibility of the stroke manager service concept has been shown in workshops. Even though the incorporation of existing hospital information systems continues to be challenging, first results show that patients, care-givers and healthcare service providers benefit from the stroke manager service.

MDA based approach towards Design of Database for Banking System

The Indian Banks collects huge amount of data which the banks are unable to turn into fast transaction and also unable to maintain and utilize it in a proper manner. Other problems are also occurring w.r.t. the reusability of the system in a different environment designed by the developer. Nowadays we are focusing upon interoperability of database and system hardware. In this paper we have proposed a new design of banking Database system of a bank using the modern MDA approach of software engineering to improve the maintainability, portability and flexibility. We have shown that MDA approach also provides interoperability, easy maintenance of highly computational business oriented system by taking the study of banking database. In this paper we have shown how database modeling is done with MDA for modelling at different levels like CIM, PIM, and PSM, which gives a new dimension to the database based application development.

A software engineering perspective on environmental modeling framework design: The Object Modeling System

The environmental modeling community has historically been concerned with the proliferation of models and the effort associated with collective model development tasks (e.g., code generation, data transformation, etc.). Environmental modeling frameworks (EMFs) have been developed to address this problem, but much work remains before EMFs are adopted as mainstream modeling tools. Environmental model development requires both scientific understanding of environmental phenomena and software developer proficiency. EMFs support the modeling process through streamlining model code development, allowing seamless access to data, and supporting data analysis and visualization. EMFs also support aggregation of model components into functional units, component interaction and communication, temporal-spatial stepping, scaling of spatial data, multi-threading/multi-processor support, and cross-language interoperability. Some EMFs additionally focus on high-performance computing and are tailored for particular modeling domains such as ecosystem, socio-economic, or climate change research. The Object Modeling System Version 3 (OMS3) EMF employs new advances in software framework design to better support the environmental model development process. This paper discusses key EMF design goals/constraints and addresses software engineering aspects that have made OMS3 framework development efficacious and its application practical, as demonstrated by leveraging software engineering efforts outside of the modeling community and lessons learned from over a decade of EMF development. Software engineering approaches employed in OMS3 are highlighted including a non-invasive lightweight framework design supporting component-based model development, use of implicit parallelism in system design, use of domain specific language design patterns, and cloud-based support for computational scalability. The key advancements in EMF design presented herein may be applicable and beneficial for other EMF developers seeking to better support environmental model development through improved framework design.

H: A component-based specification language for heterogeneous applications

This paper presents H, a minimalistic specification language for designing heterogeneous software applications, particularly in the realms of robotics and industria, which takes advantage of a Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) approach. H copes with some of the most outstanding characteristics of these systems, like diversity at different levels (hardware platforms, programming languages, programmer skills), network distribution, real time and fault-tolerance. The H specification covers the life-cycle of any heterogeneous application. Its development system offers to the designer and/or builder a set of tools for specifying modules, generating code semiautomatically, debugging, maintenance, and a real time analysis of the system.

Design Paradigm and Risk Assessment of Hybrid Re-engineering with an approach for development of Re-engineering Metrics

Software re-engineering, a recent research area includes reverse engineering & forward engineering while Hybrid re-engineering incorporates both the engineering processes where reverse engineering applies to existing system code to extract design & requirements, although this is often used as means to mitigate risks & reduced costs of operation and maintaining the software system. This paper briefly describes traditional re-engineering then discusses the emerging process of hybrid-reengineering which is often used as means to simplify the cumbersome tasks. The paper represents how maintenance is going to be effect with the help of given software engineering approaches. An analysis of various possible risks, their impact and mapping with various attributes is correspondingly depicted. This paper is also presenting the way to reduce the impact of most of these risks by using hybrid re-engineering. Keyword Used : Hybrid re-engineering, commercial off the Shelf (COTS), Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Reengineering, Model Driven Engineering (MDE), Defect Removal Efficiency (DRE) and Maintenance, Mean Time To Repair (MTTR), Mean Time to Failure (MTTF), Engineering (Engg.).

Software Engineering Approaches for Design Patterns

Software Engineering Approaches for Design Patterns

Engineering societal information systems by agent-oriented modeling

This article is concerned with the engineering of societal information systems where technical components of a system - software agents - support the social network around which the system is centered. We propose agent-oriented modeling as a suitable software engineering approach for developing open and adaptive societal information systems. The article first outlines the steps of the software engineering process of agent-oriented modeling and shows how the resulting models can be mapped to the simulation environment. It then describes two case studies where agent-oriented modeling has successfully been applied. The first case study addresses the development of an agent-based decision-making system for helping customers in grocery shopping. The second case study treats the engineering of a societal information system for helping patients in finding healthcare providers. The simulation results from both case studies are presented and discussed. We conclude the article by comparing related work and drawing conclusions. This work was performed while the first author was a Fulbright Scholar with the University of South Carolina.

O papel da gestão de requisitos em projetos de ambientes construídos: um estudo de caso

Frente às já conhecidas dificuldades na gestão dos projetos de ambientes construídos, pesquisadores e profissionais têm continuamente desenvolvido e aplicado boas práticas de áreas como a gestão de projetos (GP). Contudo, ainda há carências a serem supridas, como a dificuldade em acompanhar dinamicamente a evolução dos requisitos dos envolvidos. Na tentativa de suprimir esta lacuna, o artigo objetiva analisar se a gestão de requisitos (GR) pode ser integrada à GP de ambientes construídos, e quais as principais vantagens e desvantagens desta integração. A pesquisa contou com uma revisão teórica que trouxe conceitos básicos da GP e da GR, contando esta última com contribuições da engenharia de software. Também foi realizado um estudo de caso em uma empresa construtora, através de entrevistas semi-estruturadas. A pesquisa permitiu concluir que a utilização da GR é vantajosa, apesar de não solucionar todas as dificuldades dos projetos, e que a adequada estruturação dos projetos é um condicionante para o sucesso da GR. A principal contribuição é uma proposta genérica e sistemática para integrar as etapas da GR aos projetos.

Internetware: An Emerging Software Paradigm for Internet Computing

The Internet is undergoing a tremendous change towards the globalized computing environment. Due to the open, dynamic and uncontrollable natures of the Internet, software running in the Internet computing environment has some new features, which bring challenges to current software technologies in terms of software model, software operating platform, software engineering approaches and software quality. Researchers in China have proposed the term “Internetware” to present the emerging software paradigm. Sponsored by the National Basic Research 973 Program, several research practices have been done on the Internetware in the past decade. This paper summarizes the progress and status of the Internetware researches. A technical solution framework for the Internetware paradigm is proposed from four aspects: the Internetware software model defines what the Internetware is to be; the Internetware middleware determines how to run the Internetware applications; the engineering methodology determines how to develop the Internetware applications; the Internetware quality assurance determines how well the Internetware applications can perform. The paper also discusses the ongoing research issues and future trends of Internetware.

A genetic algorithm for optimized feature selection with resource constraints in software product lines

Abstract Software product line (SPL) engineering is a software engineering approach to building configurable software systems. SPLs commonly use a feature model to capture and document the commonalities and variabilities of the underlying software system. A key challenge when using a feature model to derive a new SPL configuration is determining how to find an optimized feature selection that minimizes or maximizes an objective function, such as total cost, subject to resource constraints. To help address the challenges of optimizing feature selection in the face of resource constraints, this paper presents an approach that uses G enetic A lgorithms for optimized FE ature S election (GAFES) in SPLs. Our empirical results show that GAFES can produce solutions with 86–97% of the optimality of other automated feature selection algorithms and in 45–99% less time than existing exact and heuristic feature selection techniques.