Software Engineering Environment Research Articles

A biological-like synthesis framework for software engineering environments

This research proposes a Biological-like Architecture for Software Systems (BASS) that make up of software components. The design principle is to mimic the simplicity of uni-cellular life form as fixed-sized blocks linearly arranged as a flat array so that all references to those components can be reached directly. Each component holds its attributes and operations to permit self-execution without external support. Like living cells, this autonomy is modeled to be short-lived that undergoes a three-stage life cycle, namely, creation, sustainment, and cessation. This cycle must run to completion within a predefined Time-To-Live (TTL) limit. When the time limit of an existing component expires, a new component is created to replace in situ to conserve system energy and overhead. A simulation is conducted to test the operating characteristics of this three-stage life cycle under the time limit. The results reveal that component replacement in situ is practically viable. It is envisioned that BASS will offer an energy-efficient environment that can alleviate software systems resource utilization considerably.

A CASE environment for Project-based Course to learn a sustainable software development

In the context of contemporary software development education, project-based courses have gained prominence as effective pedagogical tools. This methodology empowers students to cultivate practical skills by engaging in real-world projects. However, integrating sustainable software development practices into such courses often remains a challenge such as the need to set up new technologies for each semester, making it hard to ensure consistent and disciplined development. To address this gap, this research introduces Agilearn, the conception of a Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE) environment tailored explicitly for project-based courses with a strong focus on promoting sustainability. It is expected to enhance the learning experience by offering a collaborative platform that automates tasks and establishes a standardized agile environment for students. This paper presents the requirements analysis, the course design to implement Agilearn, the architecture of Agilearn, and a case study to implement Agilearn.

Gamification in education: a mixed-methods study of gender on computer science students’ academic performance and identity development

Underrepresentation of women in computer science (CS) increasingly demands the necessity to find and enhance current learning engagement approaches to bring more women into computing fields. Some researchers have been exploring the influence of gamification on female students as one of these possible learning engagement strategies. Gamification refers to the introduction of video game elements into non-game activities to enhance engagement and motivation. Previous studies have reported mixed results of the impact of gamification on women. In this study, we introduce SEP-CyLE (Software Engineering and Programming Cyberlearning Environment), an online gamified tool that was designed to provide supplemental computing content to students. This paper presents a convergent mixed-methods study guided by social identity theory and self-efficacy to understand women's experiences with this gamified tool. More specifically, this study explores virtual points' and leaderboards' effects on CS identity development, self-efficacy, and performance. The results show that virtual points and the leaderboard contributed to improved performance for students of all genders, suggesting that gamification is a gender-neutral learning engagement strategy that improves female students' performance as much as male students. Regardless of improved performance, most women did not actively enjoy or were motivated by the virtual points or leaderboard in SEP-CyLE. Additionally, gamification had no significant impact on CS identity development or self-efficacy constructs and had little to no impact on women's interest and engagement in the field of computing.

Pronghorn: A Multidimensional Coarse-Mesh Application for Advanced Reactor Thermal Hydraulics

This paper presents an overview of Pronghorn, a multiscale thermal-hydraulic (T/H) application developed by Idaho National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley. Pronghorn, built on the open-source finite element Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE), leverages state-of-the-art physical models, numerical methods, and nonlinear solvers to deliver fast-running advanced reactor T/H simulation capabilities within a modern software engineering environment. This work summarizes the physical models, multiphysics and multiscale coupling, and numerical discretization in Pronghorn with emphasis on our initial target application to pebble bed reactors (PBRs). A diverse set of applications are shown to depressurized natural circulation in the SANA experiments, forced convection in the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, three-dimensional (3-D)/one-dimensional coupling of Pronghorn and RELAP-7 systems T/H for loop analysis in the High Temperature Reactor Power Module, and forced convection in the Mark-1 Pebble Bed Fluoride-Salt-Cooled High-Temperature Reactor. A multiphysics coupling of Pronghorn, RELAP-7, and Griffin deterministic neutronics for a gas-cooled PBR demonstrates the capability of the MOOSE framework for reactor design calculations. These applications highlight the verification and validation underlying Pronghorn’s software development while emphasizing features that improve upon capabilities offered by legacy tools in areas such as 3-D unstructured meshing, physics modeling, and multiphysics coupling.

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.

Agile Development in Meteorological R&D: Achieving a Minimum Viable Product in a Scrum Work Setting

AbstractIn the Agile Way of Working (AoW), a group of developers jointly work to efficiently realize a project. Here we report on the application of AoW in meteorological research and development (R&D) outside of the software engineering environment. Three projects were formulated, derived from the observations strategy (2015) of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI). An initial phase of preparation consisted of breaking down the workload into tasks to be accomplished by individual project members and achievable in two one-week sprints. Sprints consisted of daily stand-ups, where accomplishments, work intentions, and obstacles were discussed, followed by project work in a joint working environment. The three projects identified were 1) flying a drone to detect boundary layer evolution, 2) monitoring the quality of the precipitation measurement system, and 3) realizing a platform for merging third-party data with meteorological observations. The preparation phase proved to be vitally important to each of the projects. The roles of the product owner and Scrum master in streamlining and guiding these projects were essential to the success of the sprint weeks, but the joint group settings worked well for only two of the three projects. While team members were positive about their experience with the AoW, the challenge remains to fuse the traditional individual work practice of researchers with that of software engineers, who are experienced in working in a group setting.

Knowledge-based Support to Process Integration in ODE


 
 
 Process integration in Software Engineering Environments (SEE) is very important to allow tool integration. In this paper, we present a knowledge-based approach to improve process integration in ODE, an ontology-based SEE.
 
 

A framework for gamification in software engineering

The nature of software engineering tasks can threat to engagement and motivation.A gamification framework for Software Engineering environments is presented.An ontology, a methodology guiding the process and a support tool are proposed.Companies can apply the proposal with appropriate design and development effort. Gamification seeks for improvement of the user's engagement, motivation, and performance when carrying out a certain task; it does so by incorporating game mechanics and elements, thus making that task more attractive. The application of gamification in Software Engineering can be promising; software projects can be organized as a set of challenges which can be ordered and that need to be fulfilled, for which some skills, and mainly much collective effort, are required. The objective of this paper is to propose a complete framework for the introduction of gamification in software engineering environments. This framework is composed of an ontology, a methodology guiding the process, and a support gamification engine. We carried out a case study in which the proposed framework was applied in a real company. In this project the company used the framework to gamify the areas of project management, requirements management, and testing. As a result, the methodology has clearly enabled the company to introduce gamification in its work environment, achieving a quality solution with appropriate design and development effort. The support tool allowed the company to gamify its current tools very easily.

Cyberinfrastructure for the collaborative development of U2U decision support tools

This paper describes the use of cyberinfrastructure to create interactive applications as part of the Useful to Usable (U2U) project. These applications transform historical climate data, knowledge, and models into decision support tools for end users such as crop farmers, university Extension educators, and other agricultural advisors. In creating a cyberinfrastructure to support the U2U project, four major challenges have been addressed: designing and developing highly usable web applications with frequent feedback, establishing a software engineering environment to support iterative development, integrating and synthesizing historical and current datasets from a variety of sources (local vs. remote, different access methods, and formats), and supporting project collaboration needs of data and document sharing, project management, and public outreach. The overall goals of the cyberinfrastructure and its architecture design are described. Methods for data retrieval and synthesis, as well as the various software components utilized are discussed. The development and integration of tools into the collaborative HUBzero framework are highlighted, including the use of HUBzero’s core features to share ideas, algorithms, and results. A highly iterative development process that includes feedback from experts and end-users to feed requirement definition, design and application updates are also examined.

Remote Access Environment for Computer Networking Laboratory: Challenges and Solutions

<p>A variety of network management systems is commercially available. However, their applicability for computer networking laboratories that are used for scientific, educational or engineering purposes (in particular, as a test environment for network-based software engineering) is limited. Also dedicated remote access systems do not offer enough flexibility. Major challenges are discussed in the paper. Most of the proposed solutions have been already implemented and tested.</p>

A Taxonomy to Support Team Coordination in Global Software Engineering Environment

A Taxonomy to Support Team Coordination in Global Software Engineering Environment

The Study on Case-Driven Methodology to Teach Software Engineering in Graduate Education

This paper discusses the reform of teaching contents, teaching model, teaching method of software engineering courses, and assesses the effects of a series of reform measures and programs. It formed a case-driven methodology to teach software engineering. The teaching practice undertaken by Northeast Petroleum University has shown that the methodology provides graduate students with the opportunities to experience the realistic software engineering problems and environments, and then effectively raise their interest in learning.

A Knowledge-based PSEE with the Ability of Project Monitoring

Process-centered software engineering environments (PSEEs) facilitate managing software projects. According to the change of enactment environments and the increment of software development complexity, PSEE features should be enhanced. We designed a knowledge-based PSEE named KPSEE. It offers the features: (1) maximizing the degree of process parallelism, (2) enhancing process flexibility, (3) managing product consistency, (4) integrating PSEEs, (5) keeping pace with significant process change, (6) preventing technique leakage, and (7) offering project monitoring ability.

Supporting collaborative development using process models: a tooled integration‐focused approach

ABSTRACTCollaboration in software engineering projects is usually intensive and requires adequate support by well‐integrated tools. However, process‐centered software engineering environments (PSEE) have traditionally been designed to exploit integration facilities in other tools, while offering themselves little to no such facilities. This is in line with the vision of the PSEE as the central orchestrator of project support tools. We argue that this view has hindered the widespread adoption of process‐based collaboration support tools by incurring too much adoption and switching costs. We propose a new process‐based collaboration support architecture, backed by a process metamodel, that can easily be integrated with existing tools. The proposed architecture revolves around the central concepts of ‘deep links’ and ‘hooks’. Our approach is validated by analyzing a collection of open‐source projects, and integration utilities based on the implemented process model server have been developed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Research on Heterogeneous Component Assembly Problems Based on Software Product Line

With the research and development of software product line and component-based software engineering methodology, it has become key technology how to build component assembly environment and realize heterogeneous component assembly. Thus, a new industrialized product line based integrated software engineering environment (PL-ISEE) model is firstly proposed, and the heterogeneity problems of developed components are analyzed and discussed. For removing components heterogeneity and realizing heterogeneous components assembly, the wrapper wrapping component is studied further. These researches and ideas will play significant role in promoting the formations of component-based software engineering methodology and future industrialized software production technology.

Interated Model based on Software Engineering Environment and Life Cycle

Interated Model based on Software Engineering Environment and Life Cycle

Supporting model-driven development using a process-centered software engineering environment

The adoption of Model-Driven Development (MDD) is increasing and it is widely recognized as an important approach for building software systems. In addition to traditional development process models, an MDD process requires the selection of metamodels and mapping rules for the generation of the transformation chain which produces models and application code. In this context, software process tasks should be performed in a specific sequence, with the correct input artifacts to produce the output ones. However, existing support tools and transformation engines for MDD do not have a process-centered focus that addresses different kinds of software process activities, such as application modeling and testing to guide the developers. Furthermore, they do not enable process modeling nor the (semi) automated execution of activities during process enactment. The MoDErNE (Model Driven Process-Centered Software Engineering Environment) uses process-centered software engineering environment concepts to improve MDD process specification and enactment by using a metamodeling foundation. In MoDErNE, a software process model may be enacted several times in different software projects. This paper details the MoDErNE environment, its approach and architecture and also the case studies through which the tool was evaluated.

5.4.2 Introducing Systems Engineering Views in Product Lifecycle Management

AbstractProduct Lifecycle Management demands to integrate all engineering data of a product or service in order to provide full traceability of dependencies between information of different types and from various sources. Current Product Data Management solutions set the focus mainly on data representing physical items. Version Management applications originating from software engineering environments are frequently used also for storing systems engineering data. However, this data management landscape is not adequate for the central role of systems engineering driving both, the development of physical system elements and of system elements implemented by software.This paper describes how all product data may be integrated with adequately emphasizing the role of systems engineering. It is based on principles EADS is establishing for an EADS‐wide standardized but versatile approach appropriate for the wide range of products and services offered by the EADS Divisions Airbus, Astrium, Cassidian and Eurocopter. Currently the defined and agreed concepts are further progressed and implemented.

An Ideal Schema Design of an Industrialized PL-ISEE Database Platform

Using the automation production and management system of modern manufacturing industry product line for reference, a new industrialized PL-ISEE (product line based integrated software engineering environment) model was proposed by us in reference [4]. In the new model, the middle part in the PL-ISEE architecture is data layer which is composed of the software components bus and environment database platform to achieve the storage and managements of product line core assets data. In this paper, the environment database platform architecture and its schema design as well as implementation mechanism are further researched. Whole database platform architecture consists of the product line asset objects management service and core assets database system. The data model and database schema of the database system are designed and created by using a united core asset concept model and data organization model. The database supporting platform with the model and schema can well satisfy all the requirements of interfaces, tools and data integration as well as product line assembling production in the PL-ISEE. Therefore, the design and realizing ideas of the PL-ISEE database platform will be useful for researching on product line engineering and methodology in the future.

Research on the Realizing Mechanism of an Industrialized PL-ISEE Database Platform

Using the automation production mode of modern manufacturing industry for reference, a new industrialized PL-ISEE (product line based integrated software engineering environment) model was proposed by us in reference [8]. The middle part of the PL-ISEE architecture is data layer which is composed of the software components bus and core assets database platform to achieve the storage and managements of product line core assets data. In this paper, the architecture and its implementation mechanism of the PL-ISEE database platform is further researched. Whole platform architecture consists of core asset objects management service and assets database system. The data model and database schema as well as database views of the database platform are designed and created by using united product line concept model and data model. So, the database supporting platform’s functions and configuration also well satisfy the requirements of interfaces, tools and data integration as well as product line assembling production in the PL-ISEE. Therefore, the design and realizing ideas of the PL-ISEE database platform will be valuable to research product line engineering and methodology in future.