Trends In Software Development Research Articles

Combining low-code development with ChatGPT to novel no-code approaches: A focus-group study

Low-code tools are a trend in software development for business solutions due to their agility and ease of use. There are a certain number of vendors with such solutions. Still, in most Western countries, there is a clear need for the existence of greater quantities of certified and experienced professionals to work with those tools. This means that companies with more resources can attract and maintain those professionals, whilst other smaller organizations must rely on an endless search for this scarce resource. We will present and validate a model designed to transform ChatGPT into a low-code developer, addressing the demand for a more skilled human resource solution. This innovative tool underwent rigorous validation via a focus group study, engaging a panel of highly experienced experts. Their invaluable insights and feedback on the proposed model were systematically gathered and meticulously analysed.

Trends of Software Development Methodologies Toward DevOps: Analysis and Review

Background: The trend of software development has always been challenging for industry experts and software developers. There is tremendous growth in software development methodologies under the influence of evolving technologies and the rising demands of society. The 2019 pandemic forced software developers to shut down their offices and begin working from home, thereby, highlighting the critical necessity for a shared development and operations teams platform. As a result, the development trend moves from waterfall and Agile towards DevOps. Objective: The objective of the research is to review and comparatively analyze the availability factor of different selective and required features in software development methodologies. Software development industries will be benefited in appropriate methodology selection based on the requirement. Methods: The analysis is based on review of different development methodologies based on existing literature study, Google, and Stack Overflow Trends followed by tabular comparison of Waterfall, Iterative, Prototype, Spiral development models under Traditional and Rapid Application Development (RAD), Scrum, Kanban, XP for Agile methods with DevOps automation culture on essential features. Results: The moving trend towards DevOps, from Traditional and Agile development, demonstrate the most recent market swings for these models. Although Traditional models adhere to outdated software development methodologies, they are included in this high-quality survey and evaluation because of their widespread use in the software industry and prominent researcher’s survey work. Conclusion: Software developers, students, and researchers will all find it simple to comprehend the workings of development processes as a result of this analytical review. Additionally, it will also make it easier for these target audiences to choose relevant and effective models for software development.

نموذج مقترح لإدارة المخاطر في الشركات ذات المشروعات المتعددة

Recently, the importance of risk management has increased in the field of project management, especially software projects. The importance of risk management is because it has direct effects on the success of the project. Therefore, software organizations face a major challenge in achieving effective and efficient risk management. Therefore, measuring risks in software development is a key activity to be undertaken in risk management. Risk measurement is also one of the important topics that need more effort, especially in a work environment with multiple software projects. A multi-project environment involves multiple projects sharing the same available resources. This research aims to conduct a literature review to discover patterns or trends in software development to measure project risks and to reveal aspects of the measurement process, risk indicators, and various metrics for software projects. This research also aims to present a proposed framework for assessing risks in a multi-project work environment with shared resources for different levels in organizations with different capabilities.

Digitalization Trend and Its Influence on the Development of the Operational Process in Production Companies

The subject of digitization is currently very widely described. Implementing digitization is a complex task and there are many variants of its implementation. The authors of this article asked themselves what current trends affect the digitization of processes and what factors resulting from the characteristics of production enterprises affect the development of operational processes. The CAWI method was used in the study. In the analysis of the results, the following methods were used: Partial Least Squares Path Modeling (PLS), Mood’s Median Test, or visualization using a box plot. The analysis of the results allowed us to conclude that the development of operational processes of production enterprises is related to digitization trends, but this relationship is not direct. It is necessary to link digitalization trends with software development trends. The conducted research also indicated that there are company characteristics that determine the degree of use (absorption) and the perception of significance for digitalization trends. These characteristics are the type of a company and the age of a company.

Architecture of project management web services based on integration with natural language processing modules

A method for intellectualizing project management web services based on integration with natural language processing modules is proposed. The supporting of high reliability, extensibility and flexibility of the interface of such systems is a necessary condition for the providing of effective tools for developers of software systems of various profiles. It is shown that a prevalent trend in software development is to increase the portability of software in order to ensure the possibility of using the same application in different runtime environments. The advantages of using the concept of “API-first” are highlighted. The features of the “API-first” web server architecture are considered, in which all requests for web services are executed through a single web API interface, and the resource-intensive web pages formation is transferred to a separate structure on the same host or to a separate web server. The advantages of using natural language processing tools to improve the efficiency and availability of project management web services are considered. Project management web service database structure is proposed. All the natural language processing data for the conversational interface consist of user intents list, entities collections list, entities (collocations or word sets). It will be stored within each external language processing web service in the appropriate format automatically. Examples of prototype business logic with functions for the internal and external API are shown. Most of the external natural language processing service handlers are closely related to this business logic.

Russian Experience in Organizing Fully Remote Software Development: an Industry Study of 2021

The pandemic and the COVID-economy continue to have a significant impact on the development of industries of the "new economy". We might see it in the acceleration of digitalization, visualization of work processes and the predominance of communications in electronic channels. The transition to fully remote development and support of software under the influence of the COVID factor not just changed the IT industry, but established a new standard of organization of the software production. This article presents the results of study that covered various aspects of fully remote software development in Russian companies, including VTB, Yandex, Sbertech, and others. More than 20 experts representing their development teams have identified the main approaches to ensuring the motivation and involvement of engineers and to ensuring favorable conditions for their professional growth. The study also identifies the prospects for the evolution of the fully remote software development as a new industry standard. The results of the study are accompanied by the brief conclusions, the main idea of which is the need to quickly understand a new trend in software development and the usage of this factor in the competitive struggle (hiring specialists, organizing teams, organizational development).

Paas EUD Tool for Developing Expert Context-Aware Mobile Applications

Context-awareness enables systems to be tailored to the needs of users and their real circumstances at certain times. A noteworthy trend in software development is that an increasing number of software systems are being developed by individuals with expert knowledge in other sectors. Because most of the current context-aware development toolkits are intended for software developers, these types of systems cannot be easily developed by non-technical consumers. The development of tools for designing context-aware frameworks by consumers who are not programming experts but are specialists in the area of implementation would result in faster adoption of such services by businesses. This paper provides a cloud-based framework for people without programming experience to create context-aware mobile applications. The platform can provide a lightweight distribution of packaged applications that allows experts to send specified information to mobile users based on their context data without overlapping between the rules of the application. An energy-efficient mobile application was developed to acquire contextual information from the user device and to create quality data accordingly. The framework adopts Platform as a Service (PaaS) and containerization to facilitate development of context-aware mobile applications by experts in various domains rather than developing a tool for each domain in isolation, while considering multitenancy.

Fully Remote Software Development Due to COVID Factor

The internal transformation and using the fully remote software development under the influence of the pandemic has not only changed the industry, but heralded the construction of a new reality. This article presents the results of a study that covered the experience of transformation of 26 project teams from the world's leading IT corporations, software vendors, and high-tech companies with strong internal development practices: Alphabet, Amazon, BSC Group, Custis, Deutsche Bank, Evernote, Exness, Positive Technologies, PromSvyazBank, Sberbank, VTB, Yandex. Experts determined the results of rapid adaptation to changes, considered the medium-term impact of the pandemic factor on work processes, and made forecasts for 2021. The results of the study are accompanied by brief comments and recommendations of the author, the main idea of which is the need to quickly understand a new trend in software development, hiring specialists, and organizing teams associated with the refusal of high-tech IT companies to return to teamwork in shared offices.

Information Technologies of Accounting and Analysis in Modern Companies

This article addresses the issue of finding optimal solutions using the information technologies of accounting and analysis in modern companies. The aim of the study is to reveal available information technologies for the needs of small, medium and large businesses operating in modern conditions. This goal is achieved by using systematization, comparison, and analysis of information, obtained under the survey and open management statistics. For the first time, the paper systematizes up-to-date information of 2021 about the most popular programs, online services, platforms and cloud services that are used to improve accounting and analytical processes in enterprises of various sizes. The main global trends in software development in terms of COVID-19 pandemic have been identified. In particular, the study defines the countries that occupy the leading positions in the informatization of business processes. An attempt was made to classify information technologies by their use by various volume of businesses. The analysis of research results of the Internet search query frequency regarding the use of information technologies enabled to determine the most popular software products worldwide. The peculiarities of information technologies, their advantages and disadvantages were examined and the common and distinctive features were compared. It was determined that for the new enterprises to implement information technologies, it is necessary to conduct a step-by-step study of all available software products. The software evaluation algorithm was described to help select the optimal software for the specific business processes. The paper also describes the way to solve the problem of using accounting and analysis software for the businesses of a specific kind of activity.

Systematic Mapping of the Literature on Secure Software Development

The accelerated growth in exploiting vulnerabilities due to errors or failures in the software development process is a latent concern in the Software Industry. In this sense, this study aims to provide an overview of the Secure Software Development trends to help identify topics that have been extensively studied and those that still need to be. Therefore, in this paper, a systematic mapping review with PICo search strategies was conducted. A total of 867 papers were identified, of which only 528 papers were selected for this review. The main findings correspond to the Software Requirements Security, where the Elicitation and Misuse Cases reported more frequently. In Software Design Security, recurring themes are security in component-based software development, threat model, and security patterns. In the Software Construction Security, the most frequent topics are static code analysis and vulnerability detection. Finally, in Software Testing Security, the most frequent topics are vulnerability scanning and penetration testing. In conclusion, there is a diversity of methodologies, models, and tools with specific objectives in each secure software development stage.

M-BiRank: co-ranking developers and projects using multiple developer-project interactions in open source software community

Social collaborative coding is a popular trend in software development, and such platforms as GitHub provide rich social and technical functionalities for developers to collaborate on open source projects through multiple interactions. Developers often follow popular developers and projects for learning, technical selection, and collaboration. Thus, identifying popular developers and projects is very meaningful. In this paper, we propose a multiplex bipartite network ranking model, M-BiRank, to co-rank developers and projects using multiple developer-project interactions. Firstly, multiple developer-project interactions such as commit, issue, and watch are extracted and a multiplex developer-project bipartite network is constructed. Secondly, a random layer is selected from this multiplex bipartite network and initial ranking scores are calculated for developers and projects using BiRank. Finally, initial ranking scores diffuse to other layers and mutual reinforcement is taken into consideration to iteratively calculate ranking scores of developers and projects in different layers. Experiments on real-world GitHub dataset show that M-BiRank outperforms degree centrality, traditional single layer ranking methods, and multiplex ranking method.

A cognitive approach to improving the quality of the customs authorities' analytic activities

Subject. The article considers prospects for enhancing the quality of analytical activities of the Customs authorities through a cognitive approach implementation. Objectives. The aim is to formulate promising areas for improving the quality of analytical work of the Customs authorities by using a cognitive approach, to develop a concept for managing the analytical activities based on knowledge. Methods. The study rests on systems methodology and institutional theory. It also employs cognitive modeling techniques. Results. We show the process of transferring disparate data into knowledge, consider basic methods of big data processing, and identify the most acceptable method of customs data analysis. The paper discloses the contents and elements of the cognitive approach in analytical activities of on-line monitoring centers and describes an experiment with the application of data mining technology on the basis of the Federal Customs Service of Russia. We recommend the said approach to analytical and ICT units of organizations operating in the field of customs services. Conclusions. Current trends in software development, the use of electronic forms of customs documents, and continuously expanded list of analytical tools for big data processing entail the need for changing traditional approaches to information analysis to assess customs risks. The expert method should be supplemented with new, previously unused decision support tools, such as tools that enable automated big data analysis.

Evolutionary Cost-cognizant Test Case Selection and Prioritization for Object-Oriented Programs

Test case prioritization (TCP) is a software testing technique that finds an ideal ordering of test cases for regression testing, so that testers can obtain the maximum benefit of their test suite, even if the testing process is stop at some arbitrary point. The recent trend of software development uses OO paradigm. This paper proposed a cost-cognizant TCP approach for object-oriented software that uses path-based integration testing. Path-based integration testing will identify the possible execution path and extract these paths from the Java System Dependence Graph (JSDG) model of the source code using forward slicing technique. Afterward evolutionary algorithm (EA) was employed to prioritize test cases based on the severity detection per unit cost for each of the dependent faults. The proposed technique was known as Evolutionary Cost-Cognizant Regression Test Case Prioritization (ECRTP) and being implemented as regression testing approach for experiment.

An Architecture Model for a Distributed Virtualization System

The Thesis is about an architecture model for a Distributed Virtualization System, which could expand a virtual execution environment from a single physical machine to several nodes of a cluster. With current virtualization technologies, computing power and resource usage of Virtual Machines (or Containers) are limited to the physical machine where they run. To deliver high levels of performance and scalability, cloud applications are usually partitioned in several Virtual Machines (or Containers) located on different nodes of a virtualization cluster. Developers often use that processing model because the same instance of the operating system is not available on each node where their components run. The proposed architecture model is suitable for new trends in software development because it is inherently distributed. It combines and integrates Virtualization and Distributed Operating Systems technologies with the benefits of both worlds, providing the same isolated instance of a Virtual Operating System on each cluster node. Although it requires the introduction of changes in existing operating systems, thousands of legacy applications would not require modifications to obtain their benefits. A Distributed Virtualization System is suitable to deliver high-performance cloud services with provider-class features, such as high-availability, replication, migration, and load balancing. Furthermore, it is able to concurrently run several isolated instances of different guest Virtual Operating Systems, allocating a subset of nodes for each instance and sharing nodes between them. Currently, a prototype is running on a cluster of commodity hardware provided with two kinds of Virtual Operating Systems tailored for internet services (web server) as a proof of concept.

An Empirical Analysis of the Python Package Index (PyPI)

In this research, we provide a comprehensive empirical summary of the Python Package Repository, PyPI, including both package metadata and source code covering 178,592 packages, 1,745,744 releases, 76,997 contributors, and 156,816,750 import statements. We provide counts and trends for packages, releases, dependencies, category classifications, licenses, and package imports, as well as authors, maintainers, and organizations. As one of the largest and oldest software repositories as of publication, PyPI provides insight not just into the Python ecosystem today, but also trends in software development and licensing more broadly over time. Within PyPI, we find that the growth of the repository has been robust under all measures, with a compound annual growth rate of 47% for active packages, 39% for new authors, and 61% for new import statements over the last 15 years. As with many similar social systems, we find a number of highly right-skewed distributions, including the distribution of releases per package, packages and releases per author, imports per package, and size per package and release. However, we also find that most packages are contributed by single individuals, not multiple individuals or organizations. The data, methods, and calculations herein provide an anchor for public discourse on PyPI and serve as a foundation for future research on the Python software ecosystem.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ВИБОРУ ПРОГРАМНОГО ЗАБЕЗПЕЧЕННЯ НАВЧАННЯ ЛАНДШАФТНОМУ ПРОЕКТУВАННЮ

The article deals with the main problems and trends in development of software for landscape design in the context of accelerated introduction of BIM-technologies into the building and construction industry. It is shown that there is currently a significant lag in the development of computer BIM-products for landscape architects. The principal requirements which the modern BIM applications for landscape architects should meet and basic problems of their implementation are determined. It is argued that the decision to create a BIM application for landscape architects is possible the only by the world's leading developers of software products for the construction trade, such as Autodesk Inc. and Nemetschek and Trimble companies. It is also shown that all these developers are actively working towards improvement their existing architectural BIM applications in order to provide the possibility of their usage in landscape design. Analysis of the differences in the basic approaches used by the developers for this purpose revealed that Autodesk and Nemetschek prefer to improve their Autodesk Revit and Graphisoft ArchiCAD products, respectively, without engagement the third party developers whereas Trimble took approach with active participation of third parties – plug-ins developers to the SketchUp application. The conclusion of the article is that Autodesk Revit, Graphisoft ArchiCAD and Trimble SketchUp are promising applications for landscape design and, accordingly, for introducing them into the teaching process of colleges and universities. At the same time, it is revealed that the above-described approach by Trimble opens the prospect of the fastest conversion of SketchUp into a full-fledged BIM tool for landscape architects, and this should be taken into account when choosing an application for introducing into the educative process.

DevOps: finding room for security

DevOps is everywhere, it seems. As one of the most ubiquitous trends in software development of the past few years, its adoption has been spurred on by promises of faster roll-outs, greater agility and responsiveness and significant gains in efficiency. With developers and operational staff collaborating on continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) workflows, software will be both more dependable and more aligned with business needs – so it's claimed. But as Meera Rao, a senior principal consultant at Synopsys, explains in this interview, there is a certain lack of clarity around what DevOps really means. And in the excitement about its claimed benefits, security is often overlooked.

Workflow Generation from the Two-Hemisphere Model

Abstract Model-Driven Software Development (MDSD) is a trend in Software Development that focuses on code generation from various kinds of models. To perform such a task, it is necessary to develop an algorithm that performs source model transformation into the target model, which ideally is an actual software code written in some kind of a programming language. However, at present a lot of methods focus on Unified Modelling Language (UML) diagram generation. The present paper describes a result of authors’ research on Two-Hemisphere Model (2HM) processing for easier code generation.

A cloud-based platform to develop context-aware mobile applications by domain experts

Context-awareness enables the personalization of computer systems according to the users' needs and their particular situation at a given time. The personalization capabilities are usually implemented by programmers due to the complex processes that are involved. However, an important trend in software development is that more and more software systems are being implemented not only by programmers but also by people with expertise in other domains. Since most of the existing context-aware development toolkits are designed for programmers, non-technical users cannot develop these kinds of systems. The design of tools to create context-aware systems by users that do not have programming skills but are experts in the domain where the system is going to be deployed, will contribute to speed up the adoption of these kinds of services by the society. This paper presents a cloud-based platform to ease the development of context-aware mobile applications by people without programming skills. The platform has been designed to be used in a tourism domain. This way, tourism experts can send tourist information to mobile users according to their context data (indoor/outdoor location, language, and date and time range). An energy-efficient mobile app has been developed in order to obtain context data from the user's device and to receive personalized information in real time based on these data. The architecture and implementation details of the system are presented and the evaluation of the platform by tourism domain experts is discussed.

REVEDERE Distributed Support System for Code Review Process

review process represents a common practice in software industry for checking product quality and reducing the number of defects deployed to consumers. To integrate well with the current accelerated trend in software development, there is a need for automation and simplicity, through tools, integrated in programmer's workflows. In this paper we present the primary motivations for software inspections and we introduce a support platform for managing this activity. The system is based on core code review concepts and is presented as a middleware for human interaction. Also, a communication framework was implemented, to ease information flow and management in the code review middleware.