Empirical comparisons of animation and narration in requirements validation

Increasingly powerful computing technology suggests an expansion of multimedia features in requirements engineering methods. It is not obvious, however, that techniques such as animation and narration would improve the effectiveness of communicating domain information to stakeholders for validation. Three principles from the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (CTML) are used to compare validation methods using animation and narration with more traditional methods using static diagrams and text. Results suggest animation and narration can have significant positive impact on the level of domain understanding attained by participants. In particular, narration yielded strongly significant results. While these results should be viewed as preliminary, they indicate a potential advantage in the use of narration and possibly animation in requirements validation. The results provide justification for further research on the integration of multimedia techniques in developing and validating requirements.     

An approach for the systematic development of domain‐specific languages

Building tailored software systems for a particular application domain is a complex task. For this reason, domain‐specific languages (DSLs) receive a constantly growing attention in recent years. So far the main focus of DSL research is on case studies and experience reports for the development of individual DSLs, design approaches and implementation techniques for DSLs, and the integration of DSLs with other software development approaches on a technical level. In this paper, we identify and describe the different activities that we conduct when engineering a DSL, and describe how these activities can be combined in order to define a tailored DSL engineering process. Our research results are based on the experiences we gained from multiple different DSL development projects and prototyping experiments. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

专业软件在“工程制图”多媒体课件制作中的作用

本文分析了目前“工程制图”教具、多媒体课件存在的缺点和“工程制图”多媒体课件应具有的特点,指出了专业软件在“工程制图”课件制作中的教学作用,并举例说明了专业软件在“工程制图”多媒体课件制作中的使用方法。     

基于软件工程瀑布模型的多媒体课件制作探索

基于软件工程开发思想和多媒体制作软件应用的背景下,引入软件工程的思想。用软件工程的研究方法来制作多媒体课件,使得多媒体课件的制作成为一个规范化、合理化和可视化的一个过程。应用软件工程的思想来进行多媒体课件的制作可以提高效率,并且能够有效地解决当前的多媒体课件制作过程中存在的数量多、质量差的问题。     

A survey on the use of topic models when mining software repositories

Researchers in software engineering have attempted to improve software development by mining and analyzing software repositories. Since the majority of the software engineering data is unstructured, researchers have applied Information Retrieval (IR) techniques to help software development. The recent advances of IR, especially statistical topic models, have helped make sense of unstructured data in software repositories even more. However, even though there are hundreds of studies on applying topic models to software repositories, there is no study that shows how the models are used in the software engineering research community, and which software engineering tasks are being supported through topic models. Moreover, since the performance of these topic models is directly related to the model parameters and usage, knowing how researchers use the topic models may also help future studies make optimal use of such models. Thus, we surveyed 167 articles from the software engineering literature that make use of topic models. We find that i) most studies centre around a limited number of software engineering tasks; ii) most studies use only basic topic models; iii) and researchers usually treat topic models as black boxes without fully exploring their underlying assumptions and parameter values. Our paper provides a starting point for new researchers who are interested in using topic models, and may help new researchers and practitioners determine how to best apply topic models to a particular software engineering task.     

A Hitchhiker's guide to statistical tests for assessing randomized algorithms in software engineering

Randomized algorithms are widely used to address many types of software engineering problems, especially in the area of software verification and validation with a strong emphasis on test automation. However, randomized algorithms are affected by chance and so require the use of appropriate statistical tests to be properly analysed in a sound manner. This paper features a systematic review regarding recent publications in 2009 and 2010 showing that, overall, empirical analyses involving randomized algorithms in software engineering tend to not properly account for the random nature of these algorithms. Many of the novel techniques presented clearly appear promising, but the lack of soundness in their empirical evaluations casts unfortunate doubts on their actual usefulness. In software engineering, although there are guidelines on how to carry out empirical analyses involving human subjects, those guidelines are not directly and fully applicable to randomized algorithms. Furthermore, many of the textbooks on statistical analysis are written from the viewpoints of social and natural sciences, which present different challenges from randomized algorithms. To address the questionable overall quality of the empirical analyses reported in the systematic review, this paper provides guidelines on how to carry out and properly analyse randomized algorithms applied to solve software engineering tasks, with a particular focus on software testing, which is by far the most frequent application area of randomized algorithms within software engineering. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of model checking in software engineering

Model checking is a formal verification technique. It takes an exhaustively strategy to check hardware circuits and network protocols against desired properties. Having been developed for more than three decades, model checking is now playing an important role in software engineering for verifying rather complicated software artifacts.This paper surveys the role of model checking in software engineering. In particular, we searched for the related literatures published at reputed conferences, symposiums, workshops, and journals, and took a survey of (1) various model checking techniques that can be adapted to software development and their implementations, and (2) the use of model checking at different stages of a software development life cycle. We observed that model checking is useful for software debugging, constraint solving, and malware detection, and it can help verify different types of software systems, such as object- and aspect-oriented systems, service-oriented applications, web-based applications, and GUI applications including safety- and mission-critical systems.The survey is expected to help human engineers understand the role of model checking in software engineering, and as well decide which model checking technique(s) and/or tool(s) are applicable for developing, analyzing and verifying a practical software system. For researchers, the survey also points out how model checking has been adapted to their research topics on software engineering and its challenges.     

Modeling uncertainty in software engineering using rough sets

Uncertainty casts a shadow over all facets of software engineering. This negative meta-property is found in every aspect of software including requirement specifications, design, and code. It can also manifest itself in the tools and engineering practices employed, and in the off-the-shelf software incorporated into the final product. Unfortunately, it is often the case that software engineers ignore these sources of uncertainty or abstract them away. Perhaps this is because there is insufficient understanding of this uncertainty, and no universal techniques for handling its many forms. This paper focuses on the issues of uncertainty in software engineering. It further describes a rough set framework for making decisions in the face of such uncertainty and inconsistency. In particular, we show how to induce rule-based decision making from uncertain information in software engineering applications. Moreover, a freely available tool, Rosetta, is employed to automate the decision-making process. NASA has mandated the use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions where possible. But in commercial real-time operating systems certain attributes are uncertain, even where published information is available. Therefore, the selection of a commercial real-time operating system for an embedded system is the software engineering problem with which we explain the rough set decision-making process.     

Utilizing Event-B for domain engineering: a critical analysis

This paper presents our experience of modeling land transportation domain in the formal framework of Event-B. Well-specified requirements are crucial for good software design; they depend on the understanding of the domain. Thus, domain engineering becomes an essential activity. The possibility to have a formal model of a domain, consistent with the use of formal methods for developing critical software working within it, is an important issue. Safety-critical domains, like transportation, exhibit interesting features, such as high levels of nondeterminism, complex interactions, stringent safety properties, and multifaceted timing attributes. The formal representation of these features is a challenging task. We explore the possibility of utilizing Event-B as a domain engineering tool. We discuss the problems we faced during this exercise and how we tackled them. Special attention is devoted to the issue of the validation of the model, in particular with a technique based on the animation of specifications. Event-B is mature enough to be an effective tool to model domains except in some areas, temporal properties mainly, where more work is still needed.     

Presto—A System Environment for Mission-Critical Multimedia Applications

Summarized in this report is a multiphased R and D program, presto, conducted for developing a multimedia system environment to support a variety of mission-critical applications. The concepts, software design, and system prototype developed during the first phase of the program are presented. In particular, the work on real-time scheduling, multimedia storage and retrieval, and application programming model is described. The major results of the presto Phase I program are a set of new techniques and system software for QoS- and criticality-based, adaptive multiresource management, raw-I/O-based continuous multimedia file management, and data flow-oriented programming with integrated real-time scheduling support.     

Opportunistic problem solving in software engineering

Software development is a complex, mainly cognitive endeavor. Studying these cognitions can improve software processes, but this is an ambitious task. The topic is broad, and the software engineering domain is still maturing. Positioning software engineering activities within a holistic view of the software process helps us compare it with other engineering disciplines. In this way, we can better define what is specific to software engineering and how to quantitatively and qualitatively measure these activities.     

CLPL: Providing software infrastructure for the systematic and effective construction of complex collaborative learning systems

Over the last decade, e-Learning and in particular Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) needs have been evolving accordingly with more and more demanding pedagogical and technological requirements. As a result, high customization and flexibility are a must in this context, meaning that collaborative learning practices need to be continuously adapted, adjusted, and personalized to each specific target learning group. These very demanding needs of the CSCL domain represent a great challenge for the research community on software development to satisfy.This contribution presents and evaluates a previous research effort in the form of a generic software infrastructure called Collaborative Learning Purpose Library (CLPL) with the aim of meeting the current and demanding needs found in the CSCL domain. To this end, we experiment with the CLPL in order to offer an advanced reuse-based service-oriented software engineering methodology for developing CSCL applications in an effective and timely fashion. A validation process is provided by reporting on the use of the CLPL platform as the primary resource for the Master's thesis courses at the Open University of Catalonia when developing complex software applications in the CSCL domain.The ultimate aim of the whole research is to yield effective CSCL software systems capable of supporting and enhancing the current on-line collaborative learning practices.     

FORM: A feature-;oriented reuse method with domain-;specific reference architectures

Systematic discovery and exploitation of commonality across related software systems is a fundamental technical requirement for achieving successful software reuse. By examining a class/family of related systems and the commonality underlying those systems, it is possible to obtain a set of reference models, i.e., software architectures and components needed for implementing applications in the class. FORM (Feature-;Oriented Reuse Method) supports development of such reusable architectures and components (through a process called the “domain engineering”) and development of applications using the domain artifacts produced from the domain engineering. FORM starts with an analysis of commonality among applications in a particular domain in terms of services, operating environments, domain technologies, and implementation techniques. The model constructed during the analysis is called a “feature” model, and it captures commonality as an AND/OR graph, where AND nodes indicate mandatory features and OR nodes indicate alternative features selectable for different applications. Then, this model is used to define parameterized reference architectures and appropriate reusable components instantiatable during application development. Architectures are defined from three different viewpoints (subsystem, process, and module) and have intimate association with the features. The subsystem architecture is used to package service features and allocate them to different computers in a distributed environment. Each subsystem is further decomposed into processes considering the operating environment features. Modules are defined based on the features on domain technology and implementation techniques. These architecture models that represent an architecture at different levels of abstraction are derived from the feature hierarchy captured in the feature model. Modules serve as basis for creating reusable components, and their specification defines how they are integrated into the application (e.g., as-;is integration of pre-;coded component, instantiation of parameterized templates, and filling-;in skeletal codes). Our experiences have shown that for the electronic bulletin board and the private branch exchange (PBX) domains, “features” make up for a common domain language and the main communication medium among application users and developers. Thus, the feature model well represents a “decision space” of software development, and is a good starting point for identifying candidate reusable components.     

多媒体基准测试程序中的流并行性分析

在分析多媒体基准测试程序Mediabench特征的基础上,以Imagine流处理器为例讨论了流体系结构对多媒体应用所提供的软硬件支持,并且利用流编程模型对多媒体应用中存在的流并行性进行了详细的剖析,最后通过对3个典型的多媒体应用进行流并行程序设计,在Imagine的时钟精确模拟器Isim上测试得到了多媒体应用在流体系结构上可以获得的加速性能.     

Paradigmatic analysis as a means of eliciting knowledge to assist multimedia methodological development

We have identified two paradigms in multimedia systems design based on the software engineering and graphic design approaches. Our aim is to better inform methodological development in the field. We argue that unless and until the underlying paradigm of each community is understood, attempts to develop specific multimedia methods will be sub-optimal. ‘Paradigm’ is defined in the Kuhnian sense of a ‘disciplinary matrix’ that is composed of those shared beliefs and values that guide a ‘community’ of theorists and practitioners. This paper is based on analyses of several textbooks from both disciplines and also on interviews with software engineers and graphic designers who are actively engaged in the development of digital interactive multimedia (DIM). The results indicate that (a) Kuhn's concept of paradigm is a useful mechanism through which to examine the knowledge and approaches of these two design disciplines vis-à-vis multimedia development; and (b) that the resulting paradigms provide a useful framework from which to inform methodological development within the multimedia field. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the paradigms can assist theorists and practitioners in developing a framework for method evaluation and integration in multimedia.     

The Hybrid World of Virtual Environments

Much of the work concerned with virtual environments has addressed the development of new rendering technologies or interaction techniques. As the technology matures and becomes adopted in a wider range of applications, there is, however, a need to better understand how this technology can be accommodated in software engineering practice. A particular challenge presented by virtual environments is the complexity of the interaction that is supported, and sometimes necessary, for a particular task. Methods such as finite-state automata which are used to represent and design dialogue components for more conventional interfaces, e.g. using direct manipulation within a desktop model, do not seem to capture adequately the style of interaction that is afforded by richer input devices and graphical models. In this paper, we suggest that virtual environments are, fundamentally, what are known as hybrid systems. Building on this insight, we demonstrate how techniques developed for modelling hybrid systems can be used to represent and understand virtual interaction in a way that can be used in the specification and design phases of software development, and which have the potential to support prototyping and analysis of virtual interfaces.     

基于压缩域的图像检索技术

图像检索技术是多媒体应用中的关键技术，现有的基于内容图像检索技术大都是基于非压缩域的，对于目前普遍存在的压缩格式图像，采用这种技术必须先解压再检索，不但计算量大，而且需占用较多的中介存储空间，所以严重影响了检索系统的实时性和灵活性，同时各种压缩标准(如JPEG，MPEG，JPEG2000等)的推出与普及也促使人们寻求可以直接在压缩域操作的检索技术，该文对现有的压缩域图像检索技术的发展进行综述，并讨论了未来可能的研究方向。     

Modelling hypermedia and web applications: the Ariadne Development Method

The development process of hypermedia and web systems poses very specific problems that do not appear in other software applications, such as the need for mechanisms to model sophisticated navigational structures, interactive behaviors, interfaces with external applications, security constraints and multimedia compositions. Even though experience, modelling skills and abstractions can be borrowed from existing software design methods, such as object-oriented modelling, hypermedia developers need specific mechanisms to analyze and design using entities that belong to the hypermedia domain (such as nodes, links, anchors and space and time-based relationships). Moreover, hypermedia methods should provide mechanisms to deal with all the aforementioned features in a progressive and integrated way. In this paper, we present the Ariadne Development Method (ADM), a software engineering method that proposes a systematic, flexible, integrative and platform-independent process to specify and evaluate hypermedia and web applications. ADM has been shown particularly useful in complex systems involving a huge number of users with different abilities to access information, with a complex structure where a huge number of nodes have to be organized in a clear way to produce specifications that are discussed by people with an heterogeneous background. This is the case of ARCE, a Latin American project where 21 countries are cooperating to produce a web platform to improve assistance in disaster mitigation situations.     

Generating code for engineering design systems using software patterns

We illustrate here how software engineers developing engineering design systems can introduce patterns into the conceptual modeling techniques that were developed in the database community and integrate them with techniques that are emerging in the object-oriented analysis and engineering design community. The goal is to raise the level of abstraction used to communicate software specifications and to build applications. This will speed the development and improve the quality of engineering design tools. We show by an example how this can be accomplished through an example software pattern from the software engineering discipline (the observer pattern) [12]. We show how patterns can be automatically supported using the general techniques that were developed in the Semantic Objects, Relationships, and Constraints (SORAC) project [20] for the development of tools, for the specification of databases and for building design systems.