Seven software engineering principles for autonomic computing development

The complexity of modern middleware and software solutions is growing at an exponential rate. Only self-managing, or autonomic computing technology can reasonably stem the confusion this complexity brings to bear on human administrators. While much has been published on “architecture” and “function” for producing such systems, little has been written about the engineering of self-managing systems as a distinct paradigm. In this short article we suggest a set of software engineering principles for engineering of autonomic systems that should guide the planning of autonomic systems and their interfaces, with the intent to guide the thinking of R&D organizations pursuing the development of autonomic computing capability.     

Mathematical principles for a first course in software engineering

An introductory computer science course is developed, much as calculus is a basic course for mathematics and the physical sciences, concerned primarily with theoretical foundations and methodology rather than apprenticeship through applications. In this work, the principles taught in the course are described and an example illustrating them is given     

化工原理实验数据处理软件的开发

本软件旨在解决通常的化工原理实验数据处理过程中或因计算复杂,或因作图时不可避免的出错而影响实验结果的问题.它以Visual Basic 6.0为开发工具,采用最小二乘法直线拟合、非线性拟合、数值积分等方法处理实验数据,可完全消除学生作图出错,使实验结果更正确、更科学.本软件为处理化工原理实验数据提供方便、快捷的方法,也为教师批改实验报告提供可靠的依据.该软件在中文Windows环境中运行,界面美观、操作方便.     

Management-aided software engineering

Two veteran software managers examine some of today's management best practices for signs of what might become generally accepted practice in the near future. They present these practices from a small sample of healthy organizations. In addition, they envision how software management might mature over the next few decades to produce a new generation of best practices     

From knowledge based software engineering to knowware based software engineering

The first part of this paper reviews our efforts on knowledge-based software engineering, namely PROMIS, started from 1990s. The key point of PROMIS is to generate applications automatically based on domain knowledge as well as software knowledge. That is featured by separating the development of domain knowledge from the development of software. But in PROMIS, we did not find an appropriate representation for the domain knowledge. Fortunately, in our recent work, we found such a carrier for knowledge modules, i.e. knowware. Knowware is a commercialized form of domain knowledge. This paper briefly introduces the basic definitions of knowware, knowledge middleware and knowware engineering. Three life circle models of knowware engineering and the design of corresponding knowware implementations are given. Finally we discuss application system automatic generation and domain knowledge modeling on the J2EE platform, which combines the techniques of PROMIS, knowware and J2EE, and the development and deployment framework, i.e. PROMIS/KW＊＊.     

Unifying software engineering and systems engineering

The author describes CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) and the emerging project methods which demonstrate the opportunities for process improvement gains open to organizations. The organization that changes from separated software and system engineering processes to a more unified approach will find itself far more suited to developing dynamically changing, software-intensive systems. Culture change is never easy, but the alternative is even less palatable     

Reversibility in software engineering

Part of the attraction of object technology is its ability to remove or lower the walls that have traditionally stood between various aspects of software construction-analysis, design, implementation, maintenance. A good OO process should be reversible, allowing developers to move between tasks backward as well as forward, with many benefits for the quality of the process and the product. The author explains the concept     

Softing software engineering system

An integrated production system covering the phases specification, design, programming, documentation, test and integration—as well as project and configuration management is described. The system is built upon a unified development methodology supported by interactive tools. It encompasses a quality assurance procedure based on the automatic control of all intermediate products. It also provides a development database for project planning and control. The system is presently under development in Budapest, Hungary. Three of the planned seven subsystems are already operating in West Germany.     

Professional software engineering education

How might universities organize new lines of business in software engineering professional education? Professional education enables practicing professionals to achieve defined levels of competence and to be certified according to standards in their professions. This kind of education is offered at very few universities. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for designing professional education programs; software engineering is the central example. It suggests a strategy for combining traditional degree programs and professional certificate programs, in any mix suitable for a department and its clientele.     

Property-based software engineering measurement

Little theory exists in the field of software system measurement. Concepts such as complexity, coupling, cohesion or even size are very often subject to interpretation and appear to have inconsistent definitions in the literature. As a consequence, there is little guidance provided to the analyst attempting to define proper measures for specific problems. Many controversies in the literature are simply misunderstandings and stem from the fact that some people talk about different measurement concepts under the same label (complexity is the most common case). There is a need to define unambiguously the most important measurement concepts used in the measurement of software products. One way of doing so is to define precisely what mathematical properties characterize these concepts, regardless of the specific software artifacts to which these concepts are applied. Such a mathematical framework could generate a consensus in the software engineering community and provide a means for better communication among researchers, better guidelines for analysts, and better evaluation methods for commercial static analyzers for practitioners. We propose a mathematical framework which is generic, because it is not specific to any particular software artifact, and rigorous, because it is based on precise mathematical concepts. We use this framework to propose definitions of several important measurement concepts (size, length, complexity, cohesion, coupling). It does not intend to be complete or fully objective; other frameworks could have been proposed and different choices could have been made. However, we believe that the formalisms and properties we introduce are convenient and intuitive. This framework contributes constructively to a firmer theoretical ground of software measurement     

Evaluating software engineering standards

The authors report on the results of the Smartie project (Standards and Methods Assessment Using Rigorous Techniques in Industrial Environments), a collaborative effort to propose a widely applicable procedure for the objective assessment of standards used in software development. We hope that, for a given environment and application area, Smartie will enable the identification of standards whose use is most likely to lead to improvements in some aspect of software development processes and products. In this article, we describe how we verified the practicality of the Smartie framework by testing it with corporate partners     

Requirements engineering in software product line engineering

Many attempts have been made to increase the productivity and quality of software products based on software reuse. Software product line practice is one such approach, one that focuses on developing a family of products which have a majority of features in common. Hence, there are numerous requirements that are common across the family, but others are unique to individual products. Traditional requirements engineering methods were conceived to deal with single product requirements and are usually not flexible enough to address the needs arising from reusing requirements for a family of products. There is also the additional burden of correctly identifying and engineering both product-line-wide requirements and product-specific requirements as well as evolving them. Therefore, in this special issue, we want to highlight the importance and the role of requirements engineering for product line development as well as to provide insights into the state of the art in the field.     

Advances in software engineering

Software is the key technology in applications as diverse as accounting, hospital management, aviation, and nuclear power. Application advances in different domains such as these-each with different requirements-have propelled software development from small batch programs to large, real-time programs with multimedia capabilities. To cope, software's enabling technologies have undergone tremendous improvement in hardware, communications, operating systems, compilers, databases, programming languages, and user interfaces, among others. In turn, those improvements have fueled even more advanced applications. Improvements in VLSI technology and multimedia, for example, have resulted in faster, more compact computers that significantly widened the range of software applications. Database and user interface enhancements, on the other hand, have spawned more interactive and collaborative development environments. Such changes have a ripple effect on software development processes as well as on software techniques and tools. In this article, we highlight software development's crucial methods and techniques of the past 30 years     

系统工程与软件工程

系统工程是高科技产业的必备基础,软件行业需要的是系统化软件工程.软件工程包括三个重要的线索:开发过程、管理过程、过程改进.它们组合为一个系统工程,有了系统工程产业才能上规模,系统工程的基础是流程化管理,提高软件业的产业化程度,需要软件工程,软件工程的基础也是流程化管理.软件工程需要经历从磨合、提炼、到标准化的过程.     

Legal status of software engineering

Is the term “software engineering” a misnomer? That question has long been debated within the computer science, programming, and software engineering community. Naysayers point to the software activity's large trial-and-error component and its notable lack of solid intellectual and ethical underpinnings. On the affirmative side, ACM and the lEEE Computer Society recently joined forces to move software engineering toward professional status. Currently, software engineering is not one of the 36 engineering professions recognized and licensed in the United States. This situation is more serious than you might think, because 48 states have laws on their books that prohibit anyone who is not licensed from using the term “engineer” in describing his occupation and work