In practice: UML software architecture and design description

The Unified Modeling Language has attracted many organizations and practitioners. UML is now the de facto modeling language for software development. Several features account for its popularity: it's a standardized notation, rich in expressivity; UML 2.0 provides 13 diagram types that enable modeling several different views and abstraction levels. Furthermore, UML supports domain-specific extensions using stereotypes and tagged values. Finally, several case tools integrate UML modeling with other tasks such as generating code and reverse-engineering models from code. Our study focused on UML use and model quality in actual projects rather than on its adequacy as a notation or language.     

动态软件体系结构研究综述*

近年来,随着Internet的迅猛发展和应用形式的不断更新,传统的软件体系结构（SA）已无法完全适应需求,动态软件体系结构（dynamic software architecture,DSA）逐渐成为SA研究人员关注的焦点之一。描述了DSA的研究背景及研究意义;总结了DSA的研究内容及国内外的研究现状;最后探讨了DSA研究的主要发展方向。     

Statistical prioritization for software product line testing: an experience report

Software product lines (SPLs) are families of software systems sharing common assets and exhibiting variabilities specific to each product member of the family. Commonalities and variabilities are often represented as features organized in a feature model. Due to combinatorial explosion of the number of products induced by possible features combinations, exhaustive testing of SPLs is intractable. Therefore, sampling and prioritization techniques have been proposed to generate sorted lists of products based on coverage criteria or weights assigned to features. Solely based on the feature model, these techniques do not take into account behavioural usage of such products as a source of prioritization. In this paper, we assess the feasibility of integrating usage models into the testing process to derive statistical testing approaches for SPLs. Usage models are given as Markov chains, enabling prioritization of probable/rare behaviours. We used featured transition systems, compactly modelling variability and behaviour for SPLs, to determine which products are realizing prioritized behaviours. Statistical prioritization can achieve a significant reduction in the state space, and modelling efforts can be rewarded by better automation. In particular, we used MaTeLo, a statistical test cases generation suite developed at ALL4TEC. We assess feasibility criteria on two systems: Claroline, a configurable course management system, and Sferion?, an embedded system providing helicopter landing assistance.     

ABYSS: an architecture for software protection

ABYSS (a basic Yorktown security system) is an architecture for protecting the execution of application software. It supports a uniform security service across the range of computing systems. The use of ABYSS in solving the software protection problem, especially in the lower end of the market, is discussed. Both current and planned software distribution channels are supportable by the architecture, and the system is nearly transparent to legitimate users. A novel use-once authorization mechanism, called a token, is introduced as a solution to the problem of providing authorizations without direct communication. Software vendors may use the system to obtain technical enforcement of virtually any terms and conditions of the sale of their software, including such things as rental software. Software may be transferred between systems, and backed up to guard against loss in case of failure. The problem of protecting software on these systems is discussed, and guidelines to its solution are offered     

基于场景的两种软件体系结构评估方法

基于场景的软件体系结构评估方法通过场景将系统的质量需求转换为风险承担者与系统的交互活动 ,通过低代价的事前评估活动降低软件的质量风险。 SAAM及 ATAM两种方法在具体的实际评估活动中,它们在场景的生成、风险承担者的商业动机的表述、软件体系结构的描述等方面存在着很大的不同,两种评估方法各有特长 ,其评估方法在具体的场景执行环节上具有不确定性 ,将定量的度量方法与定性场景结合是提高评估的有效途径。     

An experience report on the personal software process

Individual developers can use quality analysis and management techniques that many consider applicable only to projects and organizations. One of the authors, a software practitioner, explains how the personal software process (PSP) gave him the training he needed. The software industry's demand to achieve predictability and consistency in the face of rapid change is significant. The PSP framework helps an individual to meet these demands. Using the PSP has provided the author with several benefits. His estimation accuracy has improved significantly. However, adding more data to his historical database will help further improve his estimating skills. As it is said: “there is no substitute for hard work to be successful”. Similarly, “there is no substitute for more data to improve an individual's personal processes”. The author's current goal is to narrow the percentage error in his estimates to within roughly 5%. He also plans to focus on improving early defect removal through more effective reviews and preventing defects by improving skills and practices     

电力系统运维可视化平台的核心构架和实践

近年来,科技的不断发展,使电网发展面临的挑战也越来越大。电网公司通过大规模、大范围的信息化建设,应用了大量业务系统。如何有效运用信息系统,将相关数据清晰、直观的展示出来,提高运维人员决策的有效性以及运维效率是亟需解决的问题。在电力系统中引入可视化技术,可有效维护系统的运行和管理。本文简单介绍了可视化技术的特点,对其在电力系统运行维护中的核心构架和实践进行了探讨。     

The marriage of research and practice [software research]

Some types of research are of interest to all software readers, and all types o f research are of interest to some software readers; but not all types of research are of interest to all Software readers. The key to success for IEEE Software, or any other publication trying to disseminate research results to practitioners, is to identify research that is of interest to "all Software readers.".     

嵌入式系统软件体系结构动态建模及应用研究

应用π演算方法,结合Petri网中的面向对象Petri网和时间Petri网,建立了嵌入式系统软件体系结构抽象模型ESAM,研究了ESAM模型的动态演化、一致性和死锁。应用ESAM抽象模型,对车站信号联锁控制器进行了建模与分析。     

Model-driven architecture for embedded software: A synopsis and an example

MDA proposes a new paradigm for software development in general. We claim that MDA could be beneficial for embedded software development, especially if it is extended to address the special needs of embedded systems. The paper consists of two sections: the first is a brief synopsis on how MDA ought to be extended to handle embedded software development, while the second illustrates the concepts in practice using a prototype modeling language and tool chain designed for developing mission computing software.     

基于软件定义网络的云边协同架构研究综述

随着5G和物联网时代的到来以及云计算应用的逐渐增加,各有所长的边缘计算与云计算势必彼此融合进行云边协同,实现云计算与边缘计算的优势互补和协同联动.SDN网络因其灵活开放可编程的网络架构被认为是解决当前云计算和边缘计算协同问题的有效方法.基于云计算和边缘计算的优势与不足对云边协同的必要性和具体内涵进行了梳理,归纳总结了目...     

GraceDTI:一个扩散张量成像数据处理与可视化系统

随着高场磁共振的发展和应用,扩散张量磁共振成像(DTI)已经逐步成为一种重要的临床磁共振检查模式。研究了DTI数据的处理和可视化问题,介绍开发的用于DTI图像数据处理和可视化的软件——GraceDTI系统。该系统提供了从扩散张量图像的估计重建、各种导出参数图像的生成、张量场可视化和纤维跟踪与可视化在内的完整的DTI处理与分析功能。该系统可用于临床DTI的辅助诊断,还可作为DTI图像处理的研究平台。     

TAP: a software architecture for an inquiry dialogue-based tutoringsystem

In the tutoring agenda planner (TAP) project, we study the feasibility of implementing the inquiry teaching method of Collins and Stevens (1991) as tutoring software. This paper describes the software architecture for TAP-1-a simple inquiry tutoring shell based on the theory of inquiry teaching. The inquiry teaching style has the objective of teaching scientific reasoning skills through a “localized” sequence of well-planned inquiry dialogue. To complement the “localized” dialogue planning framework inherent in the theory of inquiry teaching, the TAP-1 architecture has adopted the “global” curriculum planning technique. TAP-1 has successfully demonstrated the inquiry teaching style through an inquiry planner within an intelligent tutoring system shell. In addition, PADI-a geography tutor that delivers inquiry teaching style-has been implemented using TAP-1. A group of students performed well in an evaluation activity of the tutor. They also foresaw the potential of TAP for achieving the aim of cultivating scientific thoughts     

Comparing distributed and face-to-face meetings for software architecture evaluation: A controlled experiment

Scenario-based methods for evaluating software architecture require a large number of stakeholders to be collocated for evaluation meetings. Collocating stakeholders is often an expensive exercise. To reduce expense, we have proposed a framework for supporting software architecture evaluation process using groupware systems. This paper presents a controlled experiment that we conducted to assess the effectiveness of one of the key activities, developing scenario profiles, of the proposed groupware-supported process of evaluating software architecture. We used a cross-over experiment involving 32 teams of three 3rd and 4th year undergraduate students. We found that the quality of scenario profiles developed by distributed teams using a groupware tool were significantly better than the quality of scenario profiles developed by face-to-face teams (p < 0.001). However, questionnaires indicated that most participants preferred the face-to-face arrangement (82%) and 60% thought the distributed meetings were less efficient. We conclude that distributed meetings for developing scenario profiles are extremely effective but that tool support must be of a high standard or participants will not find distributed meetings acceptable.

Large-scale information retrieval in software engineering - an experience report from industrial application

Software Engineering activities are information intensive. Research proposes Information Retrieval (IR) techniques to support engineers in their daily tasks, such as establishing and maintaining traceability links, fault identification, and software maintenance. We describe an engineering task, test case selection, and illustrate our problem analysis and solution discovery process. The objective of the study is to gain an understanding of to what extent IR techniques (one potential solution) can be applied to test case selection and provide decision support in a large-scale, industrial setting. We analyze, in the context of the studied company, how test case selection is performed and design a series of experiments evaluating the performance of different IR techniques. Each experiment provides lessons learned from implementation, execution, and results, feeding to its successor. The three experiments led to the following observations: 1) there is a lack of research on scalable parameter optimization of IR techniques for software engineering problems; 2) scaling IR techniques to industry data is challenging, in particular for latent semantic analysis; 3) the IR context poses constraints on the empirical evaluation of IR techniques, requiring more research on developing valid statistical approaches. We believe that our experiences in conducting a series of IR experiments with industry grade data are valuable for peer researchers so that they can avoid the pitfalls that we have encountered. Furthermore, we identified challenges that need to be addressed in order to bridge the gap between laboratory IR experiments and real applications of IR in the industry.     

Design and evaluation of a generic software architecture foron-demand video servers

Introduces the design, implementation and evaluation of a generic software architecture for on-demand video servers. We describe different key components for controlling the storage and network devices within the server. The interactive collaborations between these software components are also illustrated. The experimental results indicate a very promising direction in exploring the right combinations of these software components. The server is thus able to increase the number of concurrent video accesses with the same hardware configuration. For instance, with the right combinations, the system achieved about 80% of the storage system bandwidth of four disks, about 70% of the storage system bandwidth of six disks, and generally reached the maximal achieved SCSI bandwidth when eight disks are used over two SCSI buses. Our research and experimental results are based on video servers currently under construction across a variety of hardware platforms, including SMP, DMP and clusters of PCs or workstations. The most advanced prototype server is based on an SGI shared-memory multiprocessor with a mass storage system consisting of RAID-3 disk arrays. With all the enabling/management schemes, we were able to further investigate interesting research issues by considering the user's access profiles for taking advantage of popular video titles. The results were significant, with a range of 60% improvement given a 512 kByte block size. In addition to the experimental results, theoretical performance models were also developed that closely match to our collected experimental results     

Validating a model-driven software architecture evaluation and improvement method: A family of experiments

ContextSoftware architectures should be evaluated during the early stages of software development in order to verify whether the non-functional requirements (NFRs) of the product can be fulfilled. This activity is even more crucial in software product line (SPL) development, since it is also necessary to identify whether the NFRs of a particular product can be achieved by exercising the variation mechanisms provided by the product line architecture or whether additional transformations are required. These issues have motivated us to propose QuaDAI, a method for the derivation, evaluation and improvement of software architectures in model-driven SPL development.ObjectiveWe present in this paper the results of a family of four experiments carried out to empirically validate the evaluation and improvement strategy of QuaDAI.MethodThe family of experiments was carried out by 92 participants: Computer Science Master’s and undergraduate students from Spain and Italy. The goal was to compare the effectiveness, efficiency, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and intention to use with regard to participants using the evaluation and improvement strategy of QuaDAI as opposed to the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM).ResultsThe main result was that the participants produced their best results when applying QuaDAI, signifying that the participants obtained architectures with better values for the NFRs faster, and that they found the method easier to use, more useful and more likely to be used. The results of the meta-analysis carried out to aggregate the results obtained in the individual experiments also confirmed these results.ConclusionsThe results support the hypothesis that QuaDAI would achieve better results than ATAM in the experiments and that QuaDAI can be considered as a promising approach with which to perform architectural evaluations that occur after the product architecture derivation in model-driven SPL development processes when carried out by novice software evaluators.     

Context checklist for industrial software engineering research and practice

The relevance of context is particularly stressed in case studies, where it is said that “case study is an empirical method aimed at investigating contemporary phenomena in their context”. In this research, we classify context information and provide a context checklist for industrial software engineering. The checklist serves the purpose of (a) supporting researchers and practitioners in characterizing the context in which they are working; (b) supporting researchers with a checklist to identify relevant contextual information to elicit and report during primary and secondary studies. We utilized a systematic approach for constructing the classification of context information and provided a detailed definition for each item. We collected feedback from researchers as well as practitioners. The usefulness of the checklist was perceived more positively by researchers than practitioners, though they highlighted benefits (raising awareness of the importance of context and usefulness for management). The understandability was perceived positively by both practitioners and researchers. The checklist may serve as a “meta-model”, forming the basis for specific adaptations for different research areas, and as input for researchers deciding which context information to extract in systematic reviews. The checklist may also help researchers in reporting context in research papers.     

Self-reconfigurable software architecture: Design and implementation

To respond quickly to the rapidly changing manufacturing environment, it is imperative for the system to have such capabilities as flexibility, adaptability, and reusability. The fractal manufacturing system (FrMS) is a new manufacturing paradigm designed to meet these requirements. To facilitate a dynamic reconfiguration of system elements (i.e., fractals), agents as well as software modules should be self-reconfigurable. Embodiment of a self-reconfigurable manufacturing system can be achieved by using self-reconfigurable software architecture. In this paper, therefore, self-reconfigurable software architecture is designed by conducting the following studies: (1) analysis of functional requirements of a fractal and environmental constraints, (2) design of reconfigurable software architecture especially for a reconfigurable agent, (3) selection of proper techniques to implement software modules, and realization of software architecture equipped with self-reconfigurability. To validate this approach, the designed architecture is applied to the FrMS.