Understanding integration in a software development environment: Issues and illustrations

In the past ten years there has been a great deal of interest in the concept of a Software Development Environment (SDE) as a complete, unifying framework of services supporting most (or all) phases of software development and maintenance. We identify three levels at which the issue of integration in a SDE arises as a key concept—at the mechanism level (interoperability of the hardware and basic software), at the end-user services level (combining the methods and paradigms of the various tools), and at the process level (adapting end-user services to the working practices of different users, projects and organizations).In this article we examine SDEs from an integration perspective, describing the previous work in this area and analyzing the integration issues that must be addressed in an SDE. For illustrative purposes, a particular focus of the paper is the configuration management aspects of a SDE.Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense.     

A CAD/CAE incorporate software framework using a unified representation architecture

Currently, there are still some big gaps between the CAD system and CAE system, e.g. the different data structure for model representation, which costs lots of time and effort of engineers in the interaction between these two kinds of systems. In order to bridge these gaps, an incorporate software framework is proposed in this paper. In this framework, the unified representation architecture (URA) is presented that makes CAD and CAE to be an organic entity. The URA contains three components: (1) unified data model (UDD) including unified B-rep, unified feature and unified mesh; (2) unified data management (UDM) consisting of unified interaction, unified data structure, unified Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) history and unified interface; (3) unified display and post-processor (UDP) for both design and performance analysis. The URA facilitates the incorporation by explicitly representing design and analysis information as design features, which maintains their associations through the history chain. Besides the URA, a unified mesh data (UMD) is proposed to unify the mesh of CAD model display and CAE analysis with the purpose of reducing the redundancy of mesh data. The unified mesh data (UMD) is proposed to unify the mesh of CAD model display and CAE analysis, which greatly reduces the redundancy of mesh generation data. Finally, the high efficiency of the proposed framework is demonstrated by engineering examples.     

基于WEB数据库环境的软件工程教学模式改革研究

软件工程教学过程中如何运用基于信息库的软件为学生提供直观的理解方法是目前该领域研究的热点问题.本文研究利用在web结构下基于数据库和配置库的共享性信息平台进行软件工程教学模式研究,将软件开发活动分为用户、角色、任务和产品四种要素,并借助开发式的信息共享方法开放系统接口,为该系统的扩展提供了条件.通过实验表明,本系统在软件工程教学改革方面取得了明显效果.     

Triangulation as a basis for knowledge discovery in software engineering

Everyone agrees that reliable empirical “facts” must be derived from a series of investigations. However, the question of what is an appropriate framework for this series is an unresolved issue. Other articles in this issue present replication as the basis for this framework (Shull FJ, Carver JC, Vegas S, Juristo N (2008) The role of replications in Empirical Software Engineering, J Empir Softw Eng (in press)); however, alternatives exist! This brief note argues triangulation should be considered as the basis for this knowledge discovery (from empirical evaluation) strategy.

A distributed development environment for embedded software

The HAGAR project is building a high-performance disk controller. It is an embedded system for which many hundreds of thousands of lines of embedded software will have to be developed concurrently with the development of the hardware. We found existing methods for embedded software development, such as simulation and remote cross development, to be inadequate for us. To meet our special needs, we developed a distributed development environment that combines and extends the capabilities of existing methods while fixing their drawbacks. Our environment is based on a processor-pool architecture, in which multiple hardware sets are pooled and managed systematically. It supports embedded software development for many programmers at different sites. It allows for the emulation of non-existing hardware adaptor cards and for the integration of embedded software testing with hardware simulation. The environment provides a single system image, hiding many hardware and configuration details from its users. From the perspective of the programmers, our environment makes developing embedded software for special hardware systems as easy as developing application programs for a UNIX workstation.     

面向数据库的化工软件集成环境的设计

对于化工领域,用户若能够在一个软件集成环境上对现有的化工软件进行集成,则可以很大程度上节省用户软件二次开发或掌握集成技术所耗费的人力物力。本文试图研究开发一种化工软件集成的环境。利用Windows自身的特点,以及其管理应用程序的一般方法,设计了化工软件的集成环境。该集成环境由界面集成模块、代码集成模块、数据集成模块和数据库管理子系统4个模块组成,对于4个模块分别给出了界面集成策略、代码集成策略、数据集成策略、数据库和数据库管理子系统的建立策略。     

A JAVA application framework for scientific software development

This paper presents AIBench (SING group, Ourense, Spain), a JAVA desktop application framework mainly focused on scientific software development, with the goal of improving the productivity of research groups. Following the MVC design pattern, the programmer is able to develop applications using only three types of concepts: operations, data‐typesand views. The framework provides the rest of the functionality present in typical scientific applications, including user parameter requests, logging facilities, multithreading execution, experiment repeatability and graphic user interface generation, among others. The proposed framework is implemented following a plugin‐based architecture, which also allows assembling new applications by the reuse of modules from past development projects. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A component framework for reusing a proprietary computer-aided engineering environment

Nowadays, it is becoming more frequent for engineers to deal with problems and situations that require specific software and the commercially available applications may not result adequate. Because of this, the reuse of software components is becoming a normal practice for improving the productivity of the software programmers, and the quality of the products that they develop. The employment of reusable components presents a number of advantages, such as the reduction in time necessary to develop new software, or the simplification of many computational tasks.There are some proprietary software environments in the engineering domain that are practically de facto standards, since they offer a broad functionality, robustness and constant updating. Therefore, those environments could be ideal candidates to be reusable components when developing new software. An example of this is Matlab, which can be encapsulated, in order to use it as a true reusable component. This will provide the user with efficient tools for designing his/her own applications.Moreover, there is an increasing importance for any software to offer distributed services. To perform this task, it is fundamental to have at one’s disposal reusable components that support Internet-based distributed applications and services development.In the present work, a software component framework that effectively encapsulates Matlab is described. This software allows developers the reuse of Matlab, for both local and distributed applications. To address those issues the .NET technology was employed. The component framework developed can be integrated in the toolbars of software development environments supporting the .NET framework. This facilitates the construction of applications that can reuse the components, since the software developers can use and test them and change their properties in design-time.     

A framework for virtual organization creation in a breeding environment

Effectiveness in the process of creating virtual organizations (VO) is an important pre-condition for having a truly dynamic VOs, in response to collaboration opportunities in fast changing market contexts. A realistic approach to materialize agility in VO creation is defined under the assumption of a VO Breeding Environment (VBE), that guarantees the preparedness of its members to quickly get engaged in collaboration processes. After a survey of past approaches and a characterization of the VBE concept, a discussion of the process and suggested functionalities towards a VO creation framework are presented in this context. Finally a list of supporting tools is described and future research challenges are pointed out.     

利用反射技术实现一种新型软件系统维护模型

在深入研究.NET反射技术基础上,结合.NET框架结构的特性,从资源整合的角度,探索性地提出了一种新型的软件系统维护模式,保证了复杂的大型系统维护的高效性和经济性,具有很大的实际意义。     

A framework for creating hybrid-open source software communities

Abstract The open source software (OSS) model is a fundamentally new and revolutionary way to develop software. The success of the OSS model is also setting the stage for a structural change in the software industry; it is beginning to transform software industry from manufacturing to a service industry. Despite the success of the OSS model, for‐profit organizations are having difficulty building a business model around the open source paradigm. Whereas there are some isolated empirical studies, little rigorous research has been done on how traditional organizations can implement and benefit from OSS practices. This research explores how organizations can foster an environment similar to OSS to manage their software development efforts to reap its numerous advantages. Drawing on organizational theory, we develop a framework that guides the creation and management of a hybrid‐OSS community within an organization. We discuss the implications of this framework and suggest areas for future research.     

A minimal test practice framework for emerging software organizations

Testing takes a large share of software development efforts, and hence is of interest when seeking improvements. Several test process improvement frameworks exist, but they are extensive and much too large to be effective for smaller organizations. This paper presents a minimal test practice framework (MTPF) that allows the incremental introduction of appropriate practices at the appropriate time in rapidly expanding organizations. The process for introducing the practice framework tries to minimize resistance to change by maximizing the involvement of the entire organization in the improvement effort and ensuring that changes are made in small steps with a low threshold for each step. The practice framework created and its method of introduction have been evaluated at one company by applying the framework for a one‐year period. Twelve local software development companies have also evaluated the framework in a survey. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

实现面向数据库的化工软件集成环境的方法

随着化工领域各类软件的不断推出,软件集成以其独特的优势受到越来越多的重视。用户若在一个软件集成环境中对现有的化工软件进行集成,则能在很大程度上节省用户软件二次开发或掌握集成技术所耗费的人力物力。本文在《面向数据库的化工软件集成环境的设计》一文基础上初步实现了对面向数据库的软件集成环境方法的研究。提出了以数据库访问类、组份类等实现的数据库管理子系统的建立方法,并阐明了作者提出的逐级菜单搜索法等界面集成方法、基于剪贴板平台的数据集成方法。本文在各方法中穿插实例,对作者提出的方法进行验证,实践证明本文提出的方法是有效可靠的。     

.NET环境下MFC框架应用的包装集成技术研究

为有效解决.NET应用中对MFC遗留应用系统的快速集成问题,并尽量重用已有系统,研究了.NET环境下MFC应用系统的包装集成技术,提出了用混合DLL方式来对MFC应用进行大粒度封装的方案.在此基础上开发了一个包装器中间件,对该中间件的体系结构进行了分析,叙述了中间件主要组成部分的关键实现技术,然后给出了一个实例.实践结果表明,该技术是行之有效的,能够满足许多应用系统的需求,提高开发效率.     

A software framework for fast prototyping of meta-heuristics hybridization

Hybrids of meta‐heuristics have been shown to be more effective and adaptable than their parents in solving combinatorial optimization problems. However, hybridized schemes are also more tedious to implement due to their increased complexity. We address this problem by proposing the meta‐heuristics development framework (MDF). In addition to being a framework that promotes software reuse to reduce developmental effort, the key strength of MDF lies in its ability to model meta‐heuristics using a “request, sense and response” schema, which decomposes algorithms into a set of well‐defined modules that can be flexibly assembled through a centralized controller. Under this scheme, hybrid schemes become an event‐based search that can adaptively trigger a desired parent's behavior in response to search events. MDF can hence be used to design and implement a wide spectrum of hybrids with varying degrees of collaboration, thereby offering algorithm designers quick turnaround in designing and testing their meta‐heuristics. Such technicality is illustrated in the paper through the construction of hybrid schemes using ant colony optimization and tabu search.     

Shimba—an environment for reverse engineering Java software systems

Shimba is a reverse engineering environment to support the understanding of Java software systems. Shimba integrates the Rigi and SCED tools to analyze and visualize the static and dynamic aspects of a subject system. The static software artifacts and their dependencies are extracted from Java byte code and viewed as directed graphs using the Rigi reverse engineering environment. The run‐time information is generated by running the target software under a customized SDK debugger. The generated information is viewed as sequence diagrams using the SCED tool. In SCED, statechart diagrams can be synthesized automatically from sequence diagrams, allowing the user to investigate the overall run‐time behavior of objects in the target system. Shimba provides facilities to manage the different diagrams and to trace artifacts and relations across views. In Shimba, SCED sequence diagrams are used to slice the static dependency graphs produced by Rigi. In turn, Rigi graphs are used to guide the generation of SCED sequence diagrams and to raise their level of abstraction. We show how the information exchange among the views enables goal‐driven reverse engineering tasks and aids the overall understanding of the target software system. The FUJABA software system serves as a case study to illustrate and validate the Shimba reverse engineering environment. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

教育软件工程的研究框架与发展趋势

教育软件的开发一直缺少相适应的开发方法的研究。教育软件工程是近年来出现的崭新的研究方向,是软件工程和教育学相互融合深入的产物。首先从总体上讨论了教育软件的概念、教育软件工程在软件产品开发中和生存周期的关系,然后描述了当前应用的具有代表性的教育软件开发模型,最后是关于教育软件工程的未来研究课题内容、研究趋势整体框架和研究发展分层结构。