软件非功能需求国内外研究综述

软件非功能需求在需求工程中扮演着重要的角色,但目前国内针对软件非功能需求方面的系统性介绍还比较匮乏.鉴于此,对软件非功能需求进行了介绍,对它的定义进行了文献上的梳理;阐述了软件非功能需求研究的必要性,详细介绍了软件非功能需求研究的发展历史,并总结了软件非功能需求研究发展;对软件非功能需求研究存在的不足进行了总结,通过梳理可以发现软件非功能需求未来的研究方向.     

Industrializing software development: a Japanese approach

An overview is given of Japan's Sigma (Software Industrialized Generator and Maintenance Aids), and of the Sigma system itself. Sigma provides a rich, standardized environment. It consists of the Sigma Center, Sigma network, and Sigma user sites. The Sigma Center will help users who are constructing development environments of programs using those environments. It will provide database services, demonstration services, and part of the network service. The Sigma network is a Unix-based network that connects the Sigma Center to the Sigma user sites, the Sigma Center to external networks. A typical Sigma user site includes Sigma workstations running Sigma OS, a local area network, and the Sigma gateway, which is a communications server and protocol-conversion system. The Sigma development tools are discussed     

Maximal software execution time: a regression-based approach

This work aims at facilitating the schedulability analysis of non-critical systems, in particular those that have soft real-time constraints, where worst-case execution times (WCETs) can be replaced by less stringent probabilistic bounds, which we call maximal execution times (METs). To this end, it is possible to obtain adequate probabilistic execution time models by separating the non-random dependency on input data from a modeling error that is purely random. The proposed approach first utilizes execution time multivariate measurements for building a multiple regression model and then uses the theory related to confidence bounds of coefficients, in order to estimate the upper bound of execution time. Although certainly our method cannot directly achieve extreme probability levels that are usually expected for WCETs, it is an attractive alternative for MET analysis, since it can arguably guarantee safe probabilistic bounds. The method’s effectiveness is demonstrated on a JPEG decoder running on an industrial SPARC V8 processor.     

面向服务软件的蜕变测试方法

在面向服务软件的测试过程中,由于在服务发现之前不可知的交互对象和同一个服务可能会有不同实现,往往出现程序执行结果不能提前预知的Oracle问题。为了有效地解决面向服务软件测试中的Oracle问题,基于面向服务架构(SOA)的特点,提出将蜕变测试方法用于面向服务软件的单元测试和集成测试过程中,依据面向服务软件每个服务的自身性质构造蜕变关系,设计蜕变测试类执行测试用例并验证蜕变关系是否保持,如果蜕变关系被违反了,则发现和报告缺陷,从而有效地支持面向服务软件的测试。     

软件Agent的通信模型

在分布式多Agent系统中，Agent之间的通信是合作的基础，但Agent技术综合了人工智能、分布式计算、软件工程等多种领域的成就，应用面广，所以通信机制多种多样，非常灵活，分析了Agent系统中最常用的3种通信模型及其优缺点，适用领域，介绍了几种综合运用多种通信方式的实例，讨论了软件Agent通信中的安全问题并对未来的发展趋势进行了展望。     

Model-based reasoning: a principled approach for software engineering

The software engineering industry suffers from almost unmanageable complexity both in the products it produces and in the processes of production. One of the current shortcomings in the software production process is the weakness of the models used. This paper makes observations on the role of knowledge in engineering and examines the central role of models and simulation. We develop an argument for the application of certain new forms of modelling methods in software engineering in order to impose more discipline and give a principled framework for building models that can support the software life-cycle. The concept of a model is examined in depth and different characteristics and types of model are defined. This introduces the relatively new concept of qualitative models and their use in the field known as model-based reasoning. Unlike previous knowledge-based methods, model-based reasoning has several important advantages. Although very few model-based software projects exist, we illustrate how this approach can be developed by drawing on applications from traditional engineering. It is argued that, because qualitative modelling offers great power for addressing the issue of complexity, such models have considerable potential as high-level abstractions of software products. These could form the core of tools for the management and support of the software development process through the whole product life-cycle.     

Ami: promoting a quantitative approach to software management

In this paper we first review the state of the art in software measurement. We then explain how measurement should be used in a goal-oriented manner in project management and describe the ami (application of metrics in industry) approach to achieving this. Finally we consider the ami project as an example of successful technology transfer and look at the variety of tactics used for dissemination of the approach in response to the needs of today's growing software measurement community.     

Designing free software samples: a game theoretic approach

We develop a vertical differentiation game-theoretic model that addresses the issue of designing free software samples (shareware) for attaining follow-on sales. When shareware can be reinstalled, cannibalization of sales of the commercial product may ensue. We analyze the optimal design of free software according to two characteristics: the evaluation period allotted for sampling (potentially renewable) and the proportion of features included in the sample. We introduce a new software classification scheme based on the characteristics of the sample that aid consumer learning. We find that the optimal combination of features and trial time greatly depends on the category of software within the classification scheme. Under alternative learning scenarios, we show that the monopolist may be better off not suppressing potential shareware reinstallation.

NP-Click: a productive software development approach for network processors

Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design is too risky and prohibitively expensive for many applications. This trend, combined with increasing silicon capability on a die, is fueling the emergence of application-specific programmable architectures. This focus on architecture design for network processors has made programming them an arduous task. Current network processors require in-depth knowledge of the architecture just to begin programming the device. However, for network processors to succeed, programmers must efficiently implement high-performance applications on them. Writing high-performance code for modern network processors is difficult because of their complexity. NP-Click is a simple programming model that permits programmers to reap the benefits of a domain specific language while still allowing for target-specific optimizations. Results for the Intel IXP1200 indicate that NP-Click delivers a large productivity gain at a slight performance expense.     

Computational challenges in cell simulation: a software engineering approach

Molecular biology's advent in the 20th century has exponentially increased our knowledge about the inner workings of life. We have dozens of completed genomes and an array of high-throughput methods to characterize gene encodings and gene product operation. The question now is how we will assemble the various pieces. In other words, given sufficient information about a living cell's molecular components, can we predict its behavior? We introduce the major classes of cellular processes relevant to modeling, discuss software engineering's role in cell simulation, and identify cell simulation requirements. Our E-Cell project aims to develop the theories, techniques, and software platforms necessary for whole-cell-scale modeling, simulation, and analysis. Since the project's launch in 1996, we have built a variety of cell models, and we are currently developing new models that vary with respect to species, target subsystem, and overall scale.     

Designing a successful trading agent:A fuzzy set approach

Software agents are increasingly being used to represent humans in online auctions. Such agents have the advantages of being able to systematically monitor a wide variety of auctions and then make rapid decisions about what bids to place in what auctions. They can do this continuously and repetitively without losing concentration. To provide a means of evaluating and comparing (benchmarking) research methods in this area the trading agent competition (TAC) was established. This competition involves a number of agents bidding against one another in a number of related auctions (operating different protocols) to purchase travel packages for customers. Against this background, this paper describes the design, implementation and evaluation of SouthamptonTAC, one of the most successful participants in both the Second and the Third International Competitions. Our agent uses fuzzy techniques at the heart of its decision making: to make bidding decisions in the face of uncertainty, to make predictions about the likely outcomes of auctions, and to alter the agent's bidding strategy in response to the prevailing market conditions.     

TAMAP: a new trust-based approach for mobile agent protection

Human activities are increasingly based on the use of distant resources and services, and on the interaction between remotely located parties that may know little about each other. Mobile agents are the most suited technology. They must therefore be prepared to execute on different hosts with various environmental security conditions. This paper introduces a trust-based mechanism to improve the security of mobile agents against malicious hosts and to allow their execution in various environments. It is based on the dynamic interaction between the agent and the host. Information collected during the interaction enables generation of an environment key. This key allows then to deduce the host’s trust degree and permits the mobile agent to adapt its execution accordingly to the host trustworthiness, its behavior history and the provided Quality of Service (QoS). An adaptive mobile agent architecture is therefore proposed. It endows the mobile agent with the ability to react with an unexpected behavior.     

Artificial intelligence as a discursive practice: the case of embodied software agent systems

In this paper, I explore some of the ways in which Artificial Intelligence (AI) is mediated discursively. I assume that AI is informed by an “ancestral dream” to reproduce nature by artificial means. This dream drives the production of “cyborg discourse”, which hinges on the belief that human nature (especially intelligence) can be reduced to symbol manipulation and hence replicated in a machine. Cyborg discourse, I suggest, produces AI systems by rhetorical means; it does not merely describe AI systems or reflect a set of prevailing attitudes about technology. To support this argument, I analyse a set of research articles about an “embodied conversational agent” called the Real Estate Agent (REA). The articles about REA mobilise a set of rhetorical strategies that systematically downplay the system’s artificiality and bolster its humanlike qualities. Within the context of the dream of AI to produce humanlike machines, and given our strong bias for human-human interaction, the designers’ claim to REA’s humanness in their research articles, as I argue in the final section of this paper, needs little justification.     

On the use of many quality attributes for software refactoring: a many-objective search-based software engineering approach

Search-based software engineering (SBSE) solutions are still not scalable enough to handle high-dimensional objectives space. The majority of existing work treats software engineering problems from a single or bi-objective point of view, where the main goal is to maximize or minimize one or two objectives. However, most software engineering problems are naturally complex in which many conflicting objectives need to be optimized. Software refactoring is one of these problems involving finding a compromise between several quality attributes to improve the quality of the system while preserving the behavior. To this end, we propose a novel representation of the refactoring problem as a many-objective one where every quality attribute to improve is considered as an independent objective to be optimized. In our approach based on the recent NSGA-III algorithm, the refactoring solutions are evaluated using a set of 8 distinct objectives. We evaluated this approach on one industrial project and seven open source systems. We compared our findings to: several other many-objective techniques (IBEA, MOEA/D, GrEA, and DBEA-Eps), an existing multi-objective approach a mono-objective technique and an existing refactoring technique not based on heuristic search. Statistical analysis of our experiments over 31 runs shows the efficiency of our approach.     

Using formal methods for teaching software engineering: a tool-based approach

In this paper we describe and review the course plan and syllabus we use in a course on formal methods in software engineering currently included in the degree in Informatics of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Bologna. The course matches the theory of formal methods with their practice based on actual tool usage. In fact, the course is centered upon a project whose main goal is to let students learn some formal specification techniques, all supported by specific tools. The students use well-known notations for both requirements specification and formal design. The formal methods we use are based on the Z notation for requirements specification and on the Larch family of languages for design specifications.     

Staffing a software project: A constraint satisfaction and optimization-based approach

Software development is a people intensive activity. The abilities possessed by developers are strongly related to process productivity and final product quality. Thus, one of the most important decisions to be made by a software project manager is how to properly staff the project. However, staffing software projects is not a simple task. There are many alternatives to ponder, several developer-to-activity combinations to evaluate, and the manager may have to choose a team from a larger set of available developers, according to the project and organizational needs. Therefore, to perform the staffing activity with ad hoc procedures can be very difficult and can lead the manager to choose a team that is not the best for a given situation.     

Decomposed software pipelining: A new perspective and a new approach

Software pipelining is an efficient instruction-level loop scheduling technique, but existing software pipelining approaches have not been widely used in practical and commercial compilers. This is mainly because resource constraints and the cyclic data dependencies make software pipelining very complicated and difficult to apply. In this paper we present a new perspective on software pipelining in which it is decomposed into two subproblems—one is free from cyclic data dependencies and can be effectively solved by the list scheduling technique, and the other is free from resource constraints and can be easily solved by classical polynomial-time algorithms of graph theory. Based on this new perspective, we develop a new instruction-level loop scheduling approach, call DEcomposed Software Pipelining (DESP).     

The dynamics of software project staffing: a system dynamics basedsimulation approach

The author focuses on the dynamics of software project staffing throughout the software-development lifecycle. The research vehicle is a comprehensive system-dynamics model of the software-development process. A detailed discussion of the model's structure as well as its behavior is provided. The results of a case study in which the model is used to simulate the staffing practices of an actual software project are then presented. The experiment produces some interesting insights into the policies (both explicit and implicit) for managing the human resource, and their impact on project behavior. The decision-support capability of the model to answer what-if questions is also demonstrated. In particular, the model is used to test the degree of interchangeability of men and months on the particular software project     

On the reuse of software: A case-based approach employing a repository

Systematic reuse of software has been proposed as a promising means to address the legendary productivity increase in software development. While object-oriented programming languages are, by nature, well suited for reusability-based development of applications, additional mechanisms to effectively reuse software are necessary. We present a novel language-independent method, which assumes an appropriately organized software repository and employs a simple form of Case-Based Reasoning in conjunction with the specificity-genericity hierarchy tolocate and possiblyadopt software to particular specifications. The method focuses on code reuse and addresses the evolving nature of the repository. Complexity issues for the main algorithms are presented. Finally, a demonstrator prototype system for reusing object-oriented code (C++) is described.