Agents of change: educating software engineering leaders

Most professional degree programs for software engineering focus on solving today's problems with today's technologies. Carnegie Mellon's Master of Software Engineering program takes a different approach, preparing engineers to work with new science and technology throughout their careers and helping them become agents of change in the industry. The approach aims to cultivate future leaders in software engineering. It combines a long-term, mentored software development project with an unusual core curriculum that stresses broad-based models and problem-solving skills     

A knowledge-based prototyping environment for construction of scientific modeling software

Over the past 30 years, scientific software models have played an increasingly prominent role in the conduct of science. Unfortunately, scientific models can be difficult and time-consuming to implement, and there is little software engineering support specifically available for constructing scientific models. Because these models are not easily specified to scientifically-naive programmers, and because the scientist requires intimate knowledge of the code to conduct experiments, many scientists implement their own models. This coding activity takes valuable time away from their primary scientific mission. We have developed a knowledge-based software development tool that assists scientists in prototyping scientific models. With a specialized graphical user interface, the scientist constructs a high-level visual specification that captures the essential computational dependencies in the desired model. The system uses its scientific domain knowledge to ensure that the model being built is consistent and coherent. The final product is an executable prototype of a scientific model. Our tool accelerates the model-building process and eliminates the scientist's need to program in a formal language. Furthermore, the models developed with this tool are easier to understand and reuse than typical low-level scientific modeling code. At present, models developed with our system are restricted to those involving non-coupled algebraic and first order ordinary differential equations. Research is ongoing to lessen this restriction and support models with simultaneous equations.     

Assessing testing tools in research and education

An evaluation of three software engineering tools based on their use in research and educational environments is presented. The three testing tools are Mothra, a mutation-testing tool, Asset, a dataflow testing tool, and ATAC, a dataflow testing tool. Asset, ATAC, and Mothra were used in research projects that examined relative and general fault-detection effectiveness of testing methods, how good a test set is after functional testing based on program specification, how reliability estimates from existing models vary with the testing method used, and how improved coverage affects reliability. Students used ATAC and Mothra by treating the tools as artifacts and studying them from the point of view of documentation, coding style, and possible enhancements, solving simple problems given during testing lectures, and conducting experiments that supported ongoing research in software testing and reliability. The strengths, weaknesses, and performances of Asset, Mothra, and ATAC are discussed     

基于设计结构矩阵的辅助优化系统

传统结构优化建模方法对设计人员的能力要求较高,而现有辅助优化建模工具的通用性不强,导致复杂工程优化问题的模型建立十分困难,因此提出一种通用性较强的辅助优化建模方法.该方法将设计结构矩阵(Design Structure Matrix,DSM)思想引入优化模型的建立过程中,利用DSM结构形式和算法的优点方便有效地从复杂工程问题中提取优化模型并给出合理的优化流程.基于Excel的VBA语言开发辅助优化建模工具,快速准确地提取优化模型,并通过与优化软件Isight的接口程序自动将参与优化设计的模块映射成合理的优化流程图.采用燃气轮机支架结构的优化设计问题验证该辅助优化建模工具,并取得良好效果.     

Educational software for electrical engineering: A methodology and some results

In this paper, problems related to the use of the microcomputer as a teaching tool in engineering education are discussed. The objectives and methodological principles of educational software are defined, stressing the need to improve the quality of engineering education. The microcomputer is considered as an engineering tool in the decision-making process, offering possibilities for further deeper analysis of physical phenomena in electrical devices. Examples of applications of the methodological principles developed for the elaboration of educational software packages for electrical engineering are given.     

Collaborative visualization of engineering processes using tabletop augmented reality

3D computer visualization has emerged as an advanced problem-solving tool for engineering education and practice. For example in civil engineering, the integration of 3D/4D CAD models in the construction process helps to minimize the misinterpretation of the spatial, temporal, and logical aspects of construction planning information. Yet despite the advances made in visualization, the lack of collaborative problem-solving abilities leaves outstanding challenges that need to be addressed before 3D visualization can become widely accepted in the classroom and in professional practice. The ability to smoothly and naturally interact in a shared workspace characterizes a collaborative learning process. This paper introduces tabletop Augmented Reality to accommodate the need to collaboratively visualize computer-generated models. A new software program named ARVita is developed to validate this idea, where multiple users wearing Head-Mounted Displays and sitting around a table can all observe and interact with dynamic visual simulations of engineering processes. The applications of collaborative visualization using Augmented Reality are reviewed, the technical implementation is covered, and the program’s underlying tracking libraries are presented.     

一种源程序到流程图的转换方法及实现

把源程序转换为流程图是软件工程的研究课题之一。本文提出了一种把源程序转换为结构化的流程图(PAD图)的方法和实现技术,该方法和技术已被用于转换工具IPADT系统。此外,本文也讨论了这种转换中所面临的几个问题。     

Interactive software to solving the resource balancing problem

The proposed paper presents a software developed for the microcomputer to solving the resource balancing problems. The developed software is an interactive concept program and can be used by people with or no experience in the computer programming. The program consists of two linked modulus which are working complementary. The program is designed in the “MENU” concept and for the practical using, the data files option proposed for the running of the program with the same production network. The designed program is flexible and with a low cost microcomputer system, the program is definitly an economic and practical tool to solving the resource balancing problems. To identify the potential ability of the proposed software and to indicate how the software can be used a complete example will be discribed.     

Intelligent engineering software research at the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics

The Institute of Cybernetics of the Estonian Academy of Sciences is a centre for research in intelligent software, and applications of AI in engineering. One goal of the research is to develop intelligent software environments and expert system shells for workstations and personal computers which will be easy to use for engineering problems. A set of program packages has been developed for mechanical engineering as well as for electronics, using intelligent software systems MicroPRIZ and MicroEXPERT.     

Development of software for structural analysis adapted to construction engineering applications

The paper presents the development and application of software for structural analysis adapted to construction engineering applications. The software consists of data structures, application subroutine libraries and the built-in Matlab subroutine library. For each application, the user writes an application-specific main program using the data structures and routines in the subroutine libraries. This gives the user flexibility to build a main program that is adapted to the specific needs of the current application. The software has been tested in a number of real-world projects, e.g. tunnels and bridges. The examples show that the software is a useful design tool for design work.     

A product-line architecture for web service-based visual composition of web applications

A web service-based web application (WSbWA) is a collection of web services or reusable proven software parts that can be discovered and invoked using standard Internet protocols. The use of these web services in the development process of WSbWAs can help overcome many problems of software use, deployment and evolution. Although the cost-effective software engineering of WSbWAs is potentially a very rewarding area, not much work has been done to accomplish short time to market conditions by viewing and dealing with WSbWAs as software products that can be derived from a common infrastructure and assets with a captured specific abstraction in the domain. Both Product Line Engineering (PLE) and Agile Methods (AMs), albeit with different philosophies, are software engineering approaches that can significantly shorten the time to market and increase the quality of products. Using the PLE approach we built, at the domain engineering level, a WSbWA-specific lightweight product-line architecture and combined it, at the application engineering level, with an Agile Method that uses a domain-specific visual language with direct manipulation and extraction capabilities of web services to perform customization and calibration of a product or WSBWA for a specific customer. To assess the effectiveness of our approach we designed and implemented a tool that we used to investigate the return on investment of the activities related to PLE and AMs. Details of our proposed approach, the related tool developed, and the experimental study performed are presented in this article together with a discussion of planned directions of future work.     

Novell网络应用程序接口技术

简述了在网络环境下开发应用程序所存在的问题，提出设计一个介于用户和网络层之间的Ｎｏｖｅｌ网络应用程序接口软件包（ＡＰＩＳＰ）的新方法，并用ＢｏｒｌａｎｄＣ＋＋开发了ＡＰＩＳＰ，该软件包向用户提供Ｎｏｖｅｌ网络环境下标准的库函数。较好地解决了一般软件工程人员难于开发网络应用程序这一问题，且能用于其它类型的网络方面。     

应用协同技术研究

应用共享技术可以将单用户的应用程序改造为分布式的多用户共享应用程序。但协作者只能串行工作,而且还存在一些问题并未彻底解决,以至于难以实际应用。文章首先在分析应用共享存在上述不足的原因的基础上,提出了“应用协同”的概念,以便能构造支持群体协同工作的工具,通过该技术,可方便地将仅支持个体工作的传统软件改造为支持群体协同工作的应用软件,而这种改造对传统应用软件和它的开发者来言是透明的。最后就基于该技术所构造的应用协同工具ACPBrush进行介绍。     

Refinement and verification in component-based model-driven design

Modern software development is complex as it has to deal with many different and yet related aspects of applications. In practical software engineering this is now handled by a UML-like modelling approach in which different aspects are modelled by different notations. Component-based and object-oriented design techniques are found effective in the support of separation of correctness concerns of different aspects. These techniques are practised in a model-driven development process in which models are constructed in each phase of the development. To ensure the correctness of the software system developed, all models constructed in each phase are verifiable. This requires that the modelling notations are formally defined and related in order to have tool support developed for the integration of sophisticated checkers, generators and transformations. This paper summarises our research on the method of Refinement of Component and Object Systems (rCOS) and illustrates it with experiences from the work on the Common Component Modelling Example (CoCoME). This gives evidence that the formal techniques developed in rCOS can be integrated into a model-driven development process and shows where it may be integrated in computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools for adding formally supported checking, transformation and generation facilities.     

An automated software reliability prediction system for safety critical software

Software reliability is one of the most important software quality indicators. It is concerned with the probability that the software can execute without any unintended behavior in a given environment. In previous research we developed the Reliability Prediction System (RePS) methodology to predict the reliability of safety critical software such as those used in the nuclear industry. A RePS methodology relates the software engineering measures to software reliability using various models, and it was found that RePS’s using Extended Finite State Machine (EFSM) models and fault data collected through various software engineering measures possess the most satisfying prediction capability. In this research the EFSM-based RePS methodology is improved and implemented into a tool called Automated Reliability Prediction System (ARPS). The features of the ARPS tool are introduced with a simple case study. An experiment using human subjects was also conducted to evaluate the usability of the tool, and the results demonstrate that the ARPS tool can indeed help the analyst apply the EFSM-based RePS methodology with less number of errors and lower error criticality.     

End Users at the Bazaar: Designing Next-Generation Enterprise Resource Planning Systems

The "bazaar" metaphor has developed a lasting popularity in software engineering, especially as software architectures have evolved from monoliths to service orientation. Nevertheless, the metaphor is limited because it doesn't consider end users, those who develop software for themselves. Introducing such an end user, the "prosumer," to the bazaar not only suggests a changing division of work in software development but also calls for different functionality and architectural choices. The authors evaluated changing software architectures from an end-user development (EUD) perspective, taking the case of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems as traditionally monolithically designed systems moving toward service orientation. On the basis of the study's findings, which indicated problems with the systems' technical flexibility, the authors developed a tool set for fostering EUD activities. Their new architecture for ERP systems enables end users to create their own solutions.     

Invariant relations, invariant functions, and loop functions

The increasing criticality of software applications, the increasing size and complexity of such applications, and the increasing reliance of software engineering paradigms on third party software assets combine to place a high premium on the ability to analyze software products to an arbitrary level of thoroughness and precision. Yet despite several decades of research, the goal of analyzing the functional properties of software products to an arbitrary level of thoroughness and precision remains unfulfilled. In this paper, we discuss the use of a relation-theoretic approach inspired from Mills?? logic to analyze while loops, and we support our approach by an operational prototype tool. The proposed method and tool have applications in program comprehension, reverse engineering, program verification, software maintenance, and programmer education.     

Usability Meanings and Interpretations in ISO Standards

The usability of a software product has recently become a key software quality factor. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has developed a variety of models to specify and measure software usability but these individual models do not support all usability aspects. Furthermore, they are not yet well integrated into current software engineering practices and lack tool support. The aim of this research is to survey the actual representation (meanings and interpretations) of usability in ISO standards, indicate some of existing limitations and address them by proposing an enhanced, normative model for the evaluation of software usability.     

Reverse engineering collaboratory: a logic-based tool for monitoring the quality of programs

Much of the research carried out by groups working at physically distributed sites is conducted over the Internet. This has given rise to the tendency to set up metalaboratories, comprising research personnel, machines and tools that are not physically present in the same geographical place. For instance, the term ‘Collaboratory’ combines the concept of ‘Collaboration’ between researchers who are located in different geographical areas, and the ‘Laboratory’ they use to carry out their work. This paper shows an application of the collaboration paradigm, in which a tool has been developed and has begun to be made available to users over Internet. This is a Prolog-Based tool for monitoring the quality of a program written in some of the most commonly used programming languages (Cobol and C). This is useful and, in many cases, indispensable during the reverse engineering phase: that is, the phase devoted to reconstructing the documentation from existing code, to check whether a program has a given level of quality, whether certain parts of it may turn out to be critical from a qualitative viewpoint if repeated maintenance interventions are carried out on it, and finally whether the program itself could be a candidate for reuse and, if so, whether it constitutes a single element of a catalog of reusable programs. The tool is set up in LPA Prolog on a Windows 3.11 platform, and is part of a larger environment dedicated to the activities of software understanding through reverse engineering. The user connects to an internet address, uses the tool (which may be remotely calibrated), and takes the desired reading before importing the measurement results.