使用基准测试促进研究--对软件工程的挑战

计算机科学中,基准测试已经用来比较计算机系统性能、检索算法信息、数据库和其他一些技术。在研究领域,基准测试的创建和普遍使用经常伴随着快速的技术进步和团队建设。这些形成了科学学科的基准测试理论。基于这个理论,通过团队工作的方式定义基准测试来挑战软件工程研究,变得越来越具有科学性和需要。本文介绍一个成功使用基准测试促进研究状况的个案研究——逆向工程。     

A sequential ensemble model for software fault prediction

Innovations in Systems and Software Engineering - Unlike several other engineering disciplines, software engineering lacks well-defined research strategies. However, with the exponential rise in...     

DynaMICs: Comprehensive Support for Run-Time Monitoring

Software engineering strives to enable the economic construction of software systems that behave reliably, predictably, and safely. In other engineering disciplines, safety is assured in part by detailed monitoring of processes. In software, we may achieve some level of confidence in the operation of programs by monitoring their execution. DynaMICs is a software tool that facilitates the collection and use of constraints for software systems. In addition, it supports traceability by mapping constraints to system artifacts. Constraint specifications are stored separately from code; constraint-monitoring code is automatically generated from the specifications and inserted into the program at appropriate places; and constraints are verified at execution time. These constraint checks are triggered by changes made to variable values. We describe the architecture of DynaMICs, discuss alternative verification techniques, and outline research directions for the DynaMICs project.     

Ethical Issues in Software Engineering Research: A Survey of Current Practice

In this paper we explore how the software engineering research community is currently dealing with the ethical issues that some empirical research presents. We discuss how the immaturity of the software engineering discipline is reflected in an approach to ethical issues that compares unfavourably with other more mature disciplines.We show that an analysis of recent published work measures an increase in empirical software engineering research currently being undertaken. We also discuss our survey of UK University Department Heads which explores how the software engineering research community is dealing with the ethical issues related to empirical work. Overall we found that whilst some UK Universities have taken ethical issues very seriously, others have not considered the issues.     

The difficulties of building generic reliability models for software

The Software Engineering research community have spent considerable effort in developing models to predict the behaviour of software. A number of these models have been derived based on the pre and post behaviour of the development of software products, but when these models are applied to other products, the results are often disappointing. This appears to differentiate Software from other engineering disciplines that often depend on generic predictive models to verify the correctness of their products. This short paper discusses why other engineering disciplines have managed to create generalized models, the challenges faced by the Software industry to build these models, and the change we have made to our process in Microsoft to address some of these challenges.     

Qualitative methods in empirical studies of software engineering

While empirical studies in software engineering are beginning to gain recognition in the research community, this subarea is also entering a new level of maturity by beginning to address the human aspects of software development. This added focus has added a new layer of complexity to an already challenging area of research. Along with new research questions, new research methods are needed to study nontechnical aspects of software engineering. In many other disciplines, qualitative research methods have been developed and are commonly used to handle the complexity of issues involving human behaviour. The paper presents several qualitative methods for data collection and analysis and describes them in terms of how they might be incorporated into empirical studies of software engineering, in particular how they might be combined with quantitative methods. To illustrate this use of qualitative methods, examples from real software engineering studies are used throughout     

The pragmatics of model-driven development

The potential benefits of using models are significantly greater in software than in other engineering disciplines because of the potential for a seamless link between models and the systems they represent. Unfortunately, models have rarely produced anticipated benefits. The key lies in resolving pragmatic issues related to the artifacts and culture of the previous generation of software technologies.     

Formal specification – an analytic tool for (management) information systems

Abstract. There appears to be a general consensus within the information systems literature that formal specification of software systems is an inappropriate response to the perceived general failure of information systems to meet user requirements. Such views would seem to be based primarily on the difficulty of constructing formal specifications – and on the difficulty of understanding such specifications once constructed. Research into the applicability of formal methods has therefore tended to concentrate on the needs and the context of software developers specializing in critical and extremely complex software such as operating systems, transaction processing monitors, or nuclear reactor protection. More recently, however, formal methods have been applied successfully in more conventional and commercial areas, such as the development of a CASE tool, indicating that many of the perceived disadvantages of formal methods are merely myths.
This paper discusses the differing research directions of the information systems and software engineering disciplines and suggests that significant beneflts may result from a synthesis of the two approaches. We further suggest that there is a serious danger that approaches which have been shown to have value in one of the two domains are automatically being ignored in the other as being 'irrelevant'. While each of the two areas ignores the contribution of the other, software systems will continue to be sub-optimal (in terms of relevance, as well as quality). We argue the relevance of formal specifications to the information systems discipline, illustrating the argument with a case study based within the IS domain.     

A survey of approaches for the visual model-driven development of next generation software-intensive systems

Software-intensive systems of the future are expected to be highly distributed and to exhibit adaptive and anticipatory behavior when operating in highly dynamic environments and interfacing with the physical world. Therefore, visual modeling techniques to address these software-intensive systems require a mix of models from a multitude of disciplines such as software engineering, control engineering, and business process engineering. As in this concert of techniques software provides the most flexible element, the integration of these different views can be expected to happen in the software. The software thus includes complex information processing capabilities as well as hard real-time coordination between distributed technical systems and computers.In this article, we identify a number of general requirements for the visual model-driven specification of next generation software-intensive systems. As business process engineering and software engineering are well integrated areas and in order to keep this survey focused, we restrict our attention here to approaches for the visual model-driven development of adaptable software-intensive systems where the integration of software engineering with control engineering concepts and safety issues are important. In this survey, we identify requirements and use them to classify and characterize a number of approaches that can be employed for the development of the considered class of software-intensive systems.     

Editors' introduction: Comparative software engineering: Review and perspectives

Engineering is a set of disciplines seeking solutions for complicated problems and systems that could not be done by individuals. The aim of engineering is to repetitively produce complicated artefacts in an efficient way. This paper describes a set of generic engineering principles and an engineering maturity model. With the engineering principles and model, the nature and status of software engineering are analysed. Interesting findings on what software engineering can learn from generic engineering principles are presented. This paper intends to show the nature, status and problems of software engineering, as well as its future trends, based on the comparative studies between the generic engineering principles and software engineering practices. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A framework for developing measurement systems and its industrial evaluation

As in every engineering discipline, metrics play an important role in software development, with the difference that almost all software projects need the customization of metrics used. In other engineering disciplines, the notion of a measurement system (i.e. a tool used to collect, calculate, and report quantitative data) is well known and defined, whereas it is not as widely used in software engineering. In this paper we present a framework for developing custom measurement systems and its industrial evaluation in a software development unit within Ericsson. The results include the framework for designing measurement systems and its evaluation in real life projects at the company. The results show that with the help of ISO/IEC standards, measurement systems can be effectively used in software industry and that the presented framework improves the way of working with metrics. This paper contributes with the presentation of how automation of metrics collection and processing can be successfully introduced into a large organization and shows the benefits of it: increased efficiency of metrics collection, increased adoption of metrics in the organization, independence from individuals and standardized nomenclature for metrics in the organization.     

Industrial Applications of Software Synthesis via Category Theory—Case Studies Using Specware

Over the last two years, we have demonstrated the feasibility of applying category-theoretic methods in specifying, synthesizing, and maintaining industrial strength software systems. We have been using a first-of-its-kind tool for this purpose, Kestrel's Specware^TM software development system. In this paper, we describe our experiences and give an industrial perspective on what is needed to make this technology have broader appeal to industry. Our overall impression is that the technology does work for industrial strength applications, but that it needs additional work to make it more usable. We believe this work marks a turning point in the use of mathematically rigorous approaches to industrial strength software development and maintenance.It is interesting to note that when this technology is applied to software systems whose outputs are designs for airplane parts, the design rationale that is captured is not only software engineering design rationale, but also design rationale from other engineering disciplines (e.g., mechanical, material, manufacturing, electrical, human factors, etc.). This suggests the technology provides an approach to general systems engineering that enables one to structure and reuse engineering knowledge broadly.     

CM2KGcloud – An open web-based platform to transform conceptual models into knowledge graphs

Semantic processing of conceptual models is a focus of research for several years, bridging the disciplines of knowledge-based systems, conceptual modeling, and model-driven software engineering. With Knowledge Graphs, this research area gained momentum. In this paper, we introduce CM2KG^cloud, a generic and extensible Web-based platform for transforming conceptual models into Knowledge Graphs. The platform can work on models created by state-of-the-art metamodeling platforms (e.g., EMF, Papyrus, ADOxx) and transforms models created with them into standardized Knowledge Graph representations like GraphML, RDF, and OWL. CM2KG^cloud can be used as a service and can be integrated into software systems by its exposed API.     

Using components for rapid distributed software development

Software development has not reached the maturity of other engineering disciplines; it is still challenging to produce software that works reliably, is easy to use and maintain, and arrives within budget and on time. In addition, relatively small software systems for highly specific applications are in increasing demand. This need requires a significantly different approach to software development from that used by their large, monolithic, general-purpose software counterparts such as Microsoft Word. The paper discusses the use of components for rapid distributed software development. It reports on the the experience of a large testbed called Educational Software Components of Tomorrow (www.escot.org), supported by the US National Science Foundation     

The integration of reusable software components

The term integration is used very often now in many different disciplines including software and systems engineering. Unfortunately, a sufficiently precise definition that would clearly express the meaning of the term in a formal way as it would be necessary for it to become an engineering term does not yet exist. In fact, it is very obvious that the term is used with different interpretations and is thus now more a cause for misunderstanding than for engineering precision. It is the intention of this article to develop a more formal definition that can describe the embedding of prefabricated software components into a new systems environment.     

Software Quality—Prevention versus Cure?

In traditional engineering disciplines a preventative approach is used to tackle defects and thereby produce quality products and systems. A recent case study suggests that in software engineering a curative approach to finding defects and producing quality software may be the most practical way to proceed. Here, the argument for a curative approach to software quality is challenged, and suggestions are made on how appropriate component-based quality models, that contain both generic and domain-specific quality knowledge, may be used to support a preventative approach to producing quality software products and systems.     

The science and education of mechatronics engineering

We try to get to the heart of multidisciplinary engineering, of which mechatronics is an excellent example, and point out how the integration of disciplines leads to new degrees of freedom in design and corresponding research directions that otherwise would not have been investigated. This is the major contribution achieved by a multidisciplinary approach to engineering science; it leads to a new important research field and at the same time helps to push research in related fields into new fruitful directions. We point to a number of areas that have benefited from the interdisciplinary perspective and a focus on interactions between disciplines including: engineering curriculum; mechatronics research; control of nonlinear mechanical systems; real time control systems modelling; and time varying control systems     

Evolutionary aspects of CAE systems

Computer-aided engineering (CAE) comprises several disciplines of computer application to engineering problems. From a systems analysis point of view, the different stages of the development of a new product may be mapped on to disciplines such as computer-aided design, computer-aided manufacturing, and others. These constituents of CAE are briefly discussed, with emphasis on the need for their integration. A short review of the development of CAE systems technology is also given. Present trends and needs for more research are indicated.     

Using two case studies to explore the applicability of VIATRA for the model-driven engineering of mechatronic production systems

Software and Systems Modeling - The engineering of mechatronic production systems is complex and requires various disciplines (e.g., systems, mechanical, electrical and software engineers)....     

The open source software phenomenon: Characteristics that promote research

Since the turn of the century, open source software has triggered a vast volume of research. In this essay, based on a brief review of selected work, we show that research in many different fields and disciplines of the social sciences have shed light on the phenomenon. We argue that five characteristics make the phenomenon particularly attractive to examination from various fields and disciplines using a plethora of research methods: (1) impact: open source software has an extensive impact on the economy and society; (2) theoretical tension: the phenomenon deviates sharply from the predictions and explanations of existing theory in different fields; (3) transparency: open source software has offered researchers an unprecedented access to data; (4) communal reflexivity: the community of open source software developers frequently engage in a dialog on its functioning (it also has its own research community); (5) proximity: the innovation process in open source software resembles knowledge production in science (in many instances, open source software is an output of research processes). These five characteristics also promote a transdisciplinary research dialog. Based on the experience of open source software research, we propose that phenomena-driven transdisciplinary research provides an excellent context to promote greater dialog between disciplines and fields. Moreover, we propose that the recent diffusion of the open source software model of innovation to other areas than software calls for new research and that the field of information systems has an important role to play in this future research agenda.