A methodology for engineering collaborative and ad-hoc mobile applications using SyD middleware

Today’s web applications are more collaborative and utilize standard and ubiquitous Internet protocols. We have earlier developed System on Mobile Devices (SyD) middleware to rapidly develop and deploy collaborative applications over heterogeneous and possibly mobile devices hosting web objects. In this paper, we present the software engineering methodology for developing SyD-enabled web applications and illustrate it through a case study on two representative applications: (i) a calendar of meeting application, which is a collaborative application and (ii) a travel application which is an ad-hoc collaborative application. SyD-enabled web objects allow us to create a collaborative application rapidly with limited coding effort. In this case study, the modular software architecture allowed us to hide the inherent heterogeneity among devices, data stores, and networks by presenting a uniform and persistent object view of mobile objects interacting through XML/SOAP requests and responses. The performance results we obtained show that the application scales well as we increase the group size and adapts well within the constraints of mobile devices.     

Horizontal dispersion of software functional size with IFPUG and COSMIC units

Software development companies today are widely using software functional size measurement (FSM) as the main variable to assess the effort and time needed to perform a new software project. In the recent years, this has led to a grown interest in improving the way the measures are taken.In such sense, one of the main aspects that could have impact on measurements and that has not been enough studied is the error introduced by the measurer of the software application, through the subjectivity that can be introduced in the interpretation of the unit application rules. Such error could be evident in a measurement dispersion, defined in this paper in two possible ways: (a) Horizontal Dispersion, where the error could be introduced by the fact that two or more different people counted the same application at the same moment in the project development; and (b) Vertical Dispersion, where the error could be introduced by same measurer that count the same application at different times during the development.Since its definition by Albrecht in 1979 and its subsequent change of name in 1986, IFPUG function points have been the functional software measurement unit mostly applied, despite the definition and standardization of other variants such as NESMA, Mk-II, or more recently FiSMA. However in recent years a new method has been introduced called COSMIC that has been defined as a 2nd-generation FSM method, attracting the interest of the international software measurement community.The aim of this research is to draw some preliminary conclusions from statistical analysis of the software functional size data in which the horizontal dispersion degree could have been introduced in measurements taken into account IFPUG and COSMIC methods.     

Validating a size measure for effort estimation in model-driven Web development

Web development is moving towards model-driven processes whose goal is the development of Web applications at a higher level of abstraction based on models and model transformations. This brings new opportunities to the Web project manager to make early estimates of the size and the effort required to produce Web applications based on their conceptual models. In the last few years, several studies for size and effort estimation have been performed. However, there are no studies regarding effort estimation in model-driven Web development. In this paper, we present the validation of a model-based size measure (OO-HFP) for Web effort estimation in the context of a model-driven Web development method. The validation is performed by comparing the prediction accuracy that OO-HFP provides with the accuracy provided by the standard function point analysis (FPA) method. The results of the study (using industrial data gathered from 31 Web projects) show that the effort estimates obtained for projects that are sized using OO-HFP are more accurate than the effort estimates obtained using the standard FPA method. This suggests that by following a model-driven development approach, the size measure obtained at the conceptual model of a Web application can be considered a suitable predictor of effort.     

Model-based early and rapid estimation of COSMIC functional size – An experimental evaluation

ContextFunctional size measurement methods are widely used but have two major shortcomings: they require a complete and detailed knowledge of user requirements, and they involve relatively expensive and lengthy processes.ObjectiveUML is routinely used in the software industry to effectively describe software requirements in an incremental way, so UML models grow in detail and completeness through the requirements analysis phase. Here, we aim at defining the characteristics of increasingly more refined UML requirements models that support increasingly more sophisticated – hence presumably more accurate – size estimation processes.MethodWe consider the COSMIC method and three alternative processes (two of which are proposed in this paper) to estimate COSMIC size measures that can be applied to UML diagrams at progressive stages of the requirements definition phase. Then, we check the accuracy of the estimates by comparing the results obtained on a set of projects to the functional size values obtained with the standard COSMIC method.ResultsOur analysis shows that it is possible to write increasingly more detailed and complete UML models of user requirements that provide the data required by COSMIC size estimation methods, which in turn yield increasingly more accurate size measure estimates of the modeled software. Initial estimates are based on simple models and are obtained quickly and with little effort. The estimates increase their accuracy as models grow in completeness and detail, i.e., as the requirements definition phase progresses.ConclusionDevelopers that use UML for requirements modeling can obtain an early estimation of the application size at the beginning of the development process, when only a very simple UML model has been built for the application, and can obtain increasingly more accurate size estimates while the knowledge of the product increases and UML models are refined accordingly.     

Applying fuzzy neural network to estimate software development effort

The ability to accurately and consistently estimate software development efforts is required by the project managers in planning and conducting software development activities. Since software effort drivers are vague and uncertain, software effort estimates, especially in the early stages of the development life cycle, are prone to a certain degree of estimation errors. A software effort estimation model which adopts a fuzzy inference method provides a solution to fit the uncertain and vague properties of software effort drivers. The present paper proposes a fuzzy neural network (FNN) approach for embedding artificial neural network into fuzzy inference processes in order to derive the software effort estimates. Artificial neural network is utilized to determine the significant fuzzy rules in fuzzy inference processes. We demonstrated our approach by using the 63 historical project data in the well-known COCOMO model. Empirical results showed that applying FNN for software effort estimates resulted in slightly smaller mean magnitude of relative error (MMRE) and probability of a project having a relative error of less than or equal to 0.25 (Pred(0.25)) as compared with the results obtained by just using artificial neural network and the original model. The proposed model can also provide objective fuzzy effort estimation rule sets by adopting the learning mechanism of the artificial neural network.     

Estimating the development cost of custom software

In this paper an approach for the estimation of software development costs is presented. The method is based on the characterization of the software to be developed in terms of project and environment attributes and comparison with some similar completed project(s) recovered from a historical database. A case study is also presented, focusing on the calibration and application of the method on 59 information systems implementing supply chain functions in industry. Various strategies are explored, the best of which predicted effort quite effectively, with a mean estimation error of 24% with respect to the actual effort.     

基于PSP的软件项目计划管理

在软件企业实施个体软件过程(Rersonal Software Process,PSP)和软件项目管理经验基础上,提出了基于PSP的软件项目计划管理方法,该方法是建立在项目计划遵循所定义的软件过程、基于历史数据的工作量估计和基于工作单元的跟踪等三原则之上.该方法在软件企业进行了实施,结果表明取得了很好的效果.     

An empirical validation of a neural network model for software effort estimation

As software becomes more complex and its scope dramatically increases, the importance of research on developing methods for estimating software development efforts has perpetually increased. Such accurate estimation has a prominent impact on the success of projects. Out of the numerous methods for estimating software development efforts that have been proposed, line of code (LOC)-based constructive cost model (COCOMO), function point-based regression model (FP), neural network model (NN), and case-based reasoning (CBR) are among the most popular models. Recent research has tended to focus on the use of function points (FPs) in estimating the software development efforts, however, a precise estimation should not only consider the FPs, which represent the size of the software, but should also include various elements of the development environment for its estimation. Therefore, this study is designed to analyze the FPs and the development environments of recent software development cases. The primary purpose of this study is to propose a precise method of estimation that takes into account and places emphasis on the various software development elements. This research proposes and evaluates a neural network-based software development estimation model.     

A measurement method for sizing the structure of UML sequence diagrams

ContextThe COSMIC functional size measurement method on UML diagrams has been investigated as a means to estimate the software effort early in the software development life cycle. Like other functional size measurement methods, the COSMIC method takes into account the data movements in the UML sequence diagrams for example, but does not consider the data manipulations in the control structure. This paper explores software sizing at a finer level of granularity by taking into account the structural aspect of a sequence diagram in order to quantify its structural size. These functional and structural sizes can then be used as distinct independent variables to improve effort estimation models.ObjectiveThe objective is to design an improved measurement of the size of the UML sequence diagrams by taking into account the data manipulations represented by the structure of the sequence diagram, which will be referred to as their structural size.MethodWhile the design of COSMIC defines the functional size of a functional process at a high level of granularity (i.e. the data movements), the structural size of a sequence diagram is defined at a finer level of granularity: the size of the flow graph of their control structure described through the alt, opt and loop constructs. This new measurement method was designed by following the process recommended in Software Metrics and Software Metrology (Abran, 2010).ResultsThe size of sequence diagrams can now be measured from two perspectives, both functional and structural, and at different levels of granularity with distinct measurement units.ConclusionIt is now feasible to measure the size of functional requirements at two levels of granularity: at an abstract level, the software functional size can be measured in terms of COSMIC Function Point (CFP) units; and at a detailed level, the software structural size can be measured in terms of Control Structure Manipulation (CSM) units. These measures represent complementary aspects of software size and can be used as distinct independent variables to improve effort estimation models.     

An Artificial Neural Network-Based Model for Effective Software Development Effort Estimation

In project management, effective cost estimation is one of the most crucial activities to efficiently manage resources by predicting the required cost to fulfill a given task. However, finding the best estimation results in software development is challenging. Thus, accurate estimation of software development efforts is always a concern for many companies. In this paper, we proposed a novel software development effort estimation model based both on constructive cost model II (COCOMO II) and the artificial neural network (ANN). An artificial neural network enhances the COCOMO model, and the value of the baseline effort constant A is calibrated to use it in the proposed model equation. Three state-of-the-art publicly available datasets are used for experiments. The backpropagation feedforward procedure used a training set by iteratively processing and training a neural network. The proposed model is tested on the test set. The estimated effort is compared with the actual effort value. Experimental results show that the effort estimated by the proposed model is very close to the real effort, thus enhanced the reliability and improving the software effort estimation accuracy.     

MobiLine: A Nested Software Product Line for the domain of mobile and context-aware applications

Mobile devices are multipurpose and multi-sensor equipments supporting applications able to adapt their behavior according to changes in the user’s context (device, location, time, etc.). Meanwhile, the development of mobile and context-aware software is not a simple task, mostly due to the peculiar characteristics of these devices. Although several solutions have been proposed to facilitate their development, reuse is not systematically used throughout the software development life-cycle. In this paper, we discuss an approach for the development of mobile and context-aware software using the Software Product Line (SPL) paradigm. Furthermore, a Nested SPL for the domain of mobile and context-aware applications is presented, lessons learned in the SPL development are discussed and a product for a context-aware visit guide is shown.     

移动应用软件测试探索

随着苹果iOS和谷歌Android两大手机操作系统的兴起,强大的开发平台和开发工具帮助开发人员更快的开发出移动应用软件.移动互联网的发展将互联网带入了人们的日常生活,而移动应用软件是最关键的载体;移动设备的操作方式、网络连接方式、较小的存储空间、尺寸不同的屏幕以及移动性等都使得移动应用软件的操作流程和界面设计与传统PC应用完全不同,对用户体验的要求更进一步.将在分析移动应用软件与传统PC应用软件不同之处的基础上探索如何测试移动应用软件,进一步分析移动应用软件项目带给软件测试带来的新挑战并给出解决方案.     

Mobile situation-awareness within the project map

Mobile devices as PDAs evolve rapidly from digital calendars and address books to hosts of more complex functionality. Mobile access to business information such as customer, product or project databases is seen as one of the cutting edge IT solutions for improving productivity and customer satisfaction. However, mobility and scaled-down mobile technology lead to specific limitations in contrast to the usage of desktop computers. These restrictions are absolutely crucial to consider for the development of usable mobile applications.

With reference to the project map—Multimedia Arbeitsplatz der Zukunft (Multimedia Workplace of the Future), this article outlines our main approach to situation-aware support for mobile workers in response to mobile restrictions. We are pointing out focal components and sketch parts of the map architecture, in particular the prototypical application “BuddyAlert”.     

Managing uncertainty in project portfolio cost estimation

Although typically a software development organisation is involved in more than one project simultaneously, the available tools in the area of software cost estimation deal mostly with single software projects. In order to calculate the possible cost of the entire project portfolio, one must combine the single project estimates taking into account the uncertainty involved. In this paper, statistical simulation techniques are used to calculate confidence intervals for the effort needed for a project portfolio. The overall approach is illustrated through the adaptation of the analogy-based method for software cost estimation to cover multiple projects.     

Secure cloud-based mobile apps: attack taxonomy,requirements, mechanisms,tests and automation

The adoption and popularization of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, accentuated after the second decade of this century, has been motivated by the growing number of mobile applications, which can solve problems in different areas of contemporary societies. Conversely, the software development industry is motivated by the increasing number and quality of resources that mobile devices possess nowadays (e.g., memory, sensors, processing power or battery). While powerful mobile devices do exist, one of the main driving factors behind the increase of resources is the usage of Cloud technology, which strongly complement mobile computing. As expected, the adoption of measures to mitigate security issues has not accompanied the growth and speed of development for Cloud and Mobile software, to ensure that these are resilient to attacks by design. Aiming to contribute to decrease the gap between software and security engineering, this paper presents a deep approach to attack taxonomy, security mechanisms, and security test specification for the Cloud and Mobile ecosystem of applications. This is also the first time an encompassing and conjoined approach is provided for attack taxonomy and specification of security tests automation tools for this ecosystem.

     

面向移动机器人应用的跨平台自适应软件框架

摘要：自适应软件在移动机器人上具有广泛的应用前景,然而要在具有不同软硬件平台的移动机器人上开发自适应软件是一件非常困难的事情．．为了解决这个问题,提出并实现了一个面向移动机器人应用的跨平台自适应软件框架该框架屏蔽了运行平台的软硬件差异性,并使用规则文件将自适应逻辑分离出来,从而降低了自适应软件开发的难度。为了便于编写及检查规则文件,还实现了一个可视化的规则文件编辑器,用于自动生成模型图,并检查规则中存在的语法及逻辑错误i,最后,通过实验测试了框架的使用情况,并对框架的应用效果进行了评估、     

F2FMI: A toolkit for facilitating face-to-face mobile interaction

The importance of mobile groupware systems resides in the specific tasks that they can perform and other systems cannot. On the one hand, groupware systems allow groups of users to work together providing facilities that single-user systems are unable to offer. On the other hand, unlike stationary systems, mobile systems allow users to work on the move. The intersection of these two technologies offers a new support for activities, such as spontaneous collaboration, that could be facilitated neither by stationary groupware systems nor by mobile single-user systems. However, implementations of this new support are uncommon, probably because of the high development effort required and the seemingly little benefit obtained. In this paper, we aim to reduce this effort by facilitating the development of mobile groupware applications that support such activities. Our proposal to achieve this objective involves the design and implementation of the Face-to-Face Mobile Interaction (F2FMI) toolkit, whose goal is to provide generic and reusable software components required in most cases. We expect this strategy to yield a higher variety of successfully deployed applications, which in turn will demonstrate the benefits of supporting this kind of interactions through mobile devices.     

A model for estimating the size of a formal communication protocol specification and its implementation

Good project management is key when developing a software system successfully. To manage a project well, it is important to have the optimal resource allocation which is affected by the size of an implementation. Early software size estimation is essential for good project management. Existing software size models estimate the size of an implementation usually in terms of the number of lines of code. The main drawback of these models is that there is a wide margin of uncertainty as the actual size depends on the type of application and the software development method adopted. To address this drawback, we focus our work on communication protocol, and propose that the size of a formal specification needs to be estimated from an informal specification. This paper presents a two-stage size model for estimating the sizes of a formal communication protocol specification and its implementation, with the model validated using a test data set. The main benefit of this work is that it can give an indication of the likely sizes of both a formal specification and its implementation early at the development stage, giving developers a technique for managing communication software project better.