08142 Abstracts Collection -- Combining the Advantages of Product Lines and Open Source

From 02.04. to 05.04.2008, the Dagstuhl Seminar 08142 ``Combining the Advantages of Product Lines and Open Source\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

Introducing Product Lines through Open Source Tools

We present an approach to introducing product lines to companies that lower their initial risk by applying open source tools and a smooth learning curve into the use and creation of domain specific modeling combined with standardized variability modeling

Automatic architectural enforcement

Automatic architectural enforcement would be very beneficial especially in product line development using open source practices where there is very limited or no access to the architects and the architecture is of paramount importance. However, current techniques for modelling software architecture do not support the modelling of architectural design rules which means that architectural enforcement is achieved by manual reviews. This paper addresses this problem by proposing how architectural design rules could be expressed in UML in a meta-model for the system model

Dagstuhl News January - December 2008

"Dagstuhl News" is a publication edited especially for the members of the Foundation "Informatikzentrum Schloss Dagstuhl" to thank them for their support. The News give a summary of the scientific work being done in Dagstuhl. Each Dagstuhl Seminar is presented by a small abstract describing the contents and scientific highlights of the seminar as well as the perspectives or challenges of the research topic

Polyglot software development

The languages we choose to design solutions influence the way we think about the problem, the words we use in discussing it with colleagues, the processes we adopt in developing the software which should solve that problem. Therefore we should strive to use the best language possible for depicting each facet of the system. To do that we have to solve two challenges: i) first of all to understand merits and issues brought by the languages we could adopt and their long reaching effects on the organizations, ii) combine them wisely, trying to reduce the overhead due to their assembling. In the first part of this dissertation we study the adoption of modeling and domain specific languages. On the basis of an industrial survey we individuate a list of benefits attainable through these languages, how frequently they can be reached and which techniques permit to improve the chances to obtain a particular benefit. In the same way we study also the common problems which either prevent or hinder the adoption of these languages. We then analyze the processes through which these languages are employed, studying the relative frequency of the usage of the different techniques and the factors influencing it. Finally we present two case-studies performed in a small and in a very large company, with the intent of presenting the peculiarities of the adoption in different contexts. As consequence of adopting specialized languages, many of them have to be employed to represent the complete solution. Therefore in the second part of the thesis we focus on the integration of these languages. Being this topic really new we performed preliminary studies to first understand the phenomenon, studying the different ways through which languages interact and their effects on defectivity. Later we present some prototypal solutions for i) the automatic spotting of cross-language relations, ii) the design of language integration tool support in language workbenches through the exploitation of common meta-metamodeling. This thesis wants to offer a contribution towards the productive adoption of multiple, specific languages in the same software development project, hence polyglot software development. From this approach we should be able to reduce the complexity due to misrepresentation of solutions, offer a better facilities to think about problems and, finally to be able to solve more difficult problems with our limited brain resources. Our results consists in a better understanding of MDD and DSLs adoption in companies. From that we can derive guidelines for practitioners, lesson learned for deploying in companies, depending on the size of the company, and implications for other actors involved in the process: company management and universities. Regarding cross-language relations our contribution is an initial definition of the problem, supported by some empirical evidence to sustain its importance. The solutions we propose are not yet mature but we believe that from them future work can stem

Superior performance, managerial comprehension and resource-based strategies

The cross-sectional study looks at how firms develop superior performance using their internal resources. It is a study based on the resource-based view of the firm. The study looks at firms in the Motor Vehicle Manufacturing Industry in UK. It was initially planned as a comparative study with firms in the same industry in Zimbabwe. The study argues that for resources to be potential sources of superior performance, managers have to comprehend the strategic concepts that are concerned with these resources. The study further hypothesises that Comprehension itself is affected by Experience and Functional Expertise/Training & Development The data was analysed using SPSS programme (Version 8). The main methods of analyses were factor analysis, correlational analysis, moderated regression & subgroup analyses, and regression analysis. The results suggest that Comprehension, defined as either Knowledge, or Applicability of intangible resources, or Applicability of capabilities, contributes to developing superior performance. The results also show that Experience, and Training & Development contribute to developing superior performance The results however, did not support the hypothesis that managers with more experience had better comprehension of strategic concepts. The results seem to suggest that Experience has a negative effect on Comprehension. A possible explanation to this negative relationship could be that those managers who had been in the managerial position for many years were not familiar with the RBV concepts, which are relatively new concepts. The results did not also support the hypothesis that managers who attended more training and development programmes had better comprehension of strategic concepts. Instead, the results show that Training & Development has a negative effect on Comprehension. These results suggest that although many managers have on-going management training and development programmes, these programmes do not seem to improve their comprehension of strategic concepts

CH₄ and N₂O from waste composting

This research programme aimed to investigate methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N20) emissions from large-scale composting facilities, with particular emphasis on advanced and newly emerging composting technologies. The atmospheric concentrations of CH4 and N20 are increasing, and they are respectively the second and third largest contributors to the global greenhouse effect after carbon dioxide. During field trials at large-scale composting facilities and in laboratory studies, the generation of CH4 and N20 was detected from a range of composting processes. Gaseous emissions from composting result from the interaction of a complex combination of controlling factors influencing the microbial production of CH4 and N20. Waste biodegradability in particular was shown to have significant influence on emission of CH4 and N20. Compliance with the EU landfill directive will result in the composting of wastes of varying biodegradability, the effect of this compliance on emission of CH4 and N20 from composting requires further investigation. Emissions of CH4 and N20 during composting have not been adequately quantified in the UK. A future projection of the contribution of composting to the UK greenhouse gas inventory was an estimated 24.6 Kt CH4 year-1 and 2.5 Kt N20 year-1 from open windrows, which currently account for 80% of the composting systems employed. There is urgent need for further study into the emission of CH4 and N20 from the UK composting sector as the Kyoto protocol requires emissions from all sources to be accounted for. While significant emission of CH4 and N20 was recorded for open air mechanically turned windrow systems, the level of emissions from in-vessel composting facilities was more difficult to determine. The combination of in-vessel composting and open air windrow composting would appear to greatly mitigate emissions compared to windrow systems alone, but more research into the environmental benefits of combining composting systems is required