Early aspects: aspect-oriented requirements engineering and architecture design

This paper reports on the third Early Aspects: Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Architecture Design Workshop, which has been held in Lancaster, UK, on March 21, 2004. The workshop included a presentation session and working sessions in which the particular topics on early aspects were discussed. The primary goal of the workshop was to focus on challenges to defining methodical software development processes for aspects from early on in the software life cycle and explore the potential of proposed methods and techniques to scale up to industrial applications

Empirical Evidence of Large-Scale Diversity in API Usage of Object-Oriented Software

In this paper, we study how object-oriented classes are used across thousands of software packages. We concentrate on "usage diversity'", defined as the different statically observable combinations of methods called on the same object. We present empirical evidence that there is a significant usage diversity for many classes. For instance, we observe in our dataset that Java's String is used in 2460 manners. We discuss the reasons of this observed diversity and the consequences on software engineering knowledge and research

Weighted Class Complexity: A Measure of Complexity for Object Oriented System

Software complexity metrics are used to predict critical information about reliability and maintainability of software systems. Object oriented software development requires a different approach to software complexity metrics. In this paper, we propose a metric to compute the structural and cognitive complexity of class by associating a weight to the class, called as Weighted Class Complexity (WCC). On the contrary, of the other metrics used for object oriented systems, proposed metric calculates the complexity of a class due to methods and attributes in terms of cognitive weight. The proposed metric has been demonstrated with OO examples. The theoretical and practical evaluations based on the information theory have shown that the proposed metric is on ratio scale and satisfies most of the parameters required by the measurement theor

An agent programming manifesto

There has been considerable progress in both the theory and practice of agent programming since Georgeff & Rao’s seminal work on the Belief-Desire-Intention paradigm. However, despite increasing interest in the development of autonomous systems, applications of agent programming are confined to a small number of niche areas, and adoption of agent programming languages in mainstream software development remains limited. This state of affairs is widely acknowledged within the community, and a number of reasons and remedies have been proposed. In this paper, I present an analysis of why agent programming has failed to make an impact that is rooted in the class of programming problems agent programming sets out to solve, namely the realisation of flexible intelligent behaviour in dynamic and unpredictable environments. Based on this analysis, I outline some suggestions for the future direction of agent programming, and some principles that I believe any successful future direction must follow

The Benefits of Object Oriented Development: Toward a Framework for Evaluation

This paper describes the initial efforts to explore the benefits of OO development by describing a framework for categorizing benefits based on phases of system development and by level of analysis. The level of analysis of OO benefits can be the enterprise level, the project level, and the individual developer level. The framework was tested by conducting structured interviews with information systems professionals to assess their perceptions of the reasons for selecting OO technology and OO benefits at the three levels of analysis. The initial results indicate that OO is selected for use for a variety of reasons, but primarily because of perceived productivity benefits. The greatest benefit is thought to be at the enterprise level or project level, with fewer benefits for the individual programmer. Of the benefits often mentioned in the literature, OO being a more natural way of thinking for developers did not appear to be supported

Understanding Acceptance of Information System Development and Management Methodologies by actual Users: A Review and Assessment of Existing Literature

Despite the advantages of using IS methodologies, they are often rejected by actual users. Consequently, researchers have repeatedly attempted to understand why individuals accept certain methodologies while rejecting others. In order to differentiate what has been done from what needs to be done in research, a systematic review of academic studies that examine the acceptance of IS methodologies by actual users was conducted. This review revealed 19 articles. We found that the studies were either: a) descriptive, b) focused on specific determinants, or c) applied a holistic approach, examining methodology acceptance from a number of dimensions. Furthermore, while cognitive aspects have received considerable attention, none of the publications studied the effect of habits, emotions and the personal characteristics of individuals. We also examined the studies with respect to the reported research practices, and thereby identified areas of improvement. Based upon our findings, we developed a research agenda to guide future studies on this crucial subject

Career Tracks and Job Requirements in Information Systems vs. ACM/AIS IS 2010 Curriculum Guidelines: An Empirical Study

There is always a gap between what the job market expects from both undergraduates and graduates and what academic education actually provides. Keeping this gap is important in our view, because universities have to put first the best interest of their students as persons, in the long run, i.e. to prepare them to live a fulfilled life, in all the aspects that count, by both empowering them with the best possible knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values and helping them discover their innate abilities. However, finding the right job is an important coordinate of the multifaceted life nowadays, and academia is ought to empower them in this direction too. Our main goal here is to determine what are the most sought after job types (in line with the career tracks of ACM/AIS IS 2010 Curriculum Guidelines for undergraduates) and job requirements (per job type), in Information Systems in our country. However, in our view, this research has more than local interest given that our IS job market is very dynamic due to the consistent presence of both major corporations and active firms in this field