A Black-Box Computational Business Rules Extraction Approach through Test-Driven Development

Business rules extraction is an important activity in situations in which a software system becomes obsolete and needs to be replaced by a newer system, since the replacing system needs to satisfy the business rules embedded in the legacy software system. In this paper, we investigate an approach in which the computational business rules of a legacy software system can be extracted given previously generated output of the system and without requiring access to the system’s source code. Furthermore, extracted computational business rules are validated automatically with minimal involvement of domain experts through Test-Driven Development (TDD) such that test cases are constructed from historic output of the system. The proposed approach is applied to extract the computational business rules of a large-scale governmental payroll legacy software system. The study results demonstrate that the suggested approach extracted computational business rules van meet a substantial number of test cases. Thus, the efforts involving domain experts can be reduces to analyze such instances

Navegar contamina, también en Internet

El software es una pieza fundamental en la sociedad actual. Sin embargo, tenemos que ser conscientes de que su uso impacta en el medioambiente. Relacionado con esta preocupación, desde hace unos años, se está investigando en el área del Software Sostenible que persigue que el Software esté alineado con los objetivos de desarrollo sostenible. Una de las dimensiones del Software Sostenible es el denominado Green Software, que aboga por el desarrollo de software que sea energéticamente eficiente. Este artículo se enmarca en esta línea de trabajo y presenta un estudio que hemos realizado para determinar qué combinación de navegador+buscador de internet es más eficiente desde el punto de vista energético. Para ello hemos medido el consumo de diferentes componentes hardware del ordenador en el que se ha llevado a cabo una búsqueda. Estas mediciones se han realizado con el instrumento de medición que hemos desarrollado. Como resultado hemos obtenido, para el escenario de prueba, que la combinación más eficiente es Firefox+Ecosia. El uso de esta combinación durante un minuto en vez de la más utilizada actualmente (Chrome+Google) permitiría, por ejemplo, recorrer más de 3900 km en un coche Tesla

The measurement process in micro and small software maintenance companies: empirical study

With the dissemination of quality models and the need for measurement-based management for software organizations, a variety of approaches and models are emerging to support organizations on this journey. According to a Systematic Review of Literature that selected 30 of 692 papers returned from search sources, it was noticed the need for guidelines and guides regarding the measurement process in a specific sector: micro and small companies that work with software maintenance. In this work, an empirical study was carried out to understand how the measurement process aligned with quality models can be implemented in these organizations. The field study followed the implementation of an improvement program based on CMMI® level 2 in 7 Brazilian companies from Maringá, Paraná. Finally, it was found that the process for the definition of a measurement guide can be common to a specific group of companies, taking steps and guidelines for its execution, always aligned with the organization’s strategy, giving top management an objective view work and process, supporting decision making