A framework for cots software evaluation and selection for COTS mismatches handling and non-functional requirements

The decision to purchase Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software needs systematic guidelines so that the appropriate COTS software can be selected in order to provide a viable and effective solution to the organizations. However, the existing COTS software evaluation and selection frameworks focus more on functional aspects and do not give adequate attention to accommodate the mismatch between user requirements and COTS software specification, and also integration with non functional requirements of COTS software. Studies have identified that these two criteria are important in COTS software evaluation and selection. Therefore, this study aims to develop a new framework of COTS software evaluation and selection that focuses on handling COTS software mismatches and integrating the nonfunctional requirements. The study is conducted using mixed-mode methodology which involves survey and interview. The study is conducted in four main phases: a survey and interview of 63 organizations to identify COTS software evaluation criteria, development of COTS software evaluation and selection framework using Evaluation Theory, development of a new decision making technique by integrating Analytical Hierarchy Process and Gap Analysis to handle COTS software mismatches, and validation of the practicality and reliability of the proposed COTS software Evaluation and Selection Framework (COTS-ESF) using experts’ review, case studies and yardstick validation. This study has developed the COTS-ESF which consists of five categories of evaluation criteria: Quality, Domain, Architecture, Operational Environment and Vendor Reputation. It also provides a decision making technique and a complete process for performing the evaluation and selection of COTS software. The result of this study shows that the evaluated aspects of the framework are feasible and demonstrate their potential and practicality to be applied in the real environment. The contribution of this study straddles both the research and practical perspectives of software evaluation by improving decision making and providing a systematic guidelines for handling issue in purchasing viable COTS software

Issues for assessing component-based systems

The use of component-based software has become more and more important in state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice of software and system development. Using COTS software promises faster time-to-market, which can yield substantial advantages over competitors with regards to earlier placement of a new product on a market. At the same time, component-based software introduces risks such as unknown quality properties of the components in use that can inject harmful side effects into the final product. This paper proposes a multidimensional classification scheme for assessing component-based systems. The classification scheme provides insight into what quality characteristics, managerial features, or assessment methods and techniques might be used for evaluating different component artefacts.Eje: Ingeniería de softwareRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Issues for assessing component-based systems

The use of component-based software has become more and more important in state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice of software and system development. Using COTS software promises faster time-to-market, which can yield substantial advantages over competitors with regards to earlier placement of a new product on a market. At the same time, component-based software introduces risks such as unknown quality properties of the components in use that can inject harmful side effects into the final product. This paper proposes a multidimensional classification scheme for assessing component-based systems. The classification scheme provides insight into what quality characteristics, managerial features, or assessment methods and techniques might be used for evaluating different component artefacts.Eje: Ingeniería de softwareRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Issues for assessing component-based systems

The use of component-based software has become more and more important in state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice of software and system development. Using COTS software promises faster time-to-market, which can yield substantial advantages over competitors with regards to earlier placement of a new product on a market. At the same time, component-based software introduces risks such as unknown quality properties of the components in use that can inject harmful side effects into the final product. This paper proposes a multidimensional classification scheme for assessing component-based systems. The classification scheme provides insight into what quality characteristics, managerial features, or assessment methods and techniques might be used for evaluating different component artefacts.Eje: Ingeniería de softwareRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Model-based integration testing technique using formal finite state behavioral models for component-based software

Many issues and challenges could be identified when considering integration testing of Component-Based Software Systems (CBSS). Consequently, several research have appeared in the literature, aimed at facilitating the integration testing of CBSS. Unfortunately, they suffer from a number of drawbacks and limitations such as difficulty of understanding and describing the behavior of integrated components, lack of effective formalism for test information, difficulty of analyzing and validating the integrated components, and exposing the components implementation by providing semi-formal models. Hence, these problems have made it in effective to test today’s modern complex CBSS. To address these problems, a model-based approach such as Model-Based Testing (MBT) tends to be a suitable mechanism and could be a potential solution to be applied in the context of integration testing of CBSS. Accordingly, this thesis presents a model-based integration testing technique for CBSS. Firstly, a method to extract the formal finite state behavioral models of integrated software components using Mealy machine models was developed. The extracted formal models were used to detect faulty interactions (integration bugs) or compositional problems between integrated components in the system. Based on the experimental results, the proposed method had significant impact in reducing the number of output queries required to extract the formal models of integrated software components and its performance was 50% better compared to the existing methods. Secondly, based on the extracted formal models, an effective model-based integration testing technique (MITT) for CBSS was developed. Finally, the effectiveness of the MITT was demonstrated by employing it in the air gourmet and elevator case studies, using three evaluation parameters. The experimental results showed that the MITT was effective and outperformed Shahbaz technique on the air gourmet and elevator case studies. In terms of learned components for air gourmet and elevator case studies respectively, the MITT results were better by 98.14% and 100%, output queries based on performance were 42.13% and 25.01%, and error detection capabilities were 70.62% and 75% for each of the case study

Tracing Hardware Monitors in the GR712RC Multicore Platform: Challenges and Lessons Learnt from a Space Case Study

The demand for increased computing performance is driving industry in critical-embedded systems (CES) domains, e.g. space, towards the use of multicores processors. Multicores, however, pose several challenges that must be addressed before their safe adoption in critical embedded domains. One of the prominent challenges is software timing analysis, a fundamental step in the verification and validation process. Monitoring and profiling solutions, traditionally used for debugging and optimization, are increasingly exploited for software timing in multicores. In particular, hardware event monitors related to requests to shared hardware resources are building block to assess and restraining multicore interference. Modern timing analysis techniques build on event monitors to track and control the contention tasks can generate each other in a multicore platform. In this paper we look into the hardware profiling problem from an industrial perspective and address both methodological and practical problems when monitoring a multicore application. We assess pros and cons of several profiling and tracing solutions, showing that several aspects need to be taken into account while considering the appropriate mechanism to collect and extract the profiling information from a multicore COTS platform. We address the profiling problem on a representative COTS platform for the aerospace domain to find that the availability of directly-accessible hardware counters is not a given, and it may be necessary to the develop specific tools that capture the needs of both the user’s and the timing analysis technique requirements. We report challenges in developing an event monitor tracing tool that works for bare-metal and RTEMS configurations and show the accuracy of the developed tool-set in profiling a real aerospace application. We also show how the profiling tools can be exploited, together with handcrafted benchmarks, to characterize the application behavior in terms of multicore timing interference.This work has been partially supported by a collaboration agreement between Thales Research and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, and the European Research Council (ERC) under the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 772773). MINECO partially supported Jaume Abella under Ramon y Cajal postdoctoral fellowship (RYC2013-14717).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Indexing and Searching Document Collections using Lucene

The amount of information available to a person is growing day by day; hence retrieving the correct information in a timely manner plays a very important role. This thesis talks about indexing document collections and fetching the right information with the help of a database. The primary role of a database is to store the additional information which may be or may not be available in the document collection by itself. The indexing of document collection is performed by Lucene, while the search application is strongly integrated with a database. In this thesis a highly efficient, scalable, customized search tool is built using Lucene. The search tool is capable of indexing and searching databases, PDF documents, word documents and text files

Integrating Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solution to External Applications

An integration solution must sustain multiple PeopleSoft upgrades, which is necessary to preserve investment in system integrations. Since the underlying structures and connection technologies of PeopleSoft have been and can be migrated from version to version in order to enhance features and performance, it is critical for any external component of integration to be built based on publicly visible interfaces of the PeopleSoft component. We have developed a standard-based solution to integrate “PeopleSoft Campus Solution” into “Microsoft SharePoint” using Web services generated by PeopleSoft’s Pure Internet Architecture. We have illustrated such kind of integration in two examples that emulate some of the imminent problems in the University’s current information systems between the PeopleSoft Campus and SharePoint Workflow. The methodology used in this is applicable to integrations of general COTS software systems into modern enterprise information systems

COTS GIS Integration and its Soap-Based Web Services

In the modern geographic information systems, COTS software has been playing a major role. However, deploying heterogeneous GIS software has the tendency to form fragmented data sets and to cause inconsistency. To accomplish data consolidation, we must achieve interoperability between different GIS tools. In my thesis project, I developed Vector and Raster Data Adapters to implement the spatial data consolidation. I deployed ArcIMS to publish the spatial data and metadata onto Internet. Furthermore, the SOAP-Based GIS Web services are implemented to achieve the enterprise information system integration. The contribution of ours in this project is we have streamlined the COTS GIS server, the J2EE coordinator server, the web service provider components, and the COTS web publishing tools into a hybrid web service architecture, in which the enterprise information system integration, the web publishing, and the business-to business online services are uniformed

COTS GIS Integration and its Soap-Based Web Services

In the modern geographic information systems, COTS software has been playing a major role. However, deploying heterogeneous GIS software has the tendency to form fragmented data sets and to cause inconsistency. To accomplish data consolidation, we must achieve interoperability between different GIS tools. In my thesis project, I developed Vector and Raster Data Adapters to implement the spatial data consolidation. I deployed ArcIMS to publish the spatial data and metadata onto Internet. Furthermore, the SOAP-Based GIS Web services are implemented to achieve the enterprise information system integration. The contribution of ours in this project is we have streamlined the COTS GIS server, the J2EE coordinator server, the web service provider components, and the COTS web publishing tools into a hybrid web service architecture, in which the enterprise information system integration, the web publishing, and the business-to business online services are uniformed