Mobile system for managing and mitigating the accommodation problems among students in Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM)

Students either local or international experience different adjustment problems while moving one place to another place, and out of those problems, finding suitable accommodation is the most challenging one. However, at Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM), the accommodation center for the students utilizing the traditional method for managing and processing the issues related to the students’ accommodation. Therefore, this project seeks to exploit the mobile technologies to enhance the accommodation process and increase the communication among the students and management of the resident. This project has three core objectives: identifying the requirements, analysis and designing, and evaluating the usability of the mobile accommodation system (MAS). To evaluate the usability of the MAS, a usability scale is used and feedbacks were collected from 40 students around the UUM campus. The results have revealed that the users strongly accepted and are satisfied with the interface functions, usability, integrity and other facilities for the application. Thus, students and accommodations staff can use the applications for managing their accommodation with successfully

A domain specific language for the automatic generation of parsers classes for text protocols

ABNF ist eine Sprache zur Definition einer formalen Syntax für technische Spezifikationen und wird häufig zur Beschreibung textueller Nachrichten von Internetprotokollen eingesetzt. Die Möglichkeiten der automatischen Generierung von Parser-Klassen aus ABNF-Spezifikationen sind derzeit sehr begrenzt, da ABNF lediglich die Transfersyntax und Produktionsregeln von Textnachrichten beschreibt. Die fehlende Definition von Variablennamen innerhalb einer ABNF-Spezifikation ermöglicht es nicht, sinnvollen und ausdrucksstarken Programmcode zu generieren, der von einem Programmierer verwendet werden kann. In diesem Artikel stellen wir X-ABNF vor, eine domänenspezifische Sprache (DSL) zur Definition von Variablennamen für ABNF-Regeln. Dies ermöglicht die Generierung von ausdrucksstarkem und lesbarem Programmcode aus ABNF-Spezifikationen. Des Weiteren zeigen wir, dass dieser Ansatz auch für Spracherweiterungen mithilfe von Makroprogrammierung genutzt werden kann. Dies ermöglicht die dynamische Instanziierung von ABNF-Textnachrichten im Programmcode. Wir verwenden Xtext und Xtend zur Implementierung der Sprachgrammatik von ABNF und XABNF, was eine gute Werkzeugunterstützung gewährleistet und Codegenerierung ermöglicht.ABNF is a language for the definition of the formal syntax of technical specifications and is widely used for the definition of textual protocol messages of many internet protocols. The automatic generation of parser classes for ABNF specifications is currently very limited, because ABNF only defines the transfer syntax of the text messages and does not define names for the set of production rules. The lack of name definitions within ABNF rules does not allow to automatically generate expressiveness and meaningful program code for ABNF specifications. In this paper we present X-ABNF, which is a domain-specific language (DSL) for the definition of name-bindings for ABNF rules. The name-bindings with X-ABNF facilitates to generate a concise and meaningful code for an ABNF specification. Additionally, we show that the name-binding can also be used for language extensions through macro programming to dynamically access ABNF encoded text data within source code. We have used Xtext and Xtend for the implementation of the language grammar of ABNF and X-ABNF, which provide good tool support and code generation capabilities

Automatic code generation from UML diagrams: the state-of-the-art

The emergence of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) as the de-facto standard for modeling software systems has encouraged the development of automated software tools that facilitate automatic code generation. UML diagrams are used to diagrammatically model and specify the static structure as well as the dynamic behavior of object-oriented systems and the software tools then go ahead and automatically produce code from the given diagrams. In the last two decades substantial work has been done in this area of automatic code generation. This paper is aimed at identifying and classifying this work pertaining to automatic code generation from UML diagrams, restricting the search neither to a specific context nor to a particular programming language. A Systematic literature review (SLR) using the keywords “automatic code generation”, “MDE”, “code generation” and “UML” is used to identify 40 research papers published during the years 2000–2016 which are broadly classified into three groups: Approaches, Frameworks and Tools. For each paper, an analysis is made of the achievements and the gaps, the UML diagrams used the programming languages and the platform. This analysis helps to answer the main questions that the paper addresses including what techniques or implementation methods have been used for automatic code generation from UML Diagrams, what are the achievements and gaps in the field of automatic code generation from UML diagrams, which UML diagram is most used for automatic code generation from UML diagrams, which programming language source code is mostly automatically generated from the design models and which is the most used target platform? The answers provided in this paper will assist researchers, practitioners and developers to know the current state-of-the-art in automatic code generation from UML diagrams.Keywords: Automatic Code Generation (ACG); Unified Modeling Language (UML); Model Driven Engineering (MDE

A methodology for CIM modelling and its transformation to PIM

Developing with Model Driven Architecture is nowadays widely used starting with a CIM that can be transformed to models of low abstraction (PIM, PSM) that can be used to generate the code. The CIM represents the highest level of abstraction of the approach which allowing modeling system’s requirement. However, there is no standard method to build this type of model or how to transform it to lower level of abstraction (PIM) which is considered the final objective of building such model. This paper provides an approach to build the CIM that can be transformed (semi-) automatically later to lower levels of abstraction in PIMs.  Thereby, the proposed architecture represents both the static and dynamic view of the system based on the business process model. Meanwhile, the PIM level is represented by the Domain Diagram class and Sequence Diagram of Systems External behavior. Thus, the proposal helps bridging the gap between those that are experts about the domain and its requirements, and those that are experts of the system design and development. Keywords: CIM to PIM transformation; MDA; software process

Getting Relational Database from Legacy Data-MDRE Approach

The previous management information systems turning on traditional mainframe environment are often written in COBOL and store their data in files; they are usually large and complex and known as legacy systems. These legacy systems need to be maintained and evolved due to several causes, including correction of anomalies, requirements change, management rules change, new reorganization, etc. But, the maintenance of legacy systems becomes over years extremely complex and highly expensive, In this case, a new or an improved system must replace the previous one. However, replacing those systems completely from scratch is also very expensive and it represents a huge risk. Nevertheless, they should be evolved by profiting from the valuable knowledge embedded in them. This paper proposes a reverse engineering process based on Model Driven engineering that presents a solution to provide a normalized relational database which includes the integrity constraints extracted from legacy data. A CASE tool CETL: (COBOL Extract Transform Load) is developed to support the proposal. Keywords: legacy data, reverse engineering, model driven engineering, COBOL metamodel, domain class diagram, relational database

Higher-order Transformations with Nested Concrete Syntax

ABSTRACT Transformations play an important role in grammar-based applications such as program generation. In this domain, the use of the concrete syntax technology is particularly beneficial as it substantially simplifies the development and maintenance of the transformations. Further benefits could be achieved by the use of higherorder transformations to generate program transformations. However, both technologies cannot be combined easily because of the difficulties in merging the different object, meta, and meta-meta languages. Here we propose an approach to higher-order transformations with nested concrete syntax. We use Stratego as meta-meta language and allow the embedding of arbitrary object languages into arbitrary meta languages. We describe the implementation of the approach and give two examples for its application, the embedding of Stratego in itself to generate WebDSL program transformations, and the use of Stratego to generate Prolog-clauses with embedded object syntax

An Investigation Into the Generality of a Graphical Representation of Program Code for Source to Source Translation

This thesis addresses the problem of defining a source-to-source translation system for reusable software components. It describes the development of an interoperable language for writing software components, and presents a system to translate components written in the interoperable language to a set of compatible target languages. The common features in a set of popular programming languages are analyzed to inform the design of the interoperable language. An evaluation is performed by using the source-to-source translator to convert two well-known open source Java libraries to C++ and Python, and the accuracy and performance of the resulting translations are assessed

Model based development of speech recognition grammar for VoiceXML

Speech interaction is a natural form of interaction between human and devices. This interaction technology is currently in high demand but often has limitations. A limited form of interaction is thus in use to achieve best possible efficiency. The limited form of speech interaction uses direct commands instead of complete natural language. The VoiceXML is a W3C (World wide consortium) recommended web based speech interaction application development language that performs the dialogue management. It has been used as a base language in this thesis for the case study. The VoiceXML uses a grammatical base to recognise the user utterance for the commands. This thesis applies the model based development approach to create a hierarchical data model for the speech grammar. Further, the grammar has been separated from the interaction code. MetaEdit+ tool has been used for developing the grammar model and for generating the grammar file. The approach is further compared with other grammar models. In conclusion, the applied approach is found suitable for the grammar modelling in VoiceXML application development. Descriptors: Data Model, Grammar Model, MetaEdit+ , VoiceXML, Grammar generation, Hierarchical Model, Speech interactio