Conference on the Programming Environment for Development of Numerical Software

Systematic approaches to numerical software development and testing are presented

A portability assistant for Fortran applications

This thesis addresses the issues of porting software from one machine environment to another. Some general observations are made about the definition of Portability and the design and portability of programs written in high level programming languages, in particular Fortran. Two areas of portability are considered in detail: (i) Portability Criteria and Measures - The main criteria affecting the portability of Fortran applications are identified and possible measures of the effects of these criteria considered. A Portability Function is defined for obtaining a measure of the percentage portability of Fortran programs. (ii) Portability Assistant - The use of existing analysis tools to obtain measures of the criteria affecting the portability of Fortran programs is considered. A portability assistant is provided in the form of an Ingres Relational Database, which holds die data obtained from these measures, enables the portability function to be applied to the application and assists in the porting of the application. The methods of measuring the criteria affecting Fortran programs and the use of an Ingres database as a portability assistant is then applied to a particular example, the porting of NOMIS, a large manpower database

Foundations of Empirical Software Engineering: The Legacy of Victor R. Basili

This book captures the main scientific contributions of Victor R. Basili, who has significantly shaped the field of empirical software engineering from its very start. He was the first to claim that software engineering needed to follow the model of other physical sciences and develop an experimental paradigm. By working on this postulate, he developed concepts that today are well known and widely used, including the Goal-Question-Metric method, the Quality-Improvement paradigm, and the Experience Factory. He is one of the few software pioneers who can aver that their research results are not just scientifically acclaimed but are also used as industry standards. On the occasion of his 65th birthday, celebrated with a symposium in his honor at the International Conference on Software Engineering in St. Louis, MO, USA in May 2005, Barry Boehm, Hans Dieter Rombach, and Marvin V. Zelkowitz, each a long-time collaborator of Victor R. Basili, selected the 20 most important research papers of their friend, and arranged these according to subject field. They then invited renowned researchers to write topical introductions. The result is this commented collection of timeless cornerstones of software engineering, hitherto available only in scattered publications