An Empirical Study of a Software Maintenance Process

This paper describes how a process support tool is used to collect metrics about a major upgrade to our own electronic retail system. An incremental prototyping lifecycle is adopted in which each increment is categorised by an effort type and a project component. Effort types are Acquire, Build, Comprehend and Design and span all phases of development. Project components include data models and process models expressed in an OO modelling language and process algebra respectively as well as C++ classes and function templates and build components including source files and data files. This categorisation is independent of incremental prototyping and equally applicable to other software lifecycles. The process support tool (PWI) is responsible for ensuring the consistency between the models and the C++ source. It also supports the interaction between multiple developers and multiple metric-collectors. The first two releases of the retailing software are available for ftp from oracle.ecs.soton.ac.uk in directory pub/peter. Readers are invited to use the software and apply their own metrics as appropriate. We would be interested to correspond with anyone who does so

The use of sequencing information in software specification for verification

Software requirements specifications, virtual machine definitions, and algorithmic design all place constraints on the sequence of operations that are permissible during a program's execution. This paper discusses how these constraints can be captured and used to aid in the program verification process. The sequencing constraints can be expressed as a grammar over the alphabet of program operations. Several techniques can be used in support of testing or verification based on these specifications. Dynamic aalysis and static analysis are considered here. The automatic generation of some of these aids is feasible; the means of doing so is described

A requirements specification for a software design support system

Most existing software design systems (SDSS) support the use of only a single design methodology. A good SDSS should support a wide variety of design methods and languages including structured design, object-oriented design, and finite state machines. It might seem that a multiparadigm SDSS would be expensive in both time and money to construct. However, it is proposed that instead an extensible SDSS that directly implements only minimal database and graphical facilities be constructed. In particular, it should not directly implement tools to faciliate language definition and analysis. It is believed that such a system could be rapidly developed and put into limited production use, with the experience gained used to refine and evolve the systems over time

A DISCUSSION ON ASSURING SOFTWARE QUALITY IN SMALL AND MEDIUM SOFTWARE ENTERPRISES: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION

Under the studies of general core activities including software inspection, review and testing to achieve quality objectives in small-medium size enterprises (SMEs), the paper presents a contemporary view of such companies against quality measures. The results from a local empirical investigation of quality standards in the Turkish software industry are reported.Around 150 software companies have been approached from which 17 detailed feedback inform that in order to ensure software quality, standards including internationally recognized International Standards Organization (ISO) and Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) are given credit. However the substantial workload and resources required to obtain them are also reported as serious; downscaled frameworks of such large models proposed in the literature are not well known by the SMEs either. The paper also discusses "work around" that bypasses such standards to ease delivery of products while keeping certificates as labels just to acquire new jobs for the business

Control System for 3D Printable Robotic Hand

Humanoid robotics is a growing area of research due to its potential applications in orthosis and prosthesis for human beings. With the currently available technologies, the most advanced robotic hands used in prosthetics or robotics can cost from $11,000 to$90,000, making it inaccessible to the general population of amputees and robotics hobbyists. Most of the features provided by these expensive technologies are superfluous to many users, creating a great gap in cost and services between users and technology. Using the emerging 3D printing technology, my project is to construct a 3D printed robotic hand that can reproduce as many basic functionalities of the advanced expensive hands, while minimizing the cost. The project involves choosing a feasible 3D printed design plan, assembly of the mechanical and electrical components of the robotic hand, the design and implementation of the software interface for intuitive user control of the hand and ease of integrability to existing robotic systems. This new hand will allow mimicking, versatile gripping, human-recognizable gestures, feedback controlled force exertion, and a ROS integrated software interface. This project will further allow students at Union to extend their research in social robotics and human-computer interface by incorporating the inexpensive robotic han

On the emergent Semantic Web and overlooked issues

The emergent Semantic Web, despite being in its infancy, has already received a lotof attention from academia and industry. This resulted in an abundance of prototype systems and discussion most of which are centred around the underlying infrastructure. However, when we critically review the work done to date we realise that there is little discussion with respect to the vision of the Semantic Web. In particular, there is an observed dearth of discussion on how to deliver knowledge sharing in an environment such as the Semantic Web in effective and efficient manners. There are a lot of overlooked issues, associated with agents and trust to hidden assumptions made with respect to knowledge representation and robust reasoning in a distributed environment. These issues could potentially hinder further development if not considered at the early stages of designing Semantic Web systems. In this perspectives paper, we aim to help engineers and practitioners of the Semantic Web by raising awareness of these issues

Design and Development of a "Two- Axis Leveling Platform"

Electronic drives such as stepper motor; either rotary or linear, have found many useful application and are regarded as the major components in automation. Many applications evolved rapidly with integrating components such as sensors, controllers, actuators, drives and switches. Variety of systems that performs similar applications could be developed using these combinations. Simplicity, better control and cost are the main criteria in selecting the best configuration. Therefore a good grasp of knowledge and technology on these elements will be able to enhance the development of the automation industry. One of such applications in automation filed is a stabilizing or leveling system. A two-axis -leveling platform is a system that is capable of leveling a platform although the base is subjected to uneven motion. The word two-axis in this context represents two drives (linear stepper motor) that are used to control the platform's motion compare to some other stabilizing systems that use many drives that eventually lead to costly design. The project is aimed at designing and developing a physical model that is capable of demonstrating the idea of leveling a platform when the base is subjected to uneven motion. The model consists of the basic structure of the platform, control device such as controller board to control the motor, computer as a processor, serial port as an I/0 card, linear actuators and control program developed using Lab VIEW. Thus, the project consists of a system that has both hardware (model) and software (controller program) components. There are some initiatives taken to keep the overall cost within the budget since the main constraint in this project is the cost. Under those constraints, author has found ways to utilize both parallel and serial COM port as data acquisition medium. The motor selection was guided by the physical constrains of the system as well as equations to calculate the required torque, allowable load and speed. The expected result of this project is to deliver and communicate the idea of leveling a platform in many applications. Some of the main advantages of using the linear actuators are its high durability and flexibility of progranuning. In between the accuracy in term of tilt-angle is an impressive result of the system. Stabilizing a solid surface has found many useful applications in automotive, military, micro-inspection and measurement field. This project could be a springboard to explore the new ways in leveling a platform which carry vast practical applications