Implementation of active collections framework using .NET

For many years, large distributed enterprises have faced a common problem of near real time sharing of enterprise data typically stored in databases. As these databases may be located globally, distributed nature of this data makes it difficult to access instantaneously. The Active Collections Framework (ACF) acts as a good foundation on which to build distributed applications. This framework requires distributed applications to view changes to data as events of interest. The ACF framework integrates access to data and data changes through active collections. ACF framework is based on two different research areas: event management in distributed computing and active database systems. Active databases support mechanisms to monitor changes to the database state. The central concept in ACF event management is active collections. Each active collection is a collection of all objects specified by a query on the enterprise data. For each client interested in obtaining data, an entry is made in the active collection. This information is then used by windows service to notify the registered client of any data changes. This project implements the Active Collections Framework using Microsoft .Net and Visual Studio .Net. Two sample applications using the developed framework have been developed to demonstrate the efficiency of data storage and event notification capabilities of the developed ACF framework

Development of an Enhanced Agility Assessment Model for Legacy Information System

Deciding the moment to end the lifecycle of an information system are often not exhaustively studied. It is essential for an organisation to know when to end the life cycle of their legacy information system when it is no longer able to perform and comply with the changes the organization desires. Prolonging the length of an information system lifecycle could lead to a reduction in software cost. Most of the various metrics presented in literatures on agility measurement, such as Cost, Time, Robustness and Scope of changes (CTRS) and Simplicity, Speed and Scope of changes (3S) and the researchers evaluation methods, e.g., Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy Mathematics Analytic are qualitative and usually need to be evaluated by domain experts subjectively. This study therefore developed an enhanced agility assessment model to measure legacy information system quantitatively with the agility factors: Speed, Robustness and Complexity in an educational institution. The adoption of a quantitative metrics methodology will lead to an accurate measurement of the student information system. A stand-alone online assessment system based on agility factors and satisfying the maximum metrics benchmark requirements was used for the model implementation. The results were: Complexity of the largest module=96, Robustness=547.5 hours and Speed 0.5 minutes. The complexity of the module that exceeded 20 can be fixed by reducing the control constructs of the source code modules into submodules, with each not greater than 20. The results obtained indicated that the student information system was still agile. Thus, management should continue with the system.    &nbsp

An approach to Determine Simulation Model Complexity

AbstractDiscrete event simulation (DES) is an essential tool for planning, operating and evaluating manufacturing systems. Estimation of simulation model complexity provides several advantages in the planning phase of a simulation project. For this purpose some measures of the simulation model's complexity are indispensable. The paper presents an approach to determine the complexity of DES models by combining several parameters describing simulation models. The potentials of the proposed approach are examined via industrial cases

An Exploratory Investigation on the Invasiveness of Environmental Modeling Frameworks

Environmental modeling frameworks provide an array of useful features that model developers can harness when implementing models. Each framework differs in how it provides features to a model developer via its Application Programming Interface (API). Environmental modelers harness framework features by calling and interfacing with the framework API. As modelers write model code, they make framework-specific function calls and use framework specific data types for achieving the functionality of the model. As a result of this development approach, model code becomes coupled with and dependent on a specific modeling framework. Coupling to a specific framework makes migration to other frameworks and reuse of the code outside the original framework more difficult. This complicates collaboration between model developers wishing to share model code that ma y have been developed in a variety of languages and frameworks. This paper provides initial results of an exploratory investigation on the invasiveness of environmental modeling frameworks. Invasiveness is defined as th e coupling between application (i.e., model) and framework code used to implement the model. By comparing the implementation of an environmental model across several modeling frameworks, we aim to better understand the consequences of framework design. How frameworks present functionality to modelers through APIs can lead to consequences with respect to model development, model maintenance, reuse of model code, and ultimately collaboration among model developers. By measuring framework invasiveness, we hope to provide environmental modeling framework developers and environmental modelers with valuable in formation to assist in future development efforts. Eight implementations (six framework-based) of Thornthwaite, a simple water balance model, were made in a variety of environmental modeling frameworks and languages. A set of software metrics were proposed and applied to measure invasiveness between model implementation code and framework code. The metrics produced a rank ordering of invasiveness for the framework-based implementations of Thornthwaite. We compared model invasiveness results with several popular software metrics including size in lines of code (LOC), cyclomatic complexity, and object oriented coupling. To investigate software quality implications of framework invasiveness we checked for relationships between the Chidamber and Kemerer (1994) object oriented software metrics and our framework invasiveness measures. For the six framework-based implementations of Thornthwaite we found a five-fold variation in code size (LOC). We observed up to a seven-fold variation in total cyclomatic complexity, and a two to three-fold variation in object oriented coupling. For the model implementations we found that total size, total complexity, and total coupling all had a significant positive correlation. The raw count version of our invasiveness measures correlated with application size (LOC), total cyclomatic complexity, total efferent coupling (fan out) and total afferent coupling (fan in). Large size, complexity, and high levels of coupling between units (classes, modules) in a software system are often cited in software engineering as causes of high maintenance costs due to poor understandability and flexibility of the code. This study provides initial results but further investigation is desired to evaluate the utility of our invasiveness measurement approach as well as the software quality implications of framework invasiveness

A Methodology to Evaluate the Maintainability of Enterprise Application Integration Frameworks

Consulting companies that specialise in Enterprise Application Integration commonly require adapting existing frameworks to specific domains. Currently, there are many such frameworks available, most of which provide a materialisation of the well-known catalogue of patterns that was devised by Hohpe and Woolf. The decision regarding which framework must be used is critical since adaptation costs are not negligible. In this article, we report on a methodology that helps practitioners make a decision regarding which framework should be selected. To the best of our knowledge, there is not a previous methodology in the literature. Its salient features are that we have assembled a catalogue of measures regarding which there is a consensus in the literature that they are clearly aligned with the effort required to maintain a piece of software and we propose a statistically-sound method to produce a rank. We illustrate our proposal with an industrial case study that we have performed using five open-source frameworks.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2007-64119Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-2602Junta de Andalucía P08-TIC-4100Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2008-04718-EMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2010-21744Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad TIN2010-09809-EMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2010-10811-EMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2010-09988-EMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013- 40848-

Practices in the Squale Quality Model (Squale Deliverable 1.3)

This document presents the Squale Software Quality Model as defined by Qualixo. It first reviews existing quality models and presents the Squale model with its particular- ity, namely a practice layer. Then it reviews in details an instance of this Squale Model with its Factors, Criteria and Practices, giving precise definitions and description1. Fi- nally, it discusses possible future enhancements of this model like new practices or its agreement with the program life-cycle and the change of needs during this life cycle