Modeling and Selection of Software Service Variants

Providers and consumers have to deal with variants, meaning alternative instances of a service?s design, implementation, deployment, or operation, when developing or delivering software services. This work presents service feature modeling to deal with associated challenges, comprising a language to represent software service variants and a set of methods for modeling and subsequent variant selection. This work?s evaluation includes a POC implementation and two real-life use cases

A Meta-Study and Content Analysis of Science Fiction in Computer Science Research

Ph.D

Modeling and Selection of Software Service Variants

Providers and consumers have to deal with variants of software services, which are alternative instances of a services design, implementation, deployment, or operation. This work develops the service feature modeling language to represent software service variants and a suite of methods to select variants for development or delivery. An evaluation describes the systems implemented to make use of service feature modeling and its application to two real-world use cases

Esports spectator motivation: A case study on CS:GO

The digital world is increasingly becoming a focal point for companies to position themselves in order to gain the attention of their consumers. This is a world still underexplored, and the success of esports combined with the growth of its interested population (particularly among Millennials and Gen Z) shows that esports can be a place of new opportunities for companies to expose themselves and captivate their target audience. This research aims to understand the motivations of Portuguese consumers to watch esports (particularly the game Counter-Strike Global Offensive), to cluster them, and to correlate the motivation cluster with and the level of game engagement. Using the MSES scale to measure motivation, data were collected through a survey with 555 regular consumers of Counter-Strike Global Offensive, and main results show the existence of two clusters of consumers: one that values all the components of this motivation scale, emphasizing the socialization factors between consumers; and another that values equally these same motivations, but discards the importance of this social interaction between consumers. Also, data show that consumers who give more importance to social factors, tend to be more active in these gaming platforms and to invest more and make upgrades in their game inventories. Academical contribution of this thesis encompasses the validation of the MSES scale for the Portuguese consumers of esports. Yet, some managerial recommendation is provided, since knowing the motivations of these consumers becomes essential for marketing departments of companies that target these young consumers, in order to optimize their investments on esports

Automating the support of highly-configurable services

Faltan las palabras claveLas crecientes capacidades de configuración de los servicios, especialmente en el cloud, han dado lugar a los así llamados Servicios Altamente Configurables (HCSs). Dichas capacidades de configuración están aumentando la demanda y complejidad de las aplicaciones basadas en HCS y de las necesidades de infraestructura para soportarlas, soluciones guiadas por HCS de aquí en adelante. Tras un estudio del estado del arte, concluimos que dichas soluciones guiadas por HCSs pueden ser mejoradas significativamente en 1) los lenguajes para describir las configuraciones, también conocidas como el espacio de decisión del servicio, y 2) en las técnicas para extraer información de utilidad del espacio de decisión, técnicas de análisis en adelante. Por un lado, no existen Lenguajes Específicos de Dominio (DSLs) para describir el espacio de decisión, aunque hay algunas aproximaciones cercanas. En esta tesis creemos que es posible mejorar el actual panorama diseñando un DSL: i) en conformidad con los principales proveedores de HCSs, ii) que soporte múltiples ítems, iii) suficientemente expresivo para facilitar la descripción de relaciones lógicas y aritméticas en los términos del servicio y iv) independiente del dominio. Adicionalmente, este DSL debe definir criterios de validez para asegurar que el espacio de decisión satisface propiedades básicas como la consistencia y la configurabilidad. Más allá, se deben ofrecer explicaciones cuando el espacio de decisión del servicio no satisfaga dichas propiedades. Por otro lado, la mayor parte de las actuales técnicas de análisis, como aquellas encargadas de encontrar configuraciones óptimas o de reconfigurar servicios multitenant, llevan consigo algunos inconvenientes propios de técnicas emergentes. Para superar estos inconvenientes, se deben desarrollar: a) implementaciones de referencia totalmente funcionales, b) técnicas reusables, c) mecanismos de extensión efectivos e d) interfaces amigables. El principal objetivo de esta disertación es mejorar el soporte existente para el desarrollo de soluciones guiadas por HCS, considerando las recomendaciones anteriores. Las principales contribuciones de esta tesis son un DSL (llamado SYNOPSIS) para especificar el espacio de decisión de los HCS, y un nuevo catálogo de operaciones para comprobar y explicar los criterios de validez así como para encontrar configuraciones óptimas para uno o más usuarios. Como contribuciones menores, también presentamos dos soluciones que han sido desarrolladas para mejorar el soporte existente para la migración de infraestructuras a Amazon EC2 y para reconfigurar servicios multitenant. La piedra angular de nuestra propuesta para mejorar las técnicas de especificación ha sido definir un DSL, SYNOPSIS, y dotarlo con semántica formal basada en Modelos de Características con Estados. Acerca de nuestra propuesta para mejorar las técnicas de análisis, la clave ha sido la organización de dichas técnicas en un catálogo de operaciones básicas que pueden ser combinadas para dar lugar a soluciones guiadas por HCS m más avanzadas. La aplicabilidad de nuestros resultados está limitada a aquellos espacios de decisión que pueden ser transformados en Modelos de Características con Estados, que por nuestra experiencia es suficiente para soportar HCSs reales.The growing customisation capabilities of services, especially in Cloud scenarios, have led to the so-named Highly-configurable Services (HCSs). Such capabilities are boosting the demand and complexity of HCS-based applications and the infrastructure need to support them, HCS-driven solutions from now on. After a study of the existing literature we conclude that these HCS-driven solutions can be significantly enhanced in both 1) the languages to describe the configurations, a.k.a. the decision space of HCSs and 2) the techniques to extract useful information from the decision space, analysis techniques, in advance. On the one hand, there are no Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) to describe the decision space, although there exist some very close approaches. We suggest that it is possible to improve the current landscape by designing a DSL: i) Compliant with big HCS vendors, ii) multi-item aware, iii) expressive-enough to ease the description of arithmetic-logical relationships on configurable description terms, and iv) domainindependent. In addition, this DSL must define validity criteria for checking that the decision space satisfies some basic properties such as the consistency, and the configurability. Furthermore, explanations must be provided when the decision space do not satisfy such basic properties. On the other hand, most of the current analysis techniques such as those relate to find optimal configurations or reconfigure a multi-tenant service includes some drawbacks that can be found in emerging techniques. To overcome such drawbacks there must be developed: a) fully-functional reference implementations, b) techniques with a reuse-oriented design, c) effective extension mechanisms, and d) user-friendly interfaces. The main goal of this dissertation is to enhance the existing support to develop HCS-driven solutions considering the aforementioned suggestions for improvement. The main thesis contributions are a DSL to specify the decision space of HCSs called SYNOPSIS, and a novel catalogue of analysis operations to check and explain validity criteria as well as to find optimal configurations for one or many users. As minor contributions, two solutions have been developed to improve the existing tooling support to migrate on-premise infrastructure to Amazon EC2 and to reconfigure multi-tenant service. The cornerstone of our proposal to improve the specification techniques has been to define a DSL, SYNOPSIS, and endow it with a formal semantics based on Stateful Feature Models. Regarding our proposal to improve the analysis techniques, the key has been the organization of such techniques in a catalogue of basic analysis operations that can be combined to support more advanced HCS-driven solutions. The applicability of our results is limited to those decision spaces that can be translated to a Stateful Feature Model, that is enough to support real-world HCSs, in our experience

Fan Motives for Identifying with Professional Tennis Players

The purpose of this study was to examine motivations used by tennis fans in identifying with professional tennis players and thereby developing fan loyalty and support. No prior work has focused on fan motivations toward individual players in an individual sport. This non-experimental study design used an online survey technique to solicit responses from adult tennis fans through a variety of tennis organizations, tennis clubs, tennis training facilities, and tennis websites and blogs. Surveys responses were solicited from January through February 2017. Of the original 460 total respondents, 28% (n = 101) reported having no favorite professional tennis player and were excluded from the analysis. The remaining sample (n = 359) was uniformly divided by gender (male fans = 49.5% and female fans = 50.5%). A favorite male professional tennis player was reported by 98.5% of tennis fans and a favorite female professional tennis player was reported by 56.8% of tennis fans. Fan status was divided between player and spectator (93.3% of respondents, n = 335) or spectator only (6.7% of respondent, n =24). Experience for player and spectator fans was M = 26.5 years (SD = 15.2) and for spectator only fans was 26.9 years (SD = 14.8). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) validated the proposed eight-factor motivation model for the intended purpose in this study. Principle components analysis (PCA) revealed two components accounting for 57.6% of the total variance: Component 1 (43% of total variance) revealed highest loadings for professional athlete reputation, behavior, personality, philanthropy, and athlete as a hero. Component 2 (14.6% of total variance) revealed highest loadings for athlete physical attractiveness and vicarious identity. Physical attractiveness of male professional tennis players and female professional tennis players was a significant motivation (p = .0005) for both male tennis fans and female tennis fans. Fans identifying as player and spectator (78% of total) ranked player skills, behavior, reputation, and personality as the top four motivations (based on ranking of mean scores) toward both male and female professional tennis players. Male professional tennis player behavior (p = .022), reputation (p = .035), and philanthropy (p = .033) were significant motivations based on fan experience and the importance of each appeared to increase with increasing fan experience. Male professional tennis player skills were significant (p = .010), did not trend with fan experience, but appeared most important to those fans with the most experience. In contrast, female professional player as a hero (p = .015) was a significant motivation based on fan experience, but was least important among those fans with the most experience. These findings add to the basic literature concerning fan motivations and may be used by promoters of major tennis events to increase fan attendance and to enhance the fan experience and loyalty. Professional tennis players may also consider these findings as a guide by which they may enhance or repair their standing with tennis fans

Field Theory Toward a Post Critical Theory of Metaphor

Metaphor studies have become vogue in postcritical culture among the scientific and socio-scientific communities, in advertising and in the political arena. In fact, advertisers and marketers for years have known the power of a resonant metaphor to change minds and hearts. Once relegated to the realms of literature and linguistics, metaphor studies today represent the cutting edge of research in nearly every discipline. However, the church and the Biblical Studies academy have essentially ignored this trend, still engaging predominantly in close critical analyses of texts and refusing for the most part to engage in popular culture. This dissertation agrees with theorists Lakoff and Johnson, and others, that metaphors are the DNA of meaning, identity and therefore the necessary catalysts for visioning and change. Because metaphors are inherent in every human thought process, they are also creative, relational, multi-dimensional and interactive. When metaphors are transported from closed literary systems into cultural systems, they take on roles as change agents. I call this kind of open system metaphor theory in my dissertation, “field theory.” Metaphors exist powerfully within fields. They are prismic entities containing depth and breadth. They relate not linearly but in networks and webs. Field theory in the sciences and social sciences has educated us in the way fields behave, and I will draw on scientific and interdisciplinary definitions of “field” in order to explain the way that metaphor can function and contribute powerfully to both the theory and praxis of ministry and in contemporary postcritical culture. Metaphor field theory can help bridge divides inherent between theory and praxis, between church and culture and within and between individuals and can provide the tools for identity building, visioning and mission within postcritical culture. The artifact for this dissertation therefore will introduce a new kind of nonprofit cross-cultural society that transcends boundaries and creates new field space for communication, creativity and an integrated synergetic vision

Coordinating Service Compositions : Model and Infrastructure for Collaborative Creation of Electronic Documents

Electronic documents frequently include contributions from different human and non-human sources. The Web, for instance, offers ever-changing content and services which can perform activities during document creation. This thesis introduces a solution for collaborative document creation which maps contributions of human and non-human participants to software services. The joint flexible composition and coordination of these services leads to a novel understanding of dynamic Web-based documents

Automating the analysis of stateful feature models

Tesis descargada desde una página web de la Universidad de Sevilla http://www.lsi.us.es/~trinidad/docs/tesis.pdfEl modelado de la variabilidad es una de las principales tareas en el desarrollo de l´ıneas de productos software (LPS). Los FMs son el modelo mas utilizado para ello. Los FMs representan el conjunto de decisiones que pueden tomar los usuarios para configurar su producto como una jerarqu´ıa de caracter´ısticas. Hasta la fecha, estas decisiones se limitan a elegir y descartar las características que se desean, impidiendo la toma de decisiones sobre otros elementos importantes como son las cardinalidades y los atributos. Por otro lado, la extraccion automática de información de los FMs, también conocida como an´alisis automático de FMs (AAFM) es un tema que ha sido objeto de investigacion en los últimos veinteaños. El AAFM ofrece un amplio catálogo de operaciones de análisis para distintos propósitos. El enfoque general para resolver estas operciones de analisis consiste en dar una semántica operacional en términos de lenguajes declarativos que permiten la extraccion de información por medio de resolutores lógicos. Siguiendo este enfoque se han propuesto hasta la fecha más de 30 operaciones de análisis. Un subconjunto de estas operaciones denominadas explicativas ofrecen la posibilidad de obtener explicaciones sobre las relaciones que provocan determinados errores o las decisiones de usuario conflictivas que deben repararse en una configuración. Sin embargo, de todas las operaciones explicativas propuestas hasta la fecha, solo un subconjunto de ellas dispone de una semantica formal. En este escenario encontramos tres problemas a los que esta tesis se enfrenta: en primer lugar, los FMs no son modelos completamente configurables al impedir la toma de decisiones sobre todos sus elementos. En segundo lugar, es necesario dotar a todas las operaciones explicativas de una semantica formal. En tercer lugar, existe un elevado número de operaciones y la incapacidad de algunas de ellas para trabajar con FMs completamente configurables plantea una necesidad de proponer un nuevo marco de trabajo formal que les de soporte. En este trabajo partimos de dos conjeturas: que existe una correlacion entre determinadas operaciones explicativas y otras no explicativas; y que es posible interpretar ambos tipos de operaciones como problemas de analisis abductivo y deductivo (DAP). Apoyandonos en estas conjeturas, en esta tesis presentamos tres principales contribuciones a fin de resolver los problemas planteados: (i) proponemos los SFMs como modelos completamente configurables, que permiten a los usuarios tomar decisiones sobre todos sus elementos, (ii) el uso de los SFMs y su interpretacion como DAPs nos permite dar una semantica formal al análisis explicativo de una manera compacta, interpretando todas las operaciones propuestas hasta la fecha como casos particulares de dos operaciones de analisis explicativo, (iii) al proponer un nuevo modelo para el análisis, vemos la oportunidad de revisar todo el catálogo de operaciones del AAFM, proponiendo un catalogo simplificado de operaciones y un conjunto de mecanismos de composición que otorga flexibilidad a la hora de definir nuevas operaciones de análisis. Con estas contribuciones, entendemos que este trabajo establece las bases del analisis automático de SFMs (AASFM) que resuelve las limitaciones identificadas en este trabajo para el AAFM y que simplifica el proceso de formalizacion, de implementación y de pruebas de los motores de analisis.Modeling variability is a major task in developing Software Product Lines (SPLs). Feature Models (FMs) are the most widely used model for this purpose. A FM represents as a hierarchy of features, the set of decisions that users can take to configure their products. To date, these decisions are limited to select and remove features, preventing decisions on other important elements such as cardinalities and attributes. Moreover, the automated extraction of information from FMs, a.k.a Automated Analysis of Feature Models (AAFM) is a thriving topic that has caught the attention of researchers for the last twenty years. The AAFM offers a wide range of analysis operations for different purposes. The general approach to solve these analysis operations is to give an operational semantics in terms of declarative languages that allow the extraction of information by means of logic solvers. Following this approach over 30 operations analysis have been proposed to date. A subset of these transactions so-called explanatory operations offers the possibility of providing explanations for the relationships that cause certain errors or conflicting user decisions to be repaired in a configuration. However, of all proposed explanatory operations to date, only a subset of them has a formal semantics. In this scenario there are three problems that this thesis faces: first, FMs are not fully-configurable since they prevent decisions on any kind of element. Second, it is necessary to endow all the explanatory operations with a formal semantics. Third, there is a large number of analysis operations that do not support fully-configurable FMs. It raises a need to propose a new formal framework for their support. In this work we start from two conjectures: that there is a correlation between explanatory and non-explanatory operations, and it is possible to interpret both types of operations as Deductive and Abductive Problems (DAPs). Relying on these assumptions, in this thesis we present three main contributions in order to solve the raised problems: (i) we propose Stateful Feature Models (SFMs) as fully-configurable models that enable users to make decisions about all of its elements, (ii) the use of SFMs and its interpretation as DAPs allow us to give a formal semantics for explanatory analysis in a compact manner, performing all the operations proposed to date as special cases of two explanatory operations, (iii) as we propose a new model, we see the opportunity to review the entire catalogue AAFM operations, proposing a simplified catalogue operations and a set of composition mechanisms which give flexibility to define new analysis operations. With these contributions, we believe that this work sets the basis for the Automated Analysis of Stateful Feature Models (AASFM) that solves the limitations identified in this work for the AAFM and simplifies the formalisation process and the implementation and testing of the analysis engines

The Metis Work Ethic and the Impacts of CCF Policy on the Northwestern Saskatchewan Trapping Economy, 1930-1960

In 1944, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) entered northern Saskatchewan with the goal of utilizing natural resources and restructuring the northern economy through conservation and social policy in order to rehabilitate what they viewed as an impoverished Aboriginal population. This thesis analyzes the affects of government policy on the northwestern Saskatchewan Metis during the mid-twentieth century. Specifically, this study will examine how CCF policy affected the trapping economy and the socio-cultural traditions of the northern Metis. The northwestern Saskatchewan Metis participated in trapping as one of their main sources of income, while facing deflating market prices and government intervention. Through an analysis of archival records that included government documents, government employee and northern Metis correspondence, newspapers, community and government research initiatives and transcribed interviews done by previous projects, this study found that the new government policies were met with resistance by Metis trappers who wished to maintain their traditional trapping practices. Trapping for the Metis, was not only a source of income, it was a livelihood inseparable from their socio-cultural identities and worldview. Therefore, Metis worldview had a direct connection to their acceptance and resistance of CCF policy. More specifically, the northwestern Saskatchewan Metis had a specific “work ethic.” In order to explain Metis reactions to CCF policy Max Weber’s theoretical framework of a “work ethic” derived from The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was utilized. In this thesis it is posited that the Metis work ethic was based upon the concept of wahkootowin, which placed high value on kinship systems and reciprocity. Wahkootowin encompassed all aspects of northern Metis life including the economy. These cultural values were also juxtaposed with living a “northern style of life,” which involved hard work and survival skills that allowed the Metis to flourish within the northern landscape. In the mid-twentieth century CCF conservation and social policy conflicted with the northwestern Saskatchewan Metis work ethic that was based on the principles of wahkootowin and the northern style of life