Restructuring the Software Architecture: A Case Study of the CoolBiz Core Banking Platform

As the structural engineering underpins the resilience of a city built on an active geological fault, software architecture becomes crucial in an increasingly digital society. This paper investigates the challenges of rigid, low cohesion software structures through a detailed case study of the CoolBiz Platform, an integrated Core Banking solution. The platform currently faces significant issues in its service support framework, including low flexibility, unsatisfactory cohesion, non-adherence to SOLID principles, absence of unit tests, and lack of documentation. This study aims to describe the planning and implementation of a new event-driven architecture for the CoolBiz Platform. This architecture is expected to not only resolve current technical challenges but also bring significant business benefits, such as the implementation of language agnosticism, a strategy aimed at facilitating talent recruitment and retention by not limiting recruitment to expertise in a specific programming language

Non Linear Software Documentation with Interactive Code Examples

Documentation enables sharing knowledge between the developers of a technology and its users. Creating quality documents, however, is challenging: Documents must satisfy the needs of a large audience without being overwhelming for individuals. We address this challenge with a new document format, named Casdoc. Casdoc documents are interactive resources centered around code examples for programmers. Explanations of the code elements are presented as annotations that the readers reveal based on their needs. We evaluated Casdoc in a field study with over 300 participants who used 126 documents as part of a software design course. The majority of participants adopted Casdoc instead of a baseline format during the study. We observed that interactive documents can contain more information than static documents without being distracting to readers. We also gathered insights into five aspects of Casdoc that can be applied to other formats, and propose five guidelines to improve navigability in online documents.Comment: 29 page

Implementation Approach of Unit and Integration Testing Method Based on Recent Advancements in Functional Software Testing

Finding bugs and flaws, detecting invalid or inaccurate functionality, and analyzing and certifying the entire softwareproduct all require software testing. We looked at unit testing and integration testing in this project since they are two fundamental stages of software testing and are significantly associated. For both unit and integration testing, a sufficient number of testing methodologies and approaches have been assessed and contrasted, with each implementation system, algorithm, and technique being thoroughly scrutinized. Some of them are effective in finding as many hidden defects as possible while also reducing testing complexity, time, and expense. In this context, we chose sOrTES, a stochastic scheduling support tool that would be utilized for manual integration test cases. The chosen strategy is the most appropriate since empirical evidence reveals that it can prevent around 40% of testing failures while also increasing requirement coverage by 9.6%

Exception-aware Lifecycle Model Construction for Framework APIs

The implementation of complex software systems usually depends on low-level frameworks or third-party libraries. During their evolution, the APIs adding and removing behaviors may cause unexpected compatibility problems. So, precisely analyzing and constructing the framework/ library's API lifecycle model is of great importance. Existing works have proposed the API existence-changing model for defect detection, while not considering the influence of semantic changes in APIs. In some cases, developers will not remove or deprecate APIs but modify their semantics by adding, removing, or modifying their exception-thrown code, which may bring potential defects to upper-level code. Therefore, besides the API existence model, it is also necessary for developers to be concerned with the exception-related code evolution in APIs, which requires the construction of exception-aware API lifecycle models for framework/library projects. To achieve automatic exception-aware API lifecycle model construction, this paper adopts a static analysis technique to extract exception summary information in the framework API code and adopts a multi-step matching strategy to obtain the changing process of exceptions. Then, it generates exception-aware API lifecycle models for the given framework/library project. With this approach, the API lifecycle extraction tool, JavaExP, is implemented, which is based on Java bytecode analysis. Compared to the state-of-the-art tool, JavaExP achieves both a higher F1 score (+60%) and efficiency (+7x), whose precision of exception matching and changing results is 98%. Compared to the exception-unaware API lifecycle modeling on 60 versions, JavaExp can identify 18% times more API changes. Among the 75,433 APIs under analysis, 20% of APIs have changed their exception-throwing behavior at least once after API introduction, which may bring many hidden compatibility issues.Comment: in Chinese languag

Bioinformática de circRNAS : análise em modelos animais do Transtorno do Espectro Autista e desenvolvimento de um método de avaliação da usabilidade dos softwares utilizados para identificação

O Transtorno do Espectro Autista (TEA) é um transtorno do neurodesenvolvimento caracterizado por prejuízos na comunicação e interação social, comportamentos repetitivos e interesses restritos. Estima-se que, mundialmente, 1% da população é afetada pela condição. A etiologia do TEA é desconhecida, porém sabe-se que existe uma contribuição complexa de fatores ambientais e genéticos para o desenvolvimento do transtorno. Alterações transcritômicas são consistentemente observadas no sistema nervoso central de indivíduos com TEA e não estão restritas a expressão de genes codificantes. Uma classe de RNAs não-codificantes de interesse especialmente recente é a dos RNAs circulares (circRNAs). Os circRNAs são abundantes no encéfalo e podem desempenhar funções variadas como competir pela ligação de miRNAs, estimular a transcrição do gene parental e ser traduzido em proteínas funcionais. O envolvimento dos circRNAs no TEA ainda é pouco explorado. Recentemente foram feitas as primeiras observações de circRNAs diferencialmente expressos (CDE) no córtex cerebral de indivíduos com TEA. Adicionalmente, CDE também foram observados em dois modelos animais de TEA. Modelos animais são essenciais para o estudo de transtornos do neurodesenvolvimento e podem auxiliar os pesquisadores a investigar a etiologia e os mecanismos biológicos subjacentes. A detecção em massa e a descoberta de novos circRNAs depende quase exclusivamente de softwares de identificação de circRNA. Entretanto, possíveis problemas na usabilidade dessas ferramentas são relatados na literatura e podem prejudicar os usuários ao consumir tempo e dificultar a reprodutibilidade das análises. Considerando o potencial envolvimento de circRNAs no TEA e a dependência metodológica de softwares para identificação, a presente tese analisa por bioinformática a expressão gênica de circRNAs no encéfalo de diferentes modelos animais de TEA, assim como desenvolver um método de avaliação e melhoramento da usabilidade das ferramentas de bioinformática utilizadas para a identificação dos circRNAs. No Capítulo I, identificamos milhares de circRNAs em diferentes modelos animais de TEA em camundongos e demonstramos que as alterações na expressão estão relacionadas principalmente às funcionalidades sinápticas. No Capítulo II, identificamos parcialmente a sequência do circRNA ciRS-7 no modelo animal de ratos induzidos por ácido valproico. Demonstramos que a expressão de ciRS-7 está elevada, assim como encontrada nos modelos Ash1L, BTBR e Kmt5b no Capítulo I, e que funções sinápticas estão entre os possíveis grupos funcionais afetados. Por fim, no Capítulo III, identificamos os problemas de usabilidade das ferramentas de identificação de circRNAs utilizadas nos Capítulos I e II. Também criamos um conjunto de regras para auxiliar os desenvolvedores desse tipo de software para criarem ferramentas mais utilizáveis para os usuários finais. Em conjunto, os resultados apresentam um panorama do envolvimento de circRNAs no TEA a partir de modelos animais. Além disso, apresentamos um novo método de avaliação de usabilidade de software que deve possibilitar que futuras análises estejam alinhadas com as necessidades e expectativas de uso de ferramentas de identificação de circRNAs.Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in communication and social interaction, repetitive behaviors, and restricted interests. It is estimated that the condition affects 1% of the population worldwide. The etiology of ASD is unknown, but it is known that there is a complex contribution of environmental and genetic factors to the development of the disorder. Transcriptomic alterations are consistently observed in the central nervous system of individuals with ASD and are not restricted to the expression of coding genes. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a class of noncoding RNAs of recent interest. CircRNAs are abundant in the brain and can perform varied functions, such as competing for binding miRNAs, stimulating parental gene transcription, and being translated into functional proteins. The involvement of circRNAs in ASD is still poorly explored. Recently, the first observations of differentially expressed circRNAs (DECs) were made in the cerebral cortex of individuals with ASD. Additionally, DECs were also observed in two animal models of ASD. Animal models are essential for studying neurodevelopmental disorders and can help researchers investigate the etiology and underlying biological mechanisms. The mass detection and discovery of novel circRNAs rely almost exclusively on circRNA identification software. However, potential problems in the usability of these tools are reported in the literature and may harm users by consuming time and hindering the reproducibility of analyses. Considering the potential involvement of circRNAs in ASD and the methodological dependence on software for identification, this thesis analyzes by bioinformatics the gene expression of circRNAs in the brain of different animal models of ASD, as well as develops a method to evaluate and improve the usability of bioinformatics tools used for circRNA identification. In Chapter I, we identify thousands of circRNAs in different animal models of ASD in mice and demonstrate that the changes in expression are mainly related to synaptic functionalities. In Chapter II, we partially identify the sequence of the circRNA ciRS-7 in the valproic acid-induced rat model. We demonstrate that ciRS- 7 expression is elevated, as found in the Ash1L, BTBR, and Kmt5b models in Chapter I, and that synaptic functions are among the possible functional groups affected. Finally, in Chapter III, we identify the usability problems of the circRNAs identification tools used in Chapters I and II. We also create a set of rules to assist developers of such software in creating more usable tools for end users. Taken together, the results present an overview of the involvement of circRNAs in ASD from the perspective of animal models. In addition, we present a new software usability evaluation method that should enable future analyses to be aligned with the needs and expectations of using circRNAs identification tools