Measuring the Pro-Activity of Software Agents

Despite having well-defined characteristics, software agents do not have a developed set of measures defining their quality. Attempts at evaluating software agent quality have focused on some agent aspects, like the development process, whereas others focusing on the agent as a software product have basically adopted measures associated with other software paradigms, like procedural and object-oriented concepts. Here we propose a set of measures for evaluating software agent pro-activity, the software agent's goal-driven behavioral ability to take the initiative and satisfy its goal

Strategies, contributions and inhibitors of information systems to organizational competitiveness: An empirical analysis within the Caribbean

The study examines the impact of Information Systems (IS) through a consideration of improved competitiveness within a multi-business Caribbean firm. The methodology draws on a participant-observer approach for data collection and compares the application of IS by three business units within each of three organizations. It is argued that while there is already a substantial amount of research on IS effectiveness its value in the context of developing countries such as those of the Caribbean will be most significant. In this context firms are perceived to face more constraints than in developed countries so there is a need to explicitly recognize the effects of ‘inhibitors’. The study finds that for two of these businesses IS can be shown to have contributed to improved competitiveness, while the third had a less satisfactory experience. Analysis of the data revealed that in the two business units where IS contributed the units had been able to improve specific business processes in pursuit of identified competitive strategies. In the unit that did not derive such advantages, limitations in the functionality of the core application combined with insufficient adjustment of business processes, led to the unsatisfactory results. It is also observed that the explanatory value of the empirical analysis is enhanced if we identify inhibitors of IS for competitive advantage and make their effects more explicit

Software reliability and dependability: a roadmap

Shifting the focus from software reliability to user-centred measures of dependability in complete software-based systems. Influencing design practice to facilitate dependability assessment. Propagating awareness of dependability issues and the use of existing, useful methods. Injecting some rigour in the use of process-related evidence for dependability assessment. Better understanding issues of diversity and variation as drivers of dependability. Bev Littlewood is founder-Director of the Centre for Software Reliability, and Professor of Software Engineering at City University, London. Prof Littlewood has worked for many years on problems associated with the modelling and evaluation of the dependability of software-based systems; he has published many papers in international journals and conference proceedings and has edited several books. Much of this work has been carried out in collaborative projects, including the successful EC-funded projects SHIP, PDCS, PDCS2, DeVa. He has been employed as a consultant t

Quality measures for ETL processes: from goals to implementation

Extraction transformation loading (ETL) processes play an increasingly important role for the support of modern business operations. These business processes are centred around artifacts with high variability and diverse lifecycles, which correspond to key business entities. The apparent complexity of these activities has been examined through the prism of business process management, mainly focusing on functional requirements and performance optimization. However, the quality dimension has not yet been thoroughly investigated, and there is a need for a more human-centric approach to bring them closer to business-users requirements. In this paper, we take a first step towards this direction by defining a sound model for ETL process quality characteristics and quantitative measures for each characteristic, based on existing literature. Our model shows dependencies among quality characteristics and can provide the basis for subsequent analysis using goal modeling techniques. We showcase the use of goal modeling for ETL process design through a use case, where we employ the use of a goal model that includes quantitative components (i.e., indicators) for evaluation and analysis of alternative design decisions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

TLAD 2010 Proceedings:8th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the eighth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2010), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2010 - the 27th International Information Systems Conference. TLAD 2010 is held on the 28th June at the beautiful Dudhope Castle at the Abertay University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.This year, the workshop includes an invited talk given by Richard Cooper (of the University of Glasgow) who will present a discussion and some results from the Database Disciplinary Commons which was held in the UK over the academic year. Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will also present seven peer reviewed papers, and six refereed poster papers. Of the seven presented papers, three will be presented as full papers and four as short papers. These papers and posters cover a number of themes, including: approaches to teaching databases, e.g. group centered and problem based learning; use of novel case studies, e.g. forensics and XML data; techniques and approaches for improving teaching and student learning processes; assessment techniques, e.g. peer review; methods for improving students abilities to develop database queries and develop E-R diagrams; and e-learning platforms for supporting teaching and learning

Hazard function deployment: a QFD-based tool for the assessment of working tasks–a practical study in the construction industry

Despite the efforts made, the number of accidents has not significantly decreased in the construction industry. The main reasons can be found in the peculiarities of working activities in this sector, where hazard analysis and safety management are more difficult than in other industries. To deal with these problems, a comprehensive approach for hazard analysis is needed, focusing on the activities in which a working task is articulated since they are characterized by different types of hazards and thus risk levels. The study proposes a methodology that integrates quality function deployment (QFD) and analytic network process methods to correlate working activities, hazardous events and possible consequences. This provides more effective decision-making, while reducing the ambiguity of the qualitative assessment criteria. The results achieved can augment knowledge on the usability of QFD in safety research, providing a basis for its application for further studies

Experimental Study Using Functional Size Measurement in Building Estimation Models for Software Project Size

This paper reports on an experiment that investigates the predictability of software project size from software product size. The predictability research problem is analyzed at the stage of early requirements by accounting the size of functional requirements as well as the size of non-functional requirements. The experiment was carried out with 55 graduate students in Computer Science from Concordia University in Canada. In the experiment, a functional size measure and a project size measure were used in building estimation models for sets of web application development projects. The results show that project size is predictable from product size. Further replications of the experiment are, however, planed to obtain more results to confirm or disconfirm our claim