Search based software engineering: Trends, techniques and applications

© ACM, 2012. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version is available from the link below.In the past five years there has been a dramatic increase in work on Search-Based Software Engineering (SBSE), an approach to Software Engineering (SE) in which Search-Based Optimization (SBO) algorithms are used to address problems in SE. SBSE has been applied to problems throughout the SE lifecycle, from requirements and project planning to maintenance and reengineering. The approach is attractive because it offers a suite of adaptive automated and semiautomated solutions in situations typified by large complex problem spaces with multiple competing and conflicting objectives. This article provides a review and classification of literature on SBSE. The work identifies research trends and relationships between the techniques applied and the applications to which they have been applied and highlights gaps in the literature and avenues for further research.EPSRC and E

Detecting and Refactoring Operational Smells within the Domain Name System

The Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the most important components of the Internet infrastructure. DNS relies on a delegation-based architecture, where resolution of names to their IP addresses requires resolving the names of the servers responsible for those names. The recursive structures of the inter dependencies that exist between name servers associated with each zone are called dependency graphs. System administrators' operational decisions have far reaching effects on the DNSs qualities. They need to be soundly made to create a balance between the availability, security and resilience of the system. We utilize dependency graphs to identify, detect and catalogue operational bad smells. Our method deals with smells on a high-level of abstraction using a consistent taxonomy and reusable vocabulary, defined by a DNS Operational Model. The method will be used to build a diagnostic advisory tool that will detect configuration changes that might decrease the robustness or security posture of domain names before they become into production.Comment: In Proceedings GaM 2015, arXiv:1504.0244

Bridging test and model-driven approaches in web engineering

In the last years there has been a growing interest in agile methods and their integration into the so called "unified" approaches. In the field of Web Engineering, agile approaches such as test-driven development are appealing because of the very nature of Web applications, while model-driven approaches provide a less error-prone code derivation; however the integration of both approaches is not easy. In this paper, we present a method-independent approach to combine the agile, iterative and incremental style of test-driven development with the more formal, transformation-based model-driven Web engineering approaches. We focus not only in the development process but also in the evolution of the application, and show how tests can be transformed together with model refactoring. As a proof of concept we show an illustrative example using WebRatio, the WebML design tool.Publicado en Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, vol. 5648).Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

Regras de refatoração para banco de dados baseado em grafos

Orientador: Luiz Camolesi JúniorDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de TecnologiaResumo: A informação produzida atualmente apresenta crescimento em volume e complexidade, representando um desafio tecnológico que demanda mais do que a atual estrutura de Bancos de Dados Relacionais pode oferecer. Tal fato estimula o uso de diferentes formas de armazenamento, como Bancos de Dados baseados em Grafos (BDG). Os atuais Bancos de Dados baseados em Grafos são adaptados para suportar automaticamente a evolução do banco de dados, mas não fornecem recursos adequados para a organização da informação. Esta função é deixada a cargo das aplicações que acessam o banco de dados, comprometendo a integridade dos dados e sua confiabilidade. O objetivo deste trabalho é a definição de regras de refatoração para auxiliar o gerenciamento da evolução de Bancos de Dados baseados em Grafos. As regras apresentadas neste trabalho são adaptações e extensões de regras de refatoração consolidadas para bancos de dados relacionais para atender às características dos Bancos de Dados baseado em Grafos. O resultado deste trabalho é um catálogo de regras que poderá ser utilizado por desenvolvedores de ferramentas de administração de bancos de dados baseados em grafos para garantir a integridade das operações de evolução de esquemas de dados e consequentemente dos dados relacionadosAbstract: The information produced nowadays does not stop growing in volume and complexity, representing a technological challenge which demands more than the relational model for databases can currently offer. This situation stimulates the use of different forms of storage, such as Graph Databases. Current Graph Databases allow automatic database evolution, but do not provide adequate resources for the information organization. This is mostly left under the responsibility of the applications which access the database, compromising the data integrity and reliability. The goal of this work is the definition of refactoring rules to support the management of the evolution of Graph Databases. The rules presented in this document are adaptations and extensions of the existent refactoring rules for relational databases to meet the requirements of the Graph Databases features. The result of this work is a catalog of refactoring rules that can be used by developers of graph database management tools to guarantee the integrity of the operations of database evolutionMestradoTecnologia e InovaçãoMestra em Tecnologi

A heuristic-based approach to code-smell detection

Encapsulation and data hiding are central tenets of the object oriented paradigm. Deciding what data and behaviour to form into a class and where to draw the line between its public and private details can make the difference between a class that is an understandable, flexible and reusable abstraction and one which is not. This decision is a difficult one and may easily result in poor encapsulation which can then have serious implications for a number of system qualities. It is often hard to identify such encapsulation problems within large software systems until they cause a maintenance problem (which is usually too late) and attempting to perform such analysis manually can also be tedious and error prone. Two of the common encapsulation problems that can arise as a consequence of this decomposition process are data classes and god classes. Typically, these two problems occur together – data classes are lacking in functionality that has typically been sucked into an over-complicated and domineering god class. This paper describes the architecture of a tool which automatically detects data and god classes that has been developed as a plug-in for the Eclipse IDE. The technique has been evaluated in a controlled study on two large open source systems which compare the tool results to similar work by Marinescu, who employs a metrics-based approach to detecting such features. The study provides some valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the two approache

Agile Project Dynamics: A System Dynamics Investigation of Agile Software Development Methods

While Agile software development has many advocates, acceptance in the government and defense sectors has been limited. To address questions of meanings to the term “Agile,” we examine a range of Agile methods practiced and develop a framework of seven characteristics, which we call the Agile Genome. We gain insight into the dynamics of how Agile development compares to classic “waterfall” approaches by constructing a System Dynamics model for software projects. The Agile Project Dynamics (APD) model captures each of the Agile genes as a separate component of the model and allows experimentation with combinations of practices and management policies. Experimentation with the APD model is used to explore how different genes work in combination with one another to produce both positive and negative effects. The extensible design of the APD model provides the basis for further study of Agile methods and management practices

An Empirical Study of Cohesion and Coupling: Balancing Optimisation and Disruption

Search based software engineering has been extensively applied to the problem of finding improved modular structures that maximise cohesion and minimise coupling. However, there has, hitherto, been no longitudinal study of developers’ implementations, over a series of sequential releases. Moreover, results validating whether developers respect the fitness functions are scarce, and the potentially disruptive effect of search-based remodularisation is usually overlooked. We present an empirical study of 233 sequential releases of 10 different systems; the largest empirical study reported in the literature so far, and the first longitudinal study. Our results provide evidence that developers do, indeed, respect the fitness functions used to optimise cohesion/coupling (they are statistically significantly better than arbitrary choices with p << 0.01), yet they also leave considerable room for further improvement (cohesion/coupling can be improved by 25% on average). However, we also report that optimising the structure is highly disruptive (on average more than 57% of the structure must change), while our results reveal that developers tend to avoid such disruption. Therefore, we introduce and evaluate a multi-objective evolutionary approach that minimises disruption while maximising cohesion/coupling improvement. This allows developers to balance reticence to disrupt existing modular structure, against their competing need to improve cohesion and coupling. The multi-objective approach is able to find modular structures that improve the cohesion of developers’ implementations by 22.52%, while causing an acceptably low level of disruption (within that already tolerated by developers)

Continuous Integration Project at JPMorgan

The Major Qualifying Project team collaborated with Global Real Asset team and Alternative Investment team at JPMorgan to implement a continuous integration platform for software development. The process utilized an open source tool to streamline the automated build process accompanied with unit and regression suite testing to mitigate risk. This platform helped reduce time and effort to initiate the regression testing in the development cycle