Definition of Descriptive and Diagnostic Measurements for Model Fragment Retrieval

Tesis por compendio[ES] Hoy en día, el software existe en casi todo. Las empresas a menudo desarrollan y mantienen colecciones de sistemas de software personalizados que comparten algunas características entre ellos, pero que también tienen otras características particulares. Conforme el número de características y el número de variantes de un producto crece, el mantenimiento del software se vuelve cada vez más complejo. Para hacer frente a esta situación la Comunidad de Ingeniería del Software basada en Modelos está abordando una actividad clave: la Localización de Fragmentos de Modelo. Esta actividad consiste en la identificación de elementos del modelo que son relevantes para un requisito, una característica o un bug. Durante los últimos años se han propuesto muchos enfoques para abordar la identificación de los elementos del modelo que corresponden a una funcionalidad en particular. Sin embargo, existe una carencia a la hora de cómo se reportan las medidas del espacio de búsqueda, así como las medidas de la solución a encontrar. El objetivo de nuestra tesis radica en proporcionar a la comunidad dedicada a la actividad de localización de fragmentos de modelo una serie de medidas (tamaño, volumen, densidad, multiplicidad y dispersión) para reportar los problemas de localización de fragmentos de modelo. El uso de estas novedosas medidas ayuda a los investigadores durante la creación de nuevos enfoques, así como la mejora de aquellos enfoques ya existentes. Mediante el uso de dos casos de estudio reales e industriales, esta tesis pone en valor la importancia de estas medidas para comparar resultados de diferentes enfoques de una manera precisa. Los resultados de este trabajo han sido redactados y publicados en foros, conferencias y revistas especializadas en los temas y contexto de la investigación. Esta tesis se presenta como un compendio de artículos acorde a la regulación de la Universitat Politècnica de València. Este documento de tesis presenta los temas, el contexto y los objetivos de la investigación. Presenta las publicaciones académicas que se han publicado como resultado del trabajo y luego analiza los resultados de la investigación.[CA] Hui en dia, el programari existix en quasi tot. Les empreses sovint desenrotllen i mantenen col·leccions de sistemes de programari personalitzats que compartixen algunes característiques entre ells, però que també tenen altres característiques particulars. Conforme el nombre de característiques i el nombre de variants d'un producte creix, el manteniment del programari es torna cada vegada més complex. Per a fer front a esta situació la Comunitat d'Enginyeria del Programari basada en Models està abordant una activitat clau: la Localització de Fragments de Model. Esta activitat consistix en la identificació d'elements del model que són rellevants per a un requisit, una característica o un bug. Durant els últims anys s'han proposat molts enfocaments per a abordar la identificació dels elements del model que corresponen a una funcionalitat en particular. No obstant això, hi ha una carència a l'hora de com es reporten les mesures de l'espai de busca, així com les mesures de la solució a trobar. L'objectiu de la nostra tesi radica a proporcionar a la comunitat dedicada a l'activitat de localització de fragments de model una sèrie de mesures (grandària, volum, densitat, multiplicitat i dispersió) per a reportar els problemes de localització de fragments de model. L'ús d'estes noves mesures ajuda als investigadors durant la creació de nous enfocaments, així com la millora d'aquells enfocaments ja existents. Per mitjà de l'ús de dos casos d'estudi reals i industrials, esta tesi posa en valor la importància d'estes mesures per a comparar resultats de diferents enfocaments d'una manera precisa. Els resultats d'este treball han sigut redactats i publicats en fòrums, conferències i revistes especialitzades en els temes i context de la investigació. Esta tesi es presenta com un compendi d'articles d'acord amb la regulació de la Universitat Politècnica de València. Este document de tesi presenta els temes, el context i els objectius de la investigació. Presenta les publicacions acadèmiques que s'han publicat com resultat del treball i després analitza els resultats de la investigació.[EN] Nowadays, software exists in almost everything. Companies often develop and maintain a collection of custom-tailored software systems that share some common features but also support customer-specific ones. As the number of features and the number of product variants grows, software maintenance is becoming more and more complex. To keep pace with this situation, Model-Based Software Engineering Community is addressing a key-activity: Model Fragment Location (MFL). MFL aims at identifying model elements that are relevant to a requirement, feature, or bug. Many MFL approaches have been introduced in the last few years to address the identification of the model elements that correspond to a specific functionality. However, there is a lack of detail when the measurements about the search space (models) and the measurements about the solution to be found (model fragment) are reported. The goal of this thesis is to provide insights to MFL Research Community of how to improve the report of location problems. We propose using five measurements (size, volume, density, multiplicity, and dispersion) to report the location problems during MFL. The usage of these novel measurements support researchers during the creation of new MFL approaches and during the improvement of those existing ones. Using two different case studies, both real and industrial, we emphasize the importance of these measurements in order to compare results in a deeply way. The results of the research have been redacted and published in forums, conferences, and journals specialized in the topics and context of the research. This thesis is presented as compendium of articles according the regulations in Universitat Politècnica de València. This thesis document introduces the topics, context, and objectives of the research, presents the academic publications that have been published as a result of the work, and then discusses the outcomes of the investigation.Ballarin Naya, M. (2021). Definition of Descriptive and Diagnostic Measurements for Model Fragment Retrieval [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/171604TESISCompendi

A Framework for Seamless Variant Management and Incremental Migration to a Software Product-Line

Context: Software systems often need to exist in many variants in order to satisfy varying customer requirements and operate under varying software and hardware environments. These variant-rich systems are most commonly realized using cloning, a convenient approach to create new variants by reusing existing ones. Cloning is readily available, however, the non-systematic reuse leads to difficult maintenance. An alternative strategy is adopting platform-oriented development approaches, such as Software Product-Line Engineering (SPLE). SPLE offers systematic reuse, and provides centralized control, and thus, easier maintenance. However, adopting SPLE is a risky and expensive endeavor, often relying on significant developer intervention. Researchers have attempted to devise strategies to synchronize variants (change propagation) and migrate from clone&own to an SPL, however, they are limited in accuracy and applicability. Additionally, the process models for SPLE in literature, as we will discuss, are obsolete, and only partially reflect how adoption is approached in industry. Despite many agile practices prescribing feature-oriented software development, features are still rarely documented and incorporated during actual development, making SPL-migration risky and error-prone.Objective: The overarching goal of this PhD is to bridge the gap between clone&own and software product-line engineering in a risk-free, smooth, and accurate manner. Consequently, in the first part of the PhD, we focus on the conceptualization, formalization, and implementation of a framework for migrating from a lean architecture to a platform-based one.Method: Our objectives are met by means of (i) understanding the literature relevant to variant-management and product-line migration and determining the research gaps (ii) surveying the dominant process models for SPLE and comparing them against the contemporary industrial practices, (iii) devising a framework for incremental SPL adoption, and (iv) investigating the benefit of using features beyond PL migration; facilitating model comprehension.Results: Four main results emerge from this thesis. First, we present a qualitative analysis of the state-of-the-art frameworks for change propagation and product-line migration. Second, we compare the contemporary industrial practices with the ones prescribed in the process models for SPL adoption, and provide an updated process model that unifies the two to accurately reflect the real practices and guide future practitioners. Third, we devise a framework for incremental migration of variants into a fully integrated platform by exploiting explicitly recorded metadata pertaining to clone and feature-to-asset traceability. Last, we investigate the impact of using different variability mechanisms on the comprehensibility of various model-related tasks.Future work: As ongoing and future work, we aim to integrate our framework with existing IDEs and conduct a developer study to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of using our framework. We also aim to incorporate safe-evolution in our operators

Traceability Links Recovery among Requirements and BPMN models

Tesis por compendio[EN] Throughout the pages of this document, I present the results of the research that was carried out in the context of my PhD studies. During the aforementioned research, I studied the process of Traceability Links Recovery between natural language requirements and industrial software models. More precisely, due to their popularity and extensive usage, I studied the process of Traceability Links Recovery between natural language requirements and Business Process Models, also known as BPMN models. In order to carry out the research, I focused my work on two main objectives: (1) the development of the Traceability Links Recovery techniques between natural language requirements and BPMN models, and (2) the validation and analysis of the results obtained by the developed techniques in industrial domain case studies. The results of the research have been redacted and published in forums, conferences, and journals specialized in the topics and context of the research. This thesis document introduces the topics, context, and objectives of the research, presents the academic publications that have been published as a result of the work, and then discusses the outcomes of the investigation.[ES] A través de las páginas de este documento, presento los resultados de la investigación realizada en el contexto de mis estudios de doctorado. Durante la investigación, he estudiado el proceso de Recuperación de Enlaces de Trazabilidad entre requisitos especificados en lenguaje natural y modelos de software industriales. Más concretamente, debido a su popularidad y uso extensivo, he estudiado el proceso de Recuperación de Enlaces de Trazabilidad entre requisitos especificados en lenguaje natural y Modelos de Procesos de Negocio, también conocidos como modelos BPMN. Para llevar a cabo esta investigación, mi trabajo se ha centrado en dos objetivos principales: (1) desarrollo de técnicas de Recuperación de Enlaces de Trazabilidad entre requisitos especificados en lenguaje natural y modelos BPMN, y (2) validación y análisis de los resultados obtenidos por las técnicas desarrolladas en casos de estudio de dominios industriales. Los resultados de la investigación han sido redactados y publicados en foros, conferencias y revistas especializadas en los temas y contexto de la investigación. Esta tesis introduce los temas, contexto y objetivos de la investigación, presenta las publicaciones académicas que han sido publicadas como resultado del trabajo, y expone los resultados de la investigación.[CA] A través de les pàgines d'aquest document, presente els resultats de la investigació realitzada en el context dels meus estudis de doctorat. Durant la investigació, he estudiat el procés de Recuperació d'Enllaços de Traçabilitat entre requisits especificats en llenguatge natural i models de programari industrials. Més concretament, a causa de la seua popularitat i ús extensiu, he estudiat el procés de Recuperació d'Enllaços de Traçabilitat entre requisits especificats en llenguatge natural i Models de Processos de Negoci, també coneguts com a models BPMN. Per a dur a terme aquesta investigació, el meu treball s'ha centrat en dos objectius principals: (1) desenvolupament de tècniques de Recuperació d'Enllaços de Traçabilitat entre requisits especificats en llenguatge natural i models BPMN, i (2) validació i anàlisi dels resultats obtinguts per les tècniques desenvolupades en casos d'estudi de dominis industrials. Els resultats de la investigació han sigut redactats i publicats en fòrums, conferències i revistes especialitzades en els temes i context de la investigació. Aquesta tesi introdueix els temes, context i objectius de la investigació, presenta les publicacions acadèmiques que han sigut publicades com a resultat del treball, i exposa els resultats de la investigació.Lapeña Martí, R. (2020). Traceability Links Recovery among Requirements and BPMN models [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/149391TESISCompendi

Haasteet ja muunneltavuus ohjelmistotuoteperheiden rakentamisessa: rautateiden sähköenergian selvitysjärjestelmä

According to European Union, all member countries shall have a settlement system in use by 2020. The settlement system shall receive energy consumption data from meters installed in trains, validate the data and allocate it for the right user. In this way, the energy consumption can be invoiced from the right user precisely. Erex is a such energy settlement system. The system needs to be adopted for each country to meet their different needs with regards to laws, systems and practices. This means that the system shall allow at least some flexibility. When new partners have entered the partnership and new instances have been created and modified for them with ad-hoc methods, the manageability of the systems has decreased. For this reason, a need to improve the management of the systems as whole has been raised. It would be easier, if the systems would have a shared core and systematically managed variability. This would mean creating a product family with systematically managed commonality and variability. The objective of this thesis was to study, what are the challenges of creating such product family, where all systems share the same principles but some degree of flexibility is allowed. To achieve these objectives, experts from partner countries and the administration and developers of the systems were interviewed. Thereafter, challenges related to product families and their variability were studied from the literature. Then, the challenges found in empirical and theoretical parts were compared. The objective was to see if the results of empirical study support the current literature. The comparison had three key results. Firstly, many of the current challenges are rather typical for software that is derived with ad-hoc methods. These challenges were found both in empirical and theoretical parts. Secondly, there were a group of challenges that were found only in the theoretical part and did not appear in the interviews but were considered as potential for this case. Thus, these challenges can be of great worth when the product family is developed. Lastly, there were challenges discovered only in the empirical part. These challenges are highly case and domain specific and were not investigated in the theoretical part due to their subjects. Experience from domain should be used to address these case specific challenges as they may not be found from any literature. There were only three challenges that could have been addressed in theoretical part by their subject. Compared to the whole amount of challenges found, these three challenges had only little role. Overall, this means that challenges found in the case are rather typical for product families. Thus, experience from the literature and industry can be used to solve these challenges

Maßgeschneiderte Produktlinienextraktion

Industry faces an increasing number of challenges regarding the functionality, efficiency and reliability of software. A common approach to reduce the linked development effort and respective costs are model-based languages, such as Matlab/Simulink and statecharts. While these languages help companies during development of single systems, the high demand for customized software is an increasing challenge. As a result, variants with high similarity and only slight differences have to be developed in an efficient way. As reimplementation of complex functionality for each variant is no option, copies of existing solutions are often modified for new customers. In the short-run, this so-called clone-and-own approach allows to save costs as existing solutions can easily be reused. However, this approach also involves risks as the relations between the copied systems are rarely documented and errors have to be fixed for each variant in isolation. Thus, with a growing number of potentially large system copies, the resulting maintenance effort can become a problem. To overcome these problems, this thesis contributes an approach to semi-automatically migrate existing model variants to software product lines. These product lines allow to generate all variants from the identified reusable artifacts. As industry uses a variety of different modeling languages, the focus of the approach lies on an easy adaptation for different languages. Furthermore, the approach can be custom-tailored to include domain knowledge or language-specific details in the variability identification. The first step of the approach performs a high-level analysis of variants to identify outliers (e.g., variants that diverged too much from the rest) and clusters of strongly related variants. The second step executes variability mining to identify corresponding low-level variability relations (i.e. the common and varying parts) for these clusters. The third step uses these detailed variability relations for an automatic migration of the compared variants to a delta-oriented software product line. The approach is evaluated using publicly available case studies with industrial background as well as model variants provided by an industry partner.Die Industrie steht einer steigenden Anzahl an Herausforderungen bezüglich der Funktionalität, Effizienz und Zuverlässigkeit von Software gegenüber. Um den damit verbundenen Entwicklungsaufwand und entsprechende Kosten zu reduzieren, werden häufig modellbasierte Sprachen wie Matlab/Simulink oder Zustandsautomaten eingesetzt. Obwohl diese Sprachen die Unternehmen während der Entwicklung von Einzelsystemen unterstützen, führt die große Nachfrage nach maßgeschneiderter Software zu neuen Herausforderungen. Entsprechend müssen Varianten mit hoher Ähnlichkeit und nur geringfügigen Unterschieden effizient entwickelt werden. Da eine Neuimplementierung komplexer Funktionalität für jede Variante keine Option darstellt, werden häufig Kopien existierender Lösungen für Kunden angepasst. Auf kurze Sicht ermöglicht dieser sogenannte clone-and-own-Ansatz Kosten zu sparen, da existierende Lösungen leicht wiederverwendet werden können. Jedoch birgt der Ansatz auch Risiken, da Beziehungen zwischen den Systemkopien selten dokumentiert werden und Fehler für jede der Variante einzeln behoben werden müssen. Somit kann mit einer wachsenden Anzahl an möglicherweise umfangreichen Systemkopien der Wartungsaufwand zu einem Problem werden. Um diese Probleme zu lösen, bietet diese Arbeit einen Ansatz zur semi-automatischen Überführung existierender Modellvarianten in Softwareproduktlinien. Diese ermöglichen eine anschließende Generierung der Varianten aus den identifizierten wiederverwendbaren Artefakten. Da in der Industrie eine große Menge von Modellierungssprachen eingesetzt wird, liegt der Fokus auf der einfachen Adaption für unterschiedliche Sprachen. Zusätzlich kann durch Einbeziehung von Expertenwissen oder sprachspezifische Details die Variabilitätsidentifikation beeinflusst werden. Der erste Schritt des Ansatzes analysiert die Varianten auf hohem Abstraktionslevel, um Außenseiter (z.B. Varianten die stark von den restlichen Variaten abweichen) und Cluster von stark verwandten Varianten zu identifizieren. Der zweite Schritt analysiert diese Cluster auf niedrigem Abstraktionslevel, um entsprechende Variabilitätsrelationen (d.h. gemeinsame und unterschiedliche Teile) zu identifizieren. Der dritte Schritt nutzt diese detaillierten Variabilitätsrelationen für eine automatische Migration der verglichenen Varianten in eine delta-orientierte Softwareproduktlinie. Der Ansatz ist an Fallstudien mit industriellem Kontext sowie Modellvarianten eines Industriepartners evaluiert worden

Application of Software Engineering Principles to Synthetic Biology and Emerging Regulatory Concerns

As the science of synthetic biology matures, engineers have begun to deliver real-world applications which are the beginning of what could radically transform our lives. Recent progress indicates synthetic biology will produce transformative breakthroughs. Examples include: 1) synthesizing chemicals for medicines which are expensive and difficult to produce; 2) producing protein alternatives; 3) altering genomes to combat deadly diseases; 4) killing antibiotic-resistant pathogens; and 5) speeding up vaccine production. Although synthetic biology promises great benefits, many stakeholders have expressed concerns over safety and security risks from creating biological behavior never seen before in nature. As with any emerging technology, there is the risk of malicious use known as the dual-use problem. The technology is becoming democratized and de-skilled, and people in do-it-yourself communities can tinker with genetic code, similar to how programming has become prevalent through the ease of using macros in spreadsheets. While easy to program, it may be non-trivial to validate novel biological behavior. Nevertheless, we must be able to certify synthetically engineered organisms behave as expected, and be confident they will not harm natural life or the environment. Synthetic biology is an interdisciplinary engineering domain, and interdisciplinary problems require interdisciplinary solutions. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this dissertation lays foundations for verifying, validating, and certifying safety and security of synthetic biology applications through traditional software engineering concepts about safety, security, and reliability of systems. These techniques can help stakeholders navigate what is currently a confusing regulatory process. The contributions of this dissertation are: 1) creation of domain-specific patterns to help synthetic biologists develop assurance cases using evidence and arguments to validate safety and security of designs; 2) application of software product lines and feature models to the modular DNA parts of synthetic biology commonly known as BioBricks, making it easier to find safety features during design; 3) a technique for analyzing DNA sequence motifs to help characterize proteins as toxins or non-toxins; 4) a legal investigation regarding what makes regulating synthetic biology challenging; and 5) a repeatable workflow for leveraging safety and security artifacts to develop assurance cases for synthetic biology systems. Advisers: Myra B. Cohen and Brittany A. Dunca

Building a Systematic Legacy System Modernization Approach

A systematic legacy system modernizing approach represents a new approach for modernizing legacy systems. Systematic legacy system modernization has software reuse as an integral part of modernization. We have developed a modernization approach which uses software architecture reconstruction to find reusable components within the legacy system. The practice of software development and modernization continues to shift towards the reuse of components from legacy systems to handle the complexities of software development. Modernization of a legacy system requires reuse of software artefacts from legacy system to conserve the business rules and improve the system’s quality attributes. Software reuse is an integral part of our systematic legacy modernization approach. Software should be considered as an asset and reuse of these assets is essential to increase the return on the development costs. Software reuse ranges from reuse of ideas to algorithms to any documents that are created during the software development life cycle. Software reuse has many potential benefits which include increased software quality, and decreased software development cost and time. Demands for lower software production and maintenance costs, faster delivery of systems and increased quality can only be met by widespread and systematic software reuse. In spite of all these benefits software reuse adoption is not widespread in the software development communities. Software reuse cannot possibly become an engineering discipline so long as issues and concerns have not been clearly understood and dealt with. We have conducted two surveys to understand the issues and concerns of software reuse in the Conventional Software Engineering (CSE) Community and the Software Product Line (SPL) Community where reuse is an integral part of the product development. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of our surveys identified the critical factors which affect and inhibit software engineers and developers adopting software reuse. Software reuse has been talked about in generic terms in software product lines. Though software reuse is a core concept in SPL it has however failed to become a standardized practice. The survey conducted on the SPL Community investigates how software reuse is adopted in SPL so as to provide the necessary degree of support for engineering software product line applications and to identify some of the issues and concerns in software reuse. The identified issues and concerns have helped us to understand the difference between software reuse in the CSE and SPL Communities. It has also given us an indication of how both communities can learn good software reuse practices from each other in order to develop a common software reuse process. Based on the outcome of our surveys we have developed a systematic software reuse process, called the Knowledge Based Software Reuse (KBSR) Process, which incorporates a Repository of reusable software assets to build a systematic legacy system modernization approach. Being able to reuse software artefacts, be it software requirement specification, design, or code, would greatly enhance software productivity and reliability. All of these software artefacts can go in the Knowledge Based Software Reuse Repository and be candidates for reuse

Combining SOA and BPM Technologies for Cross-System Process Automation

This paper summarizes the results of an industry case study that introduced a cross-system business process automation solution based on a combination of SOA and BPM standard technologies (i.e., BPMN, BPEL, WSDL). Besides discussing major weaknesses of the existing, custom-built, solution and comparing them against experiences with the developed prototype, the paper presents a course of action for transforming the current solution into the proposed solution. This includes a general approach, consisting of four distinct steps, as well as specific action items that are to be performed for every step. The discussion also covers language and tool support and challenges arising from the transformation

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

Strategic alliances in the high-tech industry

[i]Keywords: high-tech industry; innovation systems in Poland and in the world; strategic management \u2013 value chain; technology management; analisis of innovation \u2013 technology mapping and data mining[/i] S\u142owa kluczowe: przemys\u142 wysokiej techniki; systemy innowacji w Polsce i na \u15bwiecie; zarz\u105dzanie strategiczne \u2013 \u142a\u144cuch warto\u15bci; zarz\u105dzanie technologi\u105; analiza innowacyjno\u15bci \u2013 mapowanie technologii i [i]data mining[/i