Information-Hiding URLs for Easier Website Evolution

Many common elements of URLs do not adhere to the principle of information hiding. For example, filename extensions and parameter names can reveal volatile implementation details. As a result, when website implementations change, links between pages break. Bookmarks and code that generates URLs often break as well. In this paper, we present two tools for information-hiding URLs. An information-hiding URL uses an alias to identify a web resource and appends parameter values into the hierarchical structure of the URL. The InformationHidingFilter uses a Java Servlet filter to facilitate the use of informationhiding URLs with JSP/Servlet web applications. Given a request, the filter identifies the JSP or Servlet being requested and identifies parameter values contained in the information-hiding URL. Required values not provided in the URL are automatically substituted with default values specified by the web developer. Thus, old links remain valid even when the website changes and new parameters have been added to the page. The InformationHidingChecker helps web developers adhere to information hiding by helping them identify JSPs or Servlets that lack URL information for the InformationHidingFilter or lack default values for parameters. We also discuss the performance cost of using information-hiding URLs.Clare Boothe Luce Foundatio

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

Self-Organizing Software Architectures

Looking at engineering productivity is a source for improving the state of software engineering. We present two approaches to improve productivity: bottom-up modeling and self-configuring software components. Productivity, as measured in the ability to produce correctly working software features using limited resources is improved by performing less wasteful activities and by concentrating on the required activities to build sustainable software development organizations. Bottom-up modeling is a way to combine improved productivity with agile software engineering. Instead of focusing on tools and up-front planning, the models used emerge, as the requirements to the product are unveiled during a project. The idea is to build the modeling formalisms strong enough to be employed in code generation and as runtime models. This brings the benefits of model-driven engineering to agile projects, where the benefits have been rare. Self-configuring components are a development of bottom-up modeling. The notion of a source model is extended to incorporate the software entities themselves. Using computational reflection and introspection, dependent components of the software can be automatically updated to reflect changes in the dependence. This improves maintainability, thus making software changes faster. The thesis contains a number of case studies explaining the ways of applying the presented techniques. In addition to constructing the case studies, an empirical validation with test subjects is presented to show the usefulness of the techniques.Itseorganisoituvat ohjelmistoarkkitehtuurit Ohjelmistokehityksen tuottavuus on monen ohjelmistokehitysorganisaation huolenaihe. Erityisesti ylläpitovaiheessa ohjelmistojen heikko muokattavuus tuottaa turhia kustannuksia ja pettymyksiä asiakassuhteissa, kun vaikeasti muokattavaan ohjelmistoon tulisi tehdä muutoksia. Tässä työssä esitetään kaksi menetelmää ohjelmistojen muokattavuuden parantamiseksi: kokoava mallinnuskielten käyttäminen sekä itseorganisoituvat ohjelmistokomponentit. Mallipohjaisessa ohjelmistotuotannossa ohjelmistoille kehitetään soveltuvat mallinnuskielet ja -työkalut, joiden pohjalta kehitettävä ohjelmisto voidaan automaattisesti tuottaa. Uuden mallinnuskielen kehittäminen ja sitä tukevan välineistön rakentaminen on kuitenkin aikaaviepää ja vaikeaa. Vaarana on, että kehitetty kieli on valmistuessaan vanhentunut. Niin kutsutuissa ketterissä ohjelmistomenetelmissä yritetään välttää perinteisten, suunittelupainotteisten kehitysmenetelmien tuottamia sudenkuoppia. Liiallinen ketteryys voi kuitenkin kostautua heikkona tuottavuutena, kun kehitysväen kaikki aika kuluu näppäryysharjoituksiin varsinaisen tuottavan työn sijaan. Kokoava mallipohjainen tuotanto keskittyy kehittämään vain riittävän hyviä malleja, joiden perusteella voidaan yhdistää mallipohjaisen ohjelmistotuotannon ja ketterien prosessimallien tuomat edut. Ulkoisten, erikseen kehiteltyjen mallikielten lisäksi työssä esitellään ajatus ohjelmakoodin itsensä käyttämisestä mallipohjaisen ohjelmistotuotannon työkaluna. Näin syntyy itseorganisoituva ohjelmistoarkkitehtuuri. Tällä tavoin kehitystyön tuottavuus paranee, sillä ohjelmakoodin sisäisten riippuvuuksien määrä laskee, ja näin ollen muokkausten tekeminen on helpompaa. Työssä esitellään tapaustutkimuksia ohjelmakoodiin perustuvasta mallipohjaisen ohjelmistotuotannon ohjelmistokehyksistä sekä empiirinen validointi itseorganisoituvuuden hyödyllisyydestä tuottavuusnäkökulmasta katsoen

The use of TRAO to manage evolution risks in e-government

The need to develop and provide more efficient ways of providing Electronic Government Services to key stakeholders in government has brought about varying degrees of evolution in government. This evolution is seen in different ways like the merging of government departments, the merging of assets or its components with legacy assets etc. This has involved the incorporation of several practices that are geared towards the elimination of processes that are repetitive and manual while attempting to progressively encourage the interaction that exists between the different stakeholders. However, some of these practices have further complicated processes in government thus creating avenues for vulnerabilities which if exploited expose government and government assets to risks and threats. Focusing on ways to manage the issues accompanied with evolution can better prepare governments for manging the associated vulnerabilities, risks and threats. The basis of a conceptual framework is provided to establish the relationships that exist between the E-Government, asset and security domains. Thus, this thesis presents a design research project used in the management of evolution-related risks. The first part of the project focusses on the development of a generic ontology known as TRAO and a scenario ontology TRAOSc made up of different hypothetical scenarios. The resulting efficiency of the development of these ontologies have facilitated the development of an intelligent tool TRAOSearch that supports high-level semantically enriched queries. Results from the use of a case study prove that there are existing evolution-related issues which governments may not be fully prepared for. Furthermore, an ontological approach in the management of evolution-related risks showed that government stakeholders were interested in the use of intelligent processes that could improve government effectiveness while analysing the risks associated with doing this. Of more importance to this research was the ability to make inferences from the ontology on existing complex relationships that exist in the form of dependencies and interdependencies between Stakeholders and Assets. Thus, this thesis presents contributions in the aspect of advancing stakeholders understanding on the types of relationships that exist in government and the effect these relationships may have on service provisioning. Another novel contribution can be seen in the correction of the ambiguity associated with the terms Service, IT Service and E-Government. Furthermore, the feedback obtained from the use of an ontology-based tool during the evaluation phase of the project provides insights on whether governments must always be at par with technological evolution

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