WWW-based Management Tool for Software Components

Cooperative software development in distributed environments has become common because of recent popularization of wide area network. In such a development fashion, reuse of software components is necessary as well as in personal or local development, and object-oriented technology is important as a basis. Reuse of object-oriented software components in distributed environments, however, has not become common yet as has been expected. This originates in not only difficulty in understanding characteristics of object-oriented software components whose structures are complicated, but also absence of support mechanisms for obtaining components in distributed environments. In this paper, first of all, we discuss what are to be handled as reusable object-oriented software components, then propose a management mechanism for promoting reuse of the components in distributed environments

Building ontologies in a domain oriented software engineering environment

Ontologies can be used in Domain Oriented Software Engineering Environments (DOSEEs) to organize and describe knowledge and to support management, acquisition and sharing of knowledge regarding some domain. However, ontology construction is not a simple task. Thus, it is necessary to provide tools that support ontology development. This paper discusses the use of ontologies to support domain-oriented software development in ODE, an Ontology-based software Development Environment, and presents ODEd, an ontology editor developed to satisfy the requirements for an ontology editor in a DOSEE. These requirements include the definition of concepts and relations using graphic representations, automatic generation of some classes of axioms, derivation of object frameworks from ontologies, and ontology instantiation and browsing.Eje: Ingeniería de Software y Bases de Datos (ISBD)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Continuum: an architecture for user evolvable collaborative virtual environments

Continuum is a software platform for collaborative virtual environments. Continuum\u27s architecture supplies a world model and defines how to combine object state, behavior code, and resource data into this single shared structure. The system frees distributed users from the constraints of monolithic centralized virtual world architectures and instead allows individual users to extend and evolve the virtual world by creating and controlling their own individual pieces of the larger world model. The architecture provides support for data distribution, code management, resource management, and rapid deployment through standardized viewers. This work not only provides this architecture, but it includes a proven implementation and the associated development tools to allow for creation of these worlds

Building ontologies in a domain oriented software engineering environment

Ontologies can be used in Domain Oriented Software Engineering Environments (DOSEEs) to organize and describe knowledge and to support management, acquisition and sharing of knowledge regarding some domain. However, ontology construction is not a simple task. Thus, it is necessary to provide tools that support ontology development. This paper discusses the use of ontologies to support domain-oriented software development in ODE, an Ontology-based software Development Environment, and presents ODEd, an ontology editor developed to satisfy the requirements for an ontology editor in a DOSEE. These requirements include the definition of concepts and relations using graphic representations, automatic generation of some classes of axioms, derivation of object frameworks from ontologies, and ontology instantiation and browsing.Eje: Ingeniería de Software y Bases de Datos (ISBD)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Interfacing Oz with the PCTE OMS

This paper details our experiment interfacing Oz with the Object Management System (OMS) of PCTE. Oz is a process-centered multi-user software development environment. PCTE is a specification which defines a language independent interface providing support mechanisms for software engineering environments (SEE) populated with CASE tools. Oz is, in theory, a SEE that can be built (or extended) using the services provided by PCTE. Oz historically has had a native OMS component whereas the PCTE OMS is an open data repository with an API for external software tools. Our experiment focused on changing Oz to use the PCTE OMS. This paper describes how several Oz components were changed in order to make the Oz server interface with the PCTE OMS. The resulting system of our experiment is an environment that has process control and integration services provided by Oz, data integration services provided by PCTE, and tool integration services provided by both. We discusses in depth the concurrency control problems that arise in such an environment and their solutions. The PCTE implementation used in our experiment is the Emeraude PCTE V 12.5.1 supplied by Transtar Software Incorporation

Model-driven user interfaces for bioinformatics data resources: regenerating the wheel as an alternative to reinventing it

BACKGROUND: The proliferation of data repositories in bioinformatics has resulted in the development of numerous interfaces that allow scientists to browse, search and analyse the data that they contain. Interfaces typically support repository access by means of web pages, but other means are also used, such as desktop applications and command line tools. Interfaces often duplicate functionality amongst each other, and this implies that associated development activities are repeated in different laboratories. Interfaces developed by public laboratories are often created with limited developer resources. In such environments, reducing the time spent on creating user interfaces allows for a better deployment of resources for specialised tasks, such as data integration or analysis. Laboratories maintaining data resources are challenged to reconcile requirements for software that is reliable, functional and flexible with limitations on software development resources. RESULTS: This paper proposes a model-driven approach for the partial generation of user interfaces for searching and browsing bioinformatics data repositories. Inspired by the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) of the Object Management Group (OMG), we have developed a system that generates interfaces designed for use with bioinformatics resources. This approach helps laboratory domain experts decrease the amount of time they have to spend dealing with the repetitive aspects of user interface development. As a result, the amount of time they can spend on gathering requirements and helping develop specialised features increases. The resulting system is known as Pierre, and has been validated through its application to use cases in the life sciences, including the PEDRoDB proteomics database and the e-Fungi data warehouse. CONCLUSION: MDAs focus on generating software from models that describe aspects of service capabilities, and can be applied to support rapid development of repository interfaces in bioinformatics. The Pierre MDA is capable of supporting common database access requirements with a variety of auto-generated interfaces and across a variety of repositories. With Pierre, four kinds of interfaces are generated: web, stand-alone application, text-menu, and command line. The kinds of repositories with which Pierre interfaces have been used are relational, XML and object databases

Next generation software environments : principles, problems, and research directions

The past decade has seen a burgeoning of research and development in software environments. Conferences have been devoted to the topic of practical environments, journal papers produced, and commercial systems sold. Given all the activity, one might expect a great deal of consensus on issues, approaches, and techniques. This is not the case, however. Indeed, the term "environment" is still used in a variety of conflicting ways. Nevertheless substantial progress has been made and we are at least nearing consensus on many critical issues.The purpose of this paper is to characterize environments, describe several important principles that have emerged in the last decade or so, note current open problems, and describe some approaches to these problems, with particular emphasis on the activities of one large-scale research program, the Arcadia project. Consideration is also given to two related topics: empirical evaluation and technology transition. That is, how can environments and their constituents be evaluated, and how can new developments be moved effectively into the production sector

User interface development and software environments : the Chiron-1 system

User interface development systems for software environments have to cope with the broad, extensible and dynamic character of such environments, must support internal and external integration, and should enable various software development strategies. The Chiron-1 system adapts and extends key ideas from current research in user interface development systems to address the particular demands of software environments. Important Chiron-1 concepts are: separation of concerns, dynamism, and open architecture. We discuss the requirements on such user interface development systems, present the Chiron-1 architecture and a scenario of its usage, detail the concepts it embodies, and report on its design and prototype implementation

Proceedings of the ECSCW'95 Workshop on the Role of Version Control in CSCW Applications

The workshop entitled "The Role of Version Control in Computer Supported Cooperative Work Applications" was held on September 10, 1995 in Stockholm, Sweden in conjunction with the ECSCW'95 conference. Version control, the ability to manage relationships between successive instances of artifacts, organize those instances into meaningful structures, and support navigation and other operations on those structures, is an important problem in CSCW applications. It has long been recognized as a critical issue for inherently cooperative tasks such as software engineering, technical documentation, and authoring. The primary challenge for versioning in these areas is to support opportunistic, open-ended design processes requiring the preservation of historical perspectives in the design process, the reuse of previous designs, and the exploitation of alternative designs. The primary goal of this workshop was to bring together a diverse group of individuals interested in examining the role of versioning in Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Participation was encouraged from members of the research community currently investigating the versioning process in CSCW as well as application designers and developers who are familiar with the real-world requirements for versioning in CSCW. Both groups were represented at the workshop resulting in an exchange of ideas and information that helped to familiarize developers with the most recent research results in the area, and to provide researchers with an updated view of the needs and challenges faced by application developers. In preparing for this workshop, the organizers were able to build upon the results of their previous one entitled "The Workshop on Versioning in Hypertext" held in conjunction with the ECHT'94 conference. The following section of this report contains a summary in which the workshop organizers report the major results of the workshop. The summary is followed by a section that contains the position papers that were accepted to the workshop. The position papers provide more detailed information describing recent research efforts of the workshop participants as well as current challenges that are being encountered in the development of CSCW applications. A list of workshop participants is provided at the end of the report. The organizers would like to thank all of the participants for their contributions which were, of course, vital to the success of the workshop. We would also like to thank the ECSCW'95 conference organizers for providing a forum in which this workshop was possible