SAGA: A project to automate the management of software production systems

The Software Automation, Generation and Administration (SAGA) project is investigating the design and construction of practical software engineering environments for developing and maintaining aerospace systems and applications software. The research includes the practical organization of the software lifecycle, configuration management, software requirements specifications, executable specifications, design methodologies, programming, verification, validation and testing, version control, maintenance, the reuse of software, software libraries, documentation, and automated management

Comprehension and Maintenance of Large Scale Multi-Language Software Applications: Open Issues and Challenges

During the last decade, the number of software applications that have been deployed as a collection of components implemented in different programming languages and paradigms has increased considerably. When such applications are maintained, traditional program comprehension and reengineering techniques may not be adequate. In this context, this working session aims to stimulate discussion around key issues relating to the comprehension, reengineering, and maintenance of multi-language software applications. Such issues include, but are not limited to, the formalization, management, exploration, and presentation of multi-language program dependencies, as well as the development of practical toolsets for automating and easing the comprehension and maintenance of multi-language software

Netlogo simulation: effective for agent based modeling in artificial intelligence

Today practical knowledge is as important as theretical knowledge. But the cost of setting up practical l abs is not easy and needs maintenance on a regular basis. But with the emergence of many simulators, practical knowledge can be imparted throug h setting up of virtual laboratories with the help of computers. The cost of maintenance also decreases to alarge extend. Our paper focuses on one such simulator named NETLOGO. NETLOGO is immergingsimulation software for agent based modeling. Itis easilyinstallable in a machine and can be downloaded from the net. It is free software. This paper deals with the usage of NETLOGO from both student and professors perspectives. The paper will state the advantages and disadvantages of the simulator along with a simulation example. Though there are many agent based programming l anguages yet our paper is trying to show the effectiveness of using NETLOGO as asimulator for agent based modeling

Automated assembly of large space structures using an expert system executive

NASA LaRC has developed a unique testbed for investigating the practical problems associated with the assembly of large space structures using robotic manipulators. The testbed is an interdisciplinary effort which considers the full spectrum of assembly problems from the design of mechanisms to the development of software. This paper will describe the automated structures assembly testbed and its operation, detail the expert system executive and its development, and discuss the planned system evolution. Emphasis will be placed on the expert system development of the program executive. The executive program must be capable of directing and reliably performing complex assembly tasks with the flexibility to recover from realistic system errors. By employing an expert system, information pertaining to the operation of the system was encapsulated concisely within a knowledge base. This lead to a substantial reduction in code, increased flexibility, eased software upgrades, and realized a savings in software maintenance costs

Change decision support:extraction and analysis of late architecture changes using change characterization and software metrics

Software maintenance is one of the most crucial aspects of software development. Software engineering researchers must develop practical solutions to handle the challenges presented in maintaining mature software systems. Research that addresses practical means of mitigating the risks involved when changing software, reducing the complexity of mature software systems, and eliminating the introduction of preventable bugs is paramount to today’s software engineering discipline. Giving software developers the information that they need to make quality decisions about changes that will negatively affect their software systems is a key aspect to mitigating those risks. This dissertation presents work performed to assist developers to collect and process data that plays a role in change decision-making during the maintenance phase. To address these problems, developers need a way to better understand the effects of a change prior to making the change. This research addresses the problems associated with increasing architectural complexity caused by software change using a twoold approach. The first approach is to characterize software changes to assess their architectural impact prior to their implementation. The second approach is to identify a set of architecture metrics that correlate to system quality and maintainability and to use these metrics to determine the level of difficulty involved in making a change. The two approaches have been combined and the results presented provide developers with a beneficial analysis framework that offers insight into the change process

System Development: What, Why, When And How CASE Tools Should Support Novice Software Engineers.

Novice software engineers particularly computer science students need to be trained with theoretical knowledge and practical skills in system developments. The knowledge and skills may encompass the activities involve in all phases of system development including analysis, design, coding, testing and maintenance

Thesauri : practical guidance for construction

Purpose - With the growing recognition that thesauri aid information retrieval, organisations are beginning to adopt, and in many cases, create thesauri. This paper offers some guidance on the construction process. Design/methodology/approach - An opinion piece with a practical focus, based on recent experiences gleaned from consultancy work. Findings - A number of steps can be taken to ensure any thesaurus under construction is fit for purpose. Due consideration is therefore given to aspects such as term selection, structure and notation, thesauri standards, software and Web display issues, thesauri evaluation and maintenance. This paper also notes that creating new subject schemes from scratch, however attractive, contributes to the plethora of terminologies currently in existence and can limit user searching within particular contexts. The decision to create a "new" thesaurus should therefore be taken carefully and observance of standards is paramount. Practical implications - This paper offers advice to assist practitioners in the development of thesauri. Originality/value - Useful guidance for those practitioners new to the area of thesaurus construction is provided, together with an overview of selected key processes involved in the construction of a thesaurus

Demonstration of a Response Time Based Remaining Useful Life (RUL) Prediction for Software Systems

Prognostic and Health Management (PHM) has been widely applied to hardware systems in the electronics and non-electronics domains but has not been explored for software. While software does not decay over time, it can degrade over release cycles. Software health management is confined to diagnostic assessments that identify problems, whereas prognostic assessment potentially indicates when in the future a problem will become detrimental. Relevant research areas such as software defect prediction, software reliability prediction, predictive maintenance of software, software degradation, and software performance prediction, exist, but all of these represent diagnostic models built upon historical data, none of which can predict an RUL for software. This paper addresses the application of PHM concepts to software systems for fault predictions and RUL estimation. Specifically, this paper addresses how PHM can be used to make decisions for software systems such as version update and upgrade, module changes, system reengineering, rejuvenation, maintenance scheduling, budgeting, and total abandonment. This paper presents a method to prognostically and continuously predict the RUL of a software system based on usage parameters (e.g., the numbers and categories of releases) and performance parameters (e.g., response time). The model developed has been validated by comparing actual data, with the results that were generated by predictive models. Statistical validation (regression validation, and k-fold cross validation) has also been carried out. A case study, based on publicly available data for the Bugzilla application is presented. This case study demonstrates that PHM concepts can be applied to software systems and RUL can be calculated to make system management decisions.Comment: This research methodology has opened up new and practical applications in the software domain. In the coming decades, we can expect a significant amount of attention and practical implementation in this area worldwid

A Metrics Framework for Customer-Focused Quality,

Although nearly everyone agrees that the collection and analysis of metrics is highly beneficial to software development and maintenance organizations, this process remains difficult for many of those organizations. The purpose of this paper is to describe a practical set of metrics that are focused on customer satisfaction and that are easily understood by both customer and developer organizations. The goals and concepts related to these metrics are presented in a framework designed to establish compliance mapping with the Software Engineering Institute\u27s (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM®) for software