A review of information flow diagrammatic models for product-service systems

A product-service system (PSS) is a combination of products and services to create value for both customers and manufacturers. Modelling a PSS based on function orientation offers a useful way to distinguish system inputs and outputs with regards to how data are consumed and information is used, i.e. information flow. This article presents a review of diagrammatic information flow tools, which are designed to describe a system through its functions. The origin, concept and applications of these tools are investigated, followed by an analysis of information flow modelling with regards to key PSS properties. A case study of selection laser melting technology implemented as PSS will then be used to show the application of information flow modelling for PSS design. A discussion based on the usefulness of the tools in modelling the key elements of PSS and possible future research directions are also presented

Semantics-driven dataflow diagram processing.

Dataflow diagram is a commonly used tool of structured analysis and design techniques in specifications and design of a software system, and in analysis of an existing system as well. While automatic generating dataflow diagram saves system designers from tedious drawing and help them develop a new system, simulating dataflow diagrams provides system analysts with a dynamic graph and help them understand an existing system. CASE tools for dataflow diagrams play an important role in software engineering. Methodologies applied to the tools are dominant issues extensively evaluated by tools designers. Executable specifications with dataflow diagrams turn out an opportunity to execute graphic dataflow diagrams for systems analysts to simulate the behavior of a system. In this thesis, a syntax representation of dataflow diagram was developed, and a formal specification for dataflow diagram was established. A parser of this developed CASE tool translates the syntax representation of DFDs into their semantic representation. An interpreter of this tool then analyzes the DFDs semantic notations and builds a set of services of a system represented by the DFDs. This CASE tool can be used to simulate system behavior, check equivalence of two systems and detect deadlock. Based on its features, this tool can be used in every phase through entire software life cycle. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1998 .Z46. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 39-02, page: 0535. Adviser: Indra A. Tjandra. Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1998

Restructuring source code identifiers

In software engineering, maintenance cost 60% of overall project lifecycle costs of any software product. Program comprehension is a substantial part of maintenance and evolution cost and, thus, any advancement in maintenance, evolution, and program understanding will potentially greatly reduce the total cost of ownership of any software products. Identifiers are an important source of information during program understanding and maintenance. Programmers often use identifiers to build their mental models of the software artifacts. Thus, poorly-chosen identifiers have been reported in the literature as misleading and increasing the program comprehension effort. Identifiers are composed of terms, which can be dictionary words, acronyms, contractions, or simple strings. We conjecture that the use of identical terms in different contexts may increase the risk of faults, and hence maintenance effort. We investigate our conjecture using a measure combining term entropy and term context-coverage to study whether certain terms increase the odds ratios of methods to be fault-prone. We compute term entropy and context-coverage of terms extracted from identifiers in Rhino 1.4R3 and ArgoUML 0.16. We show statistically that methods containing terms with high entropy and context-coverage are more fault-prone than others, and that the new measure is only partially correlated with size. We will build on this study, and will apply summarization technique for extracting linguistic information form methods and classes. Using this information, we will extract domain concepts from source code, and propose linguistic based refactoring

Defining linguistic antipatterns towards the improvement of source code quality

Previous studies showed that linguistic aspect of source code is a valuable source of information that can help to improve program comprehension. The proposed research work focuses on supporting quality improvement of source code by identifying, specifying, and studying common negative practices (i.e., linguistic antipatterns) with respect to linguistic information. We expect the definition of linguistic antipatterns to increase the awareness of the existence of such bad practices and to discourage their use. We also propose to study the relation between negative practices in linguistic information (i.e., linguistic antipatterns) and negative practices in structural information (i.e., design antipatterns) with respect to comprehension effort and fault/change proneness. We discuss the proposed methodology and some preliminary results

Modelling information flow for organisations delivering microsystems technology

Motivated by recent growth and applications of microsystems technology (MST), companies within the MST domain are beginning to explore avenues for understanding, maintaining and improving information flow, within their organisations and to/from customers, with a view to enhancing delivery performance. Delivery for organisations is the flow of goods from sellers to buyers and a classic approach to understanding information flow is via the use of modelling techniques. Cont/d