Overcoming Language Dichotomies: Toward Effective Program Comprehension for Mobile App Development

Mobile devices and platforms have become an established target for modern software developers due to performant hardware and a large and growing user base numbering in the billions. Despite their popularity, the software development process for mobile apps comes with a set of unique, domain-specific challenges rooted in program comprehension. Many of these challenges stem from developer difficulties in reasoning about different representations of a program, a phenomenon we define as a "language dichotomy". In this paper, we reflect upon the various language dichotomies that contribute to open problems in program comprehension and development for mobile apps. Furthermore, to help guide the research community towards effective solutions for these problems, we provide a roadmap of directions for future work.Comment: Invited Keynote Paper for the 26th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC'18

Penilaian kualiti persekitaran dalaman (IEQ) bangunan Akademik Institusi Pengajian Tinggi Awam (IPTA) Malaysia dalam konteks pengurusan fasiliti

Kualiti Persekitaran Dalaman atau Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) merupakan komponen penting dalam konteks bangunan mesra alam yang akan menentukan tahap kualiti penghuni di dalam sesebuah bangunan. Secara purata dianggarkan 80% kehidupan seharian manusia adalah berada di dalam bangunan. Ketidakseimbangan IEQ menyumbang kepada Sindrom Bangunan Sakit (Sick Building Syndrome) sekali gus memberi kesan kepada produktiviti para penghuni juga kepada struktur bangunan. Sehubungan itu, kajian ini dilaksanakan untuk mengenal pasti tahap kesedaran pihak pengurusan harta dan fasiliti di Institusi Pengajian Tinggi Awam (IPTA) terhadap IEQ dalam konteks bangunan akademik. Kajian ini juga bertujuan untuk mengukur tahap IEQ dan tahap kepuasan pengguna dalam bangunan akademik di IPTA. Kajian ini melibatkan bangunan akademik di 20 IPTA di Malaysia. Metodologi kajian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif, kajian saintifik dan juga pendekatan secara kuantitatif. Pendekatan Kualitatif digunakan bagi menilai tahap kesedaran pihak pengurusan harta dan fasiliti IPTA melalui proses temubual yang melibatkan 20 orang responden. Manakala pendekatan kedua adalah melalui kajian saintifik ke atas bangunan akademik yang memfokuskan kepada pengukuran elemen keselesaan terma, keselesaan bunyi, kualiti udara dalaman dan pencahayaan. Hasil pengukuran elemen tersebut dibandingkan dengan piawaian dari Malaysia Standard (MS 1525;2007) dan UNESCO. Bagi setiap IPTA, lima buah bilik kuliah dijadikan sampel dengan tiga kali bacaan setiap hari selama dua hari diperolehi bagi mendapatkan bacaan purata. Seterusnya, melalui pendekatan kuantitatif, data yang diperolehi melalui kaji selidik melibatkan 500 responden dan dianalisis menggunakan perisian Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). Hasil kajian menunjukkan kesedaran para pengurus harta dan fasililti di IPTA terhadap IEQ adalah baik tetapi masih ada beberapa kelemahan yang perlu ditambahbaik. Hasil ujian saintifik yang diperolehi menunjukkan bacaan bagi suhu dalaman, hanya UniSZA, UTHM dan UniMAS yang menepati piawaian, manakala bagi pencahayaan, UM, UIAM, UPSI, USM, UniSZA, UTM, UTHM, UTeM, UMS dan UniMAS berada di bawah tahap piawaian ditetapkan. Bagi keamatan bunyi, hanya UM, UPM, UPSI, USM dan UniMAP yang menunjukkan bacaan pada piawaian ditetapkan. Keseluruhannya menunjukkan bacaan berada pada tahap yang sederhana dan masih lagi memerlukan pernambahbaikan. Kajian ini turut mempamerkan bacaan purata bagi setiap elemen IEQ bagi bangunan akademik seluruh IPTA. Penemuan hasil kajian ini dijangka dapat membantu pihak pengurusan harta dan fasiliti IPTA dalam usaha menambahbaik tahap IEQ dalam bangunan akademik di kampus universiti sekaligus dapat meningkatkan tahap pengurusan fasiliti dalam mencapai tahap kelestarian kampus IPTA di Malaysia

International conference on software engineering and knowledge engineering: Session chair

The Thirtieth International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE 2018) will be held at the Hotel Pullman, San Francisco Bay, USA, from July 1 to July 3, 2018. SEKE2018 will also be dedicated in memory of Professor Lofti Zadeh, a great scholar, pioneer and leader in fuzzy sets theory and soft computing. The conference aims at bringing together experts in software engineering and knowledge engineering to discuss on relevant results in either software engineering or knowledge engineering or both. Special emphasis will be put on the transference of methods between both domains. The theme this year is soft computing in software engineering & knowledge engineering. Submission of papers and demos are both welcome

Automated analysis of feature models: Quo vadis?

Feature models have been used since the 90's to describe software product lines as a way of reusing common parts in a family of software systems. In 2010, a systematic literature review was published summarizing the advances and settling the basis of the area of Automated Analysis of Feature Models (AAFM). From then on, different studies have applied the AAFM in different domains. In this paper, we provide an overview of the evolution of this field since 2010 by performing a systematic mapping study considering 423 primary sources. We found six different variability facets where the AAFM is being applied that define the tendencies: product configuration and derivation; testing and evolution; reverse engineering; multi-model variability-analysis; variability modelling and variability-intensive systems. We also confirmed that there is a lack of industrial evidence in most of the cases. Finally, we present where and when the papers have been published and who are the authors and institutions that are contributing to the field. We observed that the maturity is proven by the increment in the number of journals published along the years as well as the diversity of conferences and workshops where papers are published. We also suggest some synergies with other areas such as cloud or mobile computing among others that can motivate further research in the future.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-70560-RJunta de Andalucía TIC-186

Game-theoretic Resource Allocation Methods for Device-to-Device (D2D) Communication

Device-to-device (D2D) communication underlaying cellular networks allows mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to use the licensed spectrum allocated to cellular services for direct peer-to-peer transmission. D2D communication can use either one-hop transmission (i.e., in D2D direct communication) or multi-hop cluster-based transmission (i.e., in D2D local area networks). The D2D devices can compete or cooperate with each other to reuse the radio resources in D2D networks. Therefore, resource allocation and access for D2D communication can be treated as games. The theories behind these games provide a variety of mathematical tools to effectively model and analyze the individual or group behaviors of D2D users. In addition, game models can provide distributed solutions to the resource allocation problems for D2D communication. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the applications of game-theoretic models to study the radio resource allocation issues in D2D communication. The article also outlines several key open research directions.Comment: Accepted. IEEE Wireless Comms Mag. 201