Study of Different Aspects of Software Configuration Management

Software configuration management (SCM) is an important activity in the software engineering life cycle. Today, most of the software project teams understand the need for SCM to manage change to their software systems. Most of the companies use the software configuration management and it is essential during the process of software development as rules to control and manage the evolution of software systems. In the Software Engineering, the Software Configuration System (SCM) is used for the tracking & controlling the changes in the software. Since evolution and change is unavoidable in software systems configuration management is considered as an integral element of software development and activity maintenance. The SCM activities are change management system, version management, and then system construction and release management. This paper is the study of software configuration management, the change control, CM process, steps and tools of SCM. The purpose of this paper is to give an idea about software configuration management and how this influences the software development process

Achieving a "SIL 1" TCR Monitoring System

SIL 1 (Safety Integrity Level 1) refers to the quantification and measurement of the availability, reliability, maintenance and safety of the monitoring system. In the last few years the computer infrastructure used to acquire and to diffuse data to the TCR has evolved very rapidly. A number of measures in hardware, software and management have been introduced to cope with this situation. These include: the Multipurpose Monitoring Device (MMD), a standard data acquisition platform used in the renovation of old front end monitoring equipment, the Smart Equipment Controller (Dsec), a driver that reduces the layers in the data diffusion pyramid, the multiplatform monitoring software to integrate the different SCADA systems, a software configuration tool (RAZOR) for problem tracking and version control, and a complete development environment reproducing a real installation for thorough testing of any changes. To achieve SIL 1 objectives, while mastering the evolution of our systems will be the challenge for the computer team

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

Ontological Reengineering for Reuse

This paper presents the concept of Ontological Reengineering as the process of retrieving and transforming a conceptual model of an existing and implemented ontology into a new, more correct and more complete conceptual model which is reimplemented. Three activities have been identified in this process: reverse engineering, restructuring and forward engineering. The aim of Reverse Engineering is to output a possible conceptual model on the basis of the code in which the ontology is implemented. The goal of Restructuring is to reorganize this initial conceptual model into a new conceptual model, which is built bearing in mind the use of the restructured ontology by the ontology/application that reuses it. Finally, the objective of Forward Engineering is output a new implementation of the ontology. The paper also discusses how the ontological reengineering process has been applied to the Standard-Units ontology [18], which is included in a Chemical-Elements [12] ontology. These two ontologies will be included in a Monatomic-Ions and Environmental-Pollutants ontologies

Analysis of the impact of the inlet boundary conditions in FDS results for air curtain flows in the near-field region

CFD results are discussed for planar jet flows, resembling configurations in use for air curtain flows in the context of smoke and heat control in buildings in case of fire. The CFD package FDS (Fire Dynamics Simulator), Version 6.0.1, is used. Special focus is given to the impact of the inlet boundary condition, in combination with the mesh size, on the flow field in the near-field region. Investigation of different slot configurations, including calculations inside a straight rectangular duct ahead of the air slot, reveals a small vena contracta effect when the slot is flush with a solid boundary, leading to an acceleration of the flow in the symmetry plane in the near-field region. More important is the effect of the duct length: starting from a top hat velocity profile, a duct length of about 15 hydraulic diameters is required for the flow to become fully developed at the slot. The vena contracta effect disappears if the co-flow at the nozzle exit is aligned with the jet. The FDS results capture the self-similarity in the far-field jet region, regardless of the inlet configuration

Animating the evolution of software

The use and development of open source software has increased significantly in the last decade. The high frequency of changes and releases across a distributed environment requires good project management tools in order to control the process adequately. However, even with these tools in place, the nature of the development and the fact that developers will often work on many other projects simultaneously, means that the developers are unlikely to have a clear picture of the current state of the project at any time. Furthermore, the poor documentation associated with many projects has a detrimental effect when encouraging new developers to contribute to the software. A typical version control repository contains a mine of information that is not always obvious and not easy to comprehend in its raw form. However, presenting this historical data in a suitable format by using software visualisation techniques allows the evolution of the software over a number of releases to be shown. This allows the changes that have been made to the software to be identified clearly, thus ensuring that the effect of those changes will also be emphasised. This then enables both managers and developers to gain a more detailed view of the current state of the project. The visualisation of evolving software introduces a number of new issues. This thesis investigates some of these issues in detail, and recommends a number of solutions in order to alleviate the problems that may otherwise arise. The solutions are then demonstrated in the definition of two new visualisations. These use historical data contained within version control repositories to show the evolution of the software at a number of levels of granularity. Additionally, animation is used as an integral part of both visualisations - not only to show the evolution by representing the progression of time, but also to highlight the changes that have occurred. Previously, the use of animation within software visualisation has been primarily restricted to small-scale, hand generated visualisations. However, this thesis shows the viability of using animation within software visualisation with automated visualisations on a large scale. In addition, evaluation of the visualisations has shown that they are suitable for showing the changes that have occurred in the software over a period of time, and subsequently how the software has evolved. These visualisations are therefore suitable for use by developers and managers involved with open source software. In addition, they also provide a basis for future research in evolutionary visualisations, software evolution and open source development

A Model for Configuration Management of Open Software Systems

The article proposes a model for the configuration management of open systems. The model aims at validation of configurations against given specifications. An extension of decision graphs is proposed to express specifications. The proposed model can be used by software developers to validate their own configurations across different versions of the components, or to validate configurations that include components by third parties. The model can also be used by end-users to validate compatibility among different configurations of the same application. The proposed model is first discussed in some application scenarios and then formally defined. Moreover, a type discipline is given to formally define validation of a configuration against a system specificationComment: 13 page

Security models for trusting network appliances

A significant characteristic of pervasive computing is the need for secure interactions between highly mobile entities and the services in their environment. Moreover,these decentralised systems are also characterised by partial views over the state of the global environment, implying that we cannot guarantee verification of the properties of the mobile entity entering an unfamiliar domain. Secure in this context encompasses both the need for cryptographic security and the need for trust, on the part of both parties, that the interaction is functioning as expected. In this paper we make a broad assumption that trust and cryptographic security can be considered as orthogonal concerns (i.e. cryptographic measures do not ensure transmission of correct information). We assume the existence of reliable encryption techniques and focus on the characteristics of a model that supports the management of the trust relationships between two devices during ad-hoc interactions