254,971 research outputs found
Investment in Business Software and Perceived Utility: An Empirical Study
Authors have identified many different reasons why companies invest into IT and there has been much discussion of how IT can generate value. This paper adds to the discussion of IT value generation by investigating investments in business software for the support of business processes in Swiss SMEs. In an empirical survey on the future IT investment for process support, 917 questionnaires were collected and analysed. In a first step, using exploratory factor analysis, two factors representing different sets of business software modules were identified: (1) basic modules and (2) specialized modules. In a second step, using cluster analysis, we identified four typical characteristic company profiles regarding investments in business software: (1) the IT convinced, (2) the IT differentiators, (3) the IT sceptics, and (4) the IT pragmatists. To further explore and profile the clusters, we ran several bivariate analyses with selected questions from the questionnaire. This study has both theoretical and managerial relevance as it helps to understand firm attitudes towards investments and business software
Predicting and Evaluating Software Model Growth in the Automotive Industry
The size of a software artifact influences the software quality and impacts
the development process. In industry, when software size exceeds certain
thresholds, memory errors accumulate and development tools might not be able to
cope anymore, resulting in a lengthy program start up times, failing builds, or
memory problems at unpredictable times. Thus, foreseeing critical growth in
software modules meets a high demand in industrial practice. Predicting the
time when the size grows to the level where maintenance is needed prevents
unexpected efforts and helps to spot problematic artifacts before they become
critical.
Although the amount of prediction approaches in literature is vast, it is
unclear how well they fit with prerequisites and expectations from practice. In
this paper, we perform an industrial case study at an automotive manufacturer
to explore applicability and usability of prediction approaches in practice. In
a first step, we collect the most relevant prediction approaches from
literature, including both, approaches using statistics and machine learning.
Furthermore, we elicit expectations towards predictions from practitioners
using a survey and stakeholder workshops. At the same time, we measure software
size of 48 software artifacts by mining four years of revision history,
resulting in 4,547 data points. In the last step, we assess the applicability
of state-of-the-art prediction approaches using the collected data by
systematically analyzing how well they fulfill the practitioners' expectations.
Our main contribution is a comparison of commonly used prediction approaches
in a real world industrial setting while considering stakeholder expectations.
We show that the approaches provide significantly different results regarding
prediction accuracy and that the statistical approaches fit our data best
A Functional Architecture Approach to Neural Systems
The technology for the design of systems to perform extremely complex combinations of real-time functionality has developed over a long period. This technology is based on the use of a hardware architecture with a physical separation into memory and processing, and a software architecture which divides functionality into a disciplined hierarchy of software components which exchange unambiguous information. This technology experiences difficulty in design of systems to perform parallel processing, and extreme difficulty in design of systems which can heuristically change their own functionality. These limitations derive from the approach to information exchange between functional components. A design approach in which functional components can exchange ambiguous information leads to systems with the recommendation architecture which are less subject to these limitations. Biological brains have been constrained by natural pressures to adopt functional architectures with this different information exchange approach. Neural networks have not made a complete shift to use of ambiguous information, and do not address adequate management of context for ambiguous information exchange between modules. As a result such networks cannot be scaled to complex functionality. Simulations of systems with the recommendation architecture demonstrate the capability to heuristically organize to perform complex functionality
Towards a Holistic CAD Platform for Nanotechnologies
Silicon-based CMOS technologies are predicted to reach their ultimate limits
by the middle of the next decade. Research on nanotechnologies is actively
conducted, in a world-wide effort to develop new technologies able to maintain
the Moore's law. They promise revolutionizing the computing systems by
integrating tremendous numbers of devices at low cost. These trends will have a
profound impact on the architectures of computing systems and will require a
new paradigm of CAD. The paper presents a work in progress on this direction.
It is aimed at fitting requirements and constraints of nanotechnologies, in an
effort to achieve efficient use of the huge computing power promised by them.
To achieve this goal we are developing CAD tools able to exploit efficiently
these huge computing capabilities promised by nanotechnologies in the domain of
simulation of complex systems composed by huge numbers of relatively simple
elements.Comment: Submitted on behalf of TIMA Editions
(http://irevues.inist.fr/tima-editions
Exploring the Impact of Socio-Technical Core-Periphery Structures in Open Source Software Development
In this paper we apply the social network concept of core-periphery structure
to the sociotechnical structure of a software development team. We propose a
socio-technical pattern that can be used to locate emerging coordination
problems in Open Source projects. With the help of our tool and method called
TESNA, we demonstrate a method to monitor the socio-technical core-periphery
movement in Open Source projects. We then study the impact of different
core-periphery movements on Open Source projects. We conclude that a steady
core-periphery shift towards the core is beneficial to the project, whereas
shifts away from the core are clearly not good. Furthermore, oscillatory shifts
towards and away from the core can be considered as an indication of the
instability of the project. Such an analysis can provide developers with a good
insight into the health of an Open Source project. Researchers can gain from
the pattern theory, and from the method we use to study the core-periphery
movements
Towards Python-based Domain-specific Languages for Self-reconfigurable Modular Robotics Research
This paper explores the role of operating system and high-level languages in
the development of software and domain-specific languages (DSLs) for
self-reconfigurable robotics. We review some of the current trends in
self-reconfigurable robotics and describe the development of a software system
for ATRON II which utilizes Linux and Python to significantly improve software
abstraction and portability while providing some basic features which could
prove useful when using Python, either stand-alone or via a DSL, on a
self-reconfigurable robot system. These features include transparent socket
communication, module identification, easy software transfer and reliable
module-to-module communication. The end result is a software platform for
modular robots that where appropriate builds on existing work in operating
systems, virtual machines, middleware and high-level languages.Comment: Presented at DSLRob 2011 (arXiv:1212.3308
Transforming ASN.1 Specifications into CafeOBJ to assist with Property Checking
The adoption of algebraic specification/formal method techniques by the
networks' research community is happening slowly but steadily. We work towards
a software environment that can translate a protocol's specification, from
Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1 - a very popular specification language
with many applications), into the powerful algebraic specification language
CafeOBJ. The resulting code can be used to check, validate and falsify critical
properties of systems, at the pre-coding stage of development. In this paper,
we introduce some key elements of ASN.1 and CafeOBJ and sketch some first steps
towards the implementation of such a tool including a case study.Comment: 8 pages, 12 figure
A virtual environment for the design and simulated construction of prefabricated buildings
The construction industry has acknowledged that its current working practices are in need of substantial improvements in quality and efficiency and has identified that computer modelling techniques and the use of prefabricated components can help reduce times, costs, and minimise defects and problems of on-site construction. This paper describes a virtual environment to support the design and construction processes of buildings from prefabricated components and the simulation of their construction sequence according to a project schedule. The design environment can import a library of 3-D models of prefabricated modules that can be used to interactively design a building. Using Microsoft Project, the construction schedule of the designed building can be altered, with this information feeding back to the construction simulation environment. Within this environment the order of construction can be visualised using virtual machines. Novel aspects of the system are that it provides a single 3-D environment where the user can construct their design with minimal user interaction through automatic constraint recognition and view the real-time simulation of the construction process within the environment. This takes this area of research a step forward from other systems that only allow the planner to view the construction at certain stages, and do not provide an animated view of the construction process
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