Tools of the Trade: A Survey of Various Agent Based Modeling Platforms

Agent Based Modeling (ABM) toolkits are as diverse as the community of people who use them. With so many toolkits available, the choice of which one is best suited for a project is left to word of mouth, past experiences in using particular toolkits and toolkit publicity. This is especially troublesome for projects that require specialization. Rather than using toolkits that are the most publicized but are designed for general projects, using this paper, one will be able to choose a toolkit that already exists and that may be built especially for one's particular domain and specialized needs. In this paper, we examine the entire continuum of agent based toolkits. We characterize each based on 5 important characteristics users consider when choosing a toolkit, and then we categorize the characteristics into user-friendly taxonomies that aid in rapid indexing and easy reference.Agent Based Modeling, Individual Based Model, Multi Agent Systems

Using the Internet of Things to Teach Good Software Engineering Practice to High School Students

This paper describes a course to introduce high school students to software engineering in practice using the Internet Of Things (IoT). IoT devices allow students to get quick, visible results without watering down technical aspects of programming and networking. The course has three broad goals: (1) to make software engineering fun and applicable, with the aim of recruiting traditionally underrepresented groups into computing; (2) to make young students begin to approach problems with a design mindset; and (3) to show students that computer science, generally, and software engineering, specifically, is about much more than programming. The course unfolds in three segments. The first is a whirlwind introduction to a subset of IoT technologies. Students complete a specific task (or set of tasks) using each technology. This segment culminates in a “do-it-yourself” project, in which the students implement a simple IoT application using their basic knowledge of the technologies. The course’s second segment introduces software engineering practices, again primarily via hands-on practical tutorials. In the third segment of the course, the students conceive of, design, and implement a project that uses the technologies introduced in the first segment, all while being attentive to the good software engineering practices acquired in the second segment. In addition to presenting the course curriculum, the paper also discusses a first offering of the course in a threeweek summer intensive program in 2017, including assessments done to evaluate the curriculum.Cockrell School of Engineerin

Experiences of teaching UML within the information systems curriculum

The Unified Modelling Language (UML) has been a standard modelling language for the development of software intensive systems since 2000. As a consequence, the information systems (IS) curriculum, at the Cavendish School of Computer Science, University of Westminster in London, had UML teaching incorporated two years ago. We have encouraged the introduction to and use of UML in modules that replaced traditional approaches to IS development. In this paper we report on experiences of using UML within the two modules of our undergraduate curriculum, delivered by the IS department. The first module is taught in the second year, i.e. at level 5, and delivers requirements analysis with UML. The second module uses the UML for modelling and designing distributed business applications and is taught in the final year, at level 6. In both modules it is assumed that an introduction to modelling in IS, with the syntax and semantics of a selection of UML modelling elements and diagrams, has been done earlier. We single out some problems and give a rationale for changes in the next academic yea

Construction of a taxonomy for requirements engineering commercial-off-the-shelf components

This article presents a procedure for constructing a taxonomy of COTS products in the field of Requirements Engineering (RE). The taxonomy and the obtained information reach transcendental benefits to the selection of systems and tools that aid to RE-related actors to simplify and facilitate their work. This taxonomy is performed by means of a goal-oriented methodology inspired in GBRAM (Goal-Based Requirements Analysis Method), called GBTCM (Goal-Based Taxonomy Construction Method), that provides a guide to analyze sources of information and modeling requirements and domains, as well as gathering and organizing the knowledge in any segment of the COTS market. GBTCM claims to promote the use of standards and the reuse of requirements in order to support different processes of selection and integration of components.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Extended Version of Elucidative Development for Model-Based Documentation and Language Specification

Documentation is an essential activity in software development, for source code as well as modelling artefacts. Typically, documentation is created and maintained manually which leads to inconsistencies as documented artefacts like source code or models evolve during development. Existing approaches like literate/elucidative programming or literate modelling address these problems by deriving documentation from software development artefacts or vice versa. However, these approaches restrict themselves to a certain kind of artefact and to a certain phase of the software development life-cycle. In this paper, we propose elucidative development as a generalisation of these approaches supporting heterogeneous kinds of artefacts as well as the analysis, design and implementation phases of the software development life-cycle. Elucidative development allows for linking source code and model artefacts into documentation and thus, maintains and updates their presentation semi-automatically. We present DEFT as an integrated development environment for elucidative development. We show, how DEFT can be applied to language specifications like the UML specification and help to avoid inconsistencies caused by maintenance and evolution of such a specification

Experiences of software engineering training

In this paper some experiences from laboratories of Advanced Software Engineering course are presented. This laboratory consists of seven exercises. The subjects of exercises are following: requirements engineering, system design with UML [1], reuse, precise modelling with the Object Constraint Language (OCL [2]), code coverage testing, memory leaks detection and improving application efficiency. For each laboratory exercise a set of training materials and instructions was developed. These internet materials are stored on a department server and are available for all students and lecturers of this course. Rational Suite tools [3] are used in the laboratory. The goal of introducing Internet materials was to improve the quality of SE education. Some experiences and observations are presented. The evaluation of students results is also given