Reverse Engineering and Testing of Rich Internet Applications

The World Wide Web experiences a continuous and constant evolution, where new initiatives, standards, approaches and technologies are continuously proposed for developing more effective and higher quality Web applications. To satisfy the growing request of the market for Web applications, new technologies, frameworks, tools and environments that allow to develop Web and mobile applications with the least effort and in very short time have been introduced in the last years. These new technologies have made possible the dawn of a new generation of Web applications, named Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), that offer greater usability and interactivity than traditional ones. This evolution has been accompanied by some drawbacks that are mostly due to the lack of applying well-known software engineering practices and approaches. As a consequence, new research questions and challenges have emerged in the field of web and mobile applications maintenance and testing. The research activity described in this thesis has addressed some of these topics with the specific aim of proposing new and effective solutions to the problems of modelling, reverse engineering, comprehending, re-documenting and testing existing RIAs. Due to the growing relevance of mobile applications in the renewed Web scenarios, the problem of testing mobile applications developed for the Android operating system has been addressed too, in an attempt of exploring and proposing new techniques of testing automation for these type of applications

Digital certificates and threshold cryptography

This dissertation discusses the use of secret sharing cryptographic protocols for distributing and sharing of secret documents, in our case PDF documents. We discuss the advantages and uses of such a system in the context of collaborative environments. Description of the cryptographic protocol involved and the necessary Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) shall be presented. We also provide an implementation of this framework as a “proof of concept” and fundament the use of a certificate extension as the basis for threshold cryptography. Details of the shared secret distribution protocol and shared secret recovery protocol shall be given as well as the associated technical implementation details. The actual secret sharing algorithm implemented at this stage is based on an existing well known secret sharing scheme that uses polynomial interpolation over a finite field. Finally we conclude with a practical assessment of our prototype

Visual approaches to knowledge organization and contextual exploration

This thesis explores possible visual approaches for the representation of semantic structures, such as zz-structures. Some holistic visual representations of complex domains have been investigated through the proposal of new views - the so-called zz-views - that allow both to make visible the interconnections between elements and to support a contextual and multilevel exploration of knowledge. The potential of this approach has been examined in the context of two case studies that have led to the creation of two Web applications. The \ufb01rst domain of study regarded the visual representation, analysis and management of scienti\ufb01c bibliographies. In this context, we modeled a Web application, we called VisualBib, to support researchers in building, re\ufb01ning, analyzing and sharing bibliographies. We adopted a multi-faceted approach integrating features that are typical of three di\ufb00erent classes of tools: bibliography visual analysis systems, bibliographic citation indexes and personal research assistants. The evaluation studies carried out on a \ufb01rst prototype highlighted the positive impact of our visual model and encouraged us to improve it and develop further visual analysis features we incorporated in the version 3.0 of the application. The second case study concerned the modeling and development of a multimedia catalog of Web and mobile applications. The objective was to provide an overview of a significant number of tools that can help teachers in the implementation of active learning approaches supported by technology and in the design of Teaching and Learning Activities (TLAs). We analyzed and documented 281 applications, preparing for each of them a detailed multilingual card and a video-presentation, organizing all the material in an original purpose-based taxonomy, visually represented through a browsable holistic view. The catalog, we called AppInventory, provides contextual exploration mechanisms based on zz-structures, collects user contributions and evaluations about the apps and o\ufb00ers visual analysis tools for the comparison of the applications data and user evaluations. The results of two user studies carried out on groups of teachers and students shown a very positive impact of our proposal in term of graphical layout, semantic structure, navigation mechanisms and usability, also in comparison with two similar catalogs

Test Generation and Dependency Analysis for Web Applications

In web application testing existing model based web test generators derive test paths from a navigation model of the web application, completed with either manually or randomly generated inputs. Test paths extraction and input generation are handled separately, ignoring the fact that generating inputs for test paths is difficult or even impossible if such paths are infeasible. In this thesis, we propose three directions to mitigate the path infeasibility problem. The first direction uses a search based approach defining novel set of genetic operators that support the joint generation of test inputs and feasible test paths. Results show that such search based approach can achieve higher level of model coverage than existing approaches. Secondly, we propose a novel web test generation algorithm that pre-selects the most promising candidate test cases based on their diversity from previously generated tests. Results of our empirical evaluation show that promoting diversity is beneficial not only to a thorough exploration of the web application behaviours, but also to the feasibility of automatically generated test cases. Moreover, the diversity based approach achieves higher coverage of the navigation model significantly faster than crawling based and search based approaches. The third approach we propose uses a web crawler as a test generator. As such, the generated tests are concrete, hence their navigations among the web application states are feasible by construction. However, the crawling trace cannot be easily turned into a minimal test suite that achieves the same coverage due to test dependencies. Indeed, test dependencies are undesirable in the context of regression testing, preventing the adoption of testing optimization techniques that assume tests to be independent. In this thesis, we propose the first approach to detect test dependencies in a given web test suite by leveraging the information available both in the web test code and on the client side of the web application. Results of our empirical validation show that our approach can effectively and efficiently detect test dependencies and it enables dependency aware formulations of test parallelization and test minimization

Infectious diseases management framework for Saudi Arabia (SAIF)

A Thesis Submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of PhilosopyInfectious disease management system area is considered as an emerging field of modern healthcare in the Gulf region. Significant technical and clinical progress and advanced technologies can be utilized to enhance the performance and ubiquity of such systems. Effective infectious disease management (IDM) can be achieved by analysing the disease management issues from the perspectives of healthcare personnel and patients. Hence, it is necessary to identify the needs and requirements of both healthcare personnel and patients for managing the infectious disease. The basic idea behind the proposed mobile IDM system in this thesis is to improve the healthcare processes in managing infectious diseases more effectively. For this purpose, internet and mobile technologies are integrated with social networking, mapping and IDM applications to improve the processes efficiency. Hence, the patients submit their health related data through their devices remotely using our application to our system database (so-called SAIF). The main objective of this PhD project was the design and development of a novel web based architecture of next-generation infectious disease management system embedding the concept of social networking tailored for Saudi patients. Following a detailed literature review which identifies the current status and potential impact of using infectious diseases management system in KSA, this thesis conducts a feasibility user perspective study for identifying the needs and the requirements of healthcare personnel and the patients for managing infectious diseases. Moreover, this thesis proposes a design and development of a novel architecture of next-generation web based infectious disease management system tailored for Saudi patients (i.e., called SAIF – infectious diseases management framework for Saudi Arabia). Further, this thesis introduces a usability study for the SAIF system to validate the acceptability of using mobile technologies amongst infected patient in KSA and Gulf region. The preliminary results of the study indicated general acceptance of the patients in using the system with higher usability rating in high affected patients. In general, the study concluded that the concept of SAIF system is considered acceptable tool in particularly with infected patients

VR Technologies in Cultural Heritage

This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on VR Technologies in Cultural Heritage, VRTCH 2018, held in Brasov, Romania in May 2018. The 13 revised full papers along with the 5 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 21 submissions. The papers of this volume are organized in topical sections on data acquisition and modelling, visualization methods / audio, sensors and actuators, data management, restoration and digitization, cultural tourism

UAV Cloud Platform for Precision Farming

A new application for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles comes to light daily to solve some of modern society’s problems. One of the mentioned predicaments is the possibility for optimization in agricultural processes. Due to this, a new area arose in the last years of the twentieth century, and it is in constant progression called Precision Farming. Nowadays, a division of this field growth is relative to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles applications. Most traditional methods employed by farmers are ineffective and do not aid in the progression and solution of these issues. However, there are some fields that have the possibility to enhance many agriculture methods, such fields are Cyber-Physical Systems and Cloud Computing. Given its capabilities like aerial surveillance and mapping, Cyber- Physical Systems like Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are being used to monitor vast crops, to gather insightful data thatwould take a lot more time if being collected by hand. However, these systems typically lack computing power and storage capacity, meaning that much of its gathered data cannot be stored and further analyzed locally. That is the obstacle that Cloud Computing can solve. With the possibility to offload computing power by sending the collected data to a cloud, it is possible to leverage the enormous computing power and storage capabilities of remote data-centers to gather and analyze these datasets. This dissertation proposes an architecture for this use case by leveraging the advantages of Cloud Computing to aid the obstacles of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Moreover, this dissertation is a collaboration with an on-going Horizon 2020 European project that deals with precision farming and agriculture enhanced by Cyber-Physical Systems.A cada dia que passa, novas aplicações para Veículos aéreos não tripulados são inventadas, de forma a resolver alguns dos problemas actuais da sociedade. Um desses problemas, é a possibilidade de otimização em processos agrículas. Devido a isto, nos últimos anos do século 20 nasceu uma nova área de investigação intitulada Agricultura de alta precisão. Hoje em dia, uma secção desta área diz respeito à inovação nas aplicações com recurso a Veículos aéreos não tripulados. A maioria dos métodos tradicionais usados por agricultores são ineficientes e não auxiliam nem a evolução nem a resolução destes problemas. Contudo, existem algumas áreas científicas que permitem a evoluçao de algumos métodos agrículas, estas áreas são os Sistemas Ciber-Físicos e a Computação na Nuvem. Dadas as suas capacidades tais como a vigilância e mapeamento aéreo, certos Sistemas Ciber-Físicos como os Veículos aéreos não tripulados estão a ser usados para monitorizar vastas culturas de forma a recolher dados que levariam muito mais tempo caso fossem recolhidos manualmente. No entanto, estes sistemas geralmente não detêm grandes capacidades de computação e armazenamento, o que significa que muitos dos dados recolhidos não podem ser armazenados e analisados localmente. É aí que a Computação na Nuvem é útil, com a possibilidade de enviar estes dados para uma nuvem, é possível aproveitar o enorme poder de computação e os recursos de armazenamento dos datacenters remotos para armazenar e analisar estes conjuntos de dados. Esta dissertação propõe uma arquitetura para este caso de uso ao fazer uso das vantagens da Computação na Nuvem de forma a combater os obstáculos dos Veículos aéreos não tripulados. Além disso, esta dissertação é também uma colaboração com um projecto Europeu Horizonte 2020 na área da Agricultura de alta precisão com recurso a Veículos aéreos não tripulados

A Beginner\u27s Guide to Scala, Object Orientation and Functional Programming

Scala is now an established programming language developed by Martin Oderskey and his team at the EPFL. The name Scala is derived from Sca(lable) La(nguage). Scala is a multi-paradigm language, incorporating object oriented approaches with functional programming. Although some familiarity with standard computing concepts is assumed (such as the idea of compiling a program and executing this compiled from etc.) and with basic procedural language concepts (such as variables and allocation of values to these variables) the early chapters of the book do not assume any familiarity with object orientation nor with functional programming These chapters also step through other concepts with which the reader may not be familiar (such as list processing). From this background, the book provides a practical introduction to both object and functional approaches using Scala. These concepts are introduced through practical experience taking the reader beyond the level of the language syntax to the philosophy and practice of object oriented development and functional programming. Students and those actively involved in the software industry will find this comprehensive introduction to Scala invaluable

Dataset for Automated Fact Checking in Czech Language

Naše práce prozkoumává existující datové sady pro úlohu automatického faktického ověřování textového tvrzení a navrhuje dvě metody jejich získávání v Českém jazyce. Nejprve předkládá rozsáhlý dataset FEVER CS se 127K anotovaných tvrzení pomocí strojového překladu datové sady v angličtině. Poté navrhuje sadu anotačních experimentů pro sběr nativního českého datasetu nad znalostní bází archivu ČTK a provádí ji se skupinou 163 studentů FSV UK, se ziskem 3,295 křížově anotovaných tvrzení s čtyřcestnou Fleissovou Kappa-shodou 0.63. Dále demonstruje vhodnost datové sady pro trénování modelů pro klasifikaci inference v přirozeném jazyce natrénováním modelu XLM-RoBERTa dosahujícího 85.5% mikro-F1 přesnosti v úloze klasifikace pravdivosti tvrzení z textového kontextu.Our work examines the existing datasets for the task of automated fact-verification of textual claims and proposes two methods of their acquisition in the low-resource Czech language. It first delivers a large-scale FEVER CS dataset of 127K annotated claims by applying the Machine Translation methods to a dataset available in English. It then designs a set of human-annotation experiments for collecting a novel dataset in Czech, using the ČTK Archive corpus for a knowledge base, and conducts them with a group of 163 students of FSS CUNI, yielding a dataset of 3,295 cross-annotated claims with a 4-way Fleiss' Kappa-agreement of 0.63. It then proceeds to show the eligibility of the dataset for training the Czech Natural Language Inference models, training an XLM-RoBERTa model scoring 85.5% micro-F1 in the task of classifying the claim veracity given textual evidence