Towards an Approach for Applying Early Testing to Smart Contracts

Immutability -  the ability for a Blockchain (BC) Ledger to remain an unalterable, permanent and indelible history of transactions - is a feature that is highlighted as a key benefit of BC. This ability is very important when several companies work collaboratively to achieve common objectives. This collaboration is usually represented by using business process models. BC is considered as a suitable technology to reduce the complexity of designing these collaborative processes using Smart Contracts. This paper discusses how to combine Model-based Software Development, modelling techniques, such as use cases models and activity diagram models based on Unified Model Languages (UML) in order to simplify and improve the modelling, management and execution of collaborative business processes between multiple companies in the BC network. This paper includes the neccessity of using transformation protocols to obtain Smart Contract code. In addition, it presents systematic mechanisms to evaluate and validate Smart Contract, applying early testing techniques, before deploying the Smart Contract code in the BC network.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2016-76956-C3-2-R (POLOLAS

Tracing the Scenarios in Scenario-Based Product Design: a study to support scenario generation

Scenario-based design originates from the human-computer interaction and\ud software engineering disciplines, and continues to be adapted for product development. Product development differs from software development in the former’s more varied context of use, broader characteristics of users and more tangible solutions. The possible use of scenarios in product design is therefore broader and more challenging. Existing design methods that involve scenarios can be employed in many different stages of the product design process. However, there is no proficient overview that discusses a\ud scenario-based product design process in its full extent. The purposes of creating scenarios and the evolution of scenarios from their original design data are often not obvious, although the results from using scenarios are clearly visible. Therefore, this paper proposes to classify possible scenario uses with their purpose, characteristics and supporting design methods. The classification makes explicit different types of scenarios and their relation to one another. Furthermore, novel scenario uses can be referred or added to the classification to develop it in parallel with the scenario-based design\ud practice. Eventually, a scenario-based product design process could take inspiration for creating scenarios from the classification because it provides detailed characteristics of the scenario

Semi-automatic assessment of students' graph-based diagrams

Diagrams are increasingly used in many design methods, and are being taught in a variety of contexts in higher education such as database conceptual design or software design in computer science. They are an important part of many assessments. Currently computer aided assessments are widely used for multiple choice questions. They lack the ability to assess a student’s knowledge in a more comprehensive way, which is required for diagram-type student work. The aim of this research is to develop a semi-automatic assessment framework, which enables the use of computer to support the assessment process of diagrammatic solutions, with the focus of ensuring the consistency of grades and feedback on solutions. A novel trace model, that captures design traces of student solutions, was developed as a part of the framework and was used to provide the matching criteria for grouping the solutions. A new marking style, partial marking, was developed to mark these solution groups manually. The Case-Based Reasoning method is utilised in the framework to mark some of the groups automatically. A guideline for scenario writing was proposed to increase the efficiency of automatic marking. A prototype diagram editor, a marking tool and scenario writing environment were implemented for the proposed framework in order to demonstrate proof of concept. The results of experiments show that the framework is feasible to use in the formative assessment and it provides consistent marking and personalised feedback to the students. The framework also has the potential to significantly reduce the time and effort required by the examiner to mark student diagrams. Although the constructed framework was specifically used for the assessment of database diagrams, the framework is generic enough to be used for other types of graph-based diagram

Semi-Automatic assessment of students' graph-based diagrams

Diagrams are increasingly used in many design methods, and are being taught in a variety of contexts in higher education such as database conceptual design or software design in computer science. They are an important part of many assessments. Currently computer aided assessments are widely used for multiple choice questions. They lack the ability to assess a student's knowledge in a more comprehensive way, which is required for diagram-type student work. The aim of this research is to develop a semi-automatic assessment framework, which enables the use of computer to support the assessment process of diagrammatic solutions, with the focus of ensuring the consistency of grades and feedback on solutions. A novel trace model, that captures design traces of student solutions, was developed as a part of the framework and was used to provide the matching criteria for grouping the solutions. A new marking style, partial marking, was developed to mark these solution groups manually. The Case-Based Reasoning method is utilised in the framework to mark some of the groups automatically. A guideline for scenario writing was proposed to increase the efficiency of automatic marking. A prototype diagram editor, a marking tool and scenario writing environment were implemented for the proposed framework in order to demonstrate proof of concept. The results of experiments show that the framework is feasible to use in the formative assessment and it provides consistent marking and personalised feedback to the students. The framework also has the potential to significantly reduce the time and effort required by the examiner to mark student diagrams. Although the constructed framework was specifically used for the assessment of database diagrams, the framework is generic enough to be used for other types of graph-based diagram.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Writing and Correcting Textual Scenarios for System design

National audienc

Writing and Correcting Textual Scenarios for System Design

Since a few years, scenarios have gained in popularity in Requirements Engineering. Textual scenarios are narrative descriptions of flows of actions between agents. They are often proposed to elicit, validate or document requirements. The CREWS experience has shown that the advantage of scenarios is their easiness of use, and that their disadvantage stands in the lack of guidelines for 'quality' authoring. In this article, we propose guidance for the authoring of scenarios. The guided scenario authoring process is divided into two main stages : the writing of scenarios, and the correcting of scenarios. To guide the writing of scenarios, we provide style and contents guidelines referring to a conceptual and a linguistic model of scenarios. Our assumption is that scenarios written in conformance to these guidelines can be semiautomatically analysed. Else, to guide the correcting of scenarios, we propose a set of enactable rules. These rules aim at the clarification, completion and concep..