The GOODSTEP project: General Object-Oriented Database for Software Engineering Processes

The goal of the GOODSTEP project is to enhance and improve the functionality of a fully object-oriented database management system to yield a platform suited for applications such as software development environments (SDEs). The baseline of the project is the O2 database management system (DBMS). The O2 DBMS already includes many of the features regulated by SDEs. The project has identified enhancements to O2 in order to make it a real software engineering DBMS. These enhancements are essentially upgrades of the existing O2 functionality, and hence require relatively easy extensions to the O2 system. They have been developed in the early stages of the project and are now exploited and validated by a number of software engineering tools built on top of the enhanced O2 DBMS. To ease tool construction, the GOODSTEP platform encompasses tool generation capabilities which allow for generation of integrated graphical and textual tools from high-level specifications. In addition, the GOODSTEP platform provides a software process toolset which enables modeling, analysis and enaction of software processes and is also built on top of the extended O2 database. The GOODSTEP platform is to be validated using two CASE studies carried out to develop an airline application and a business application

Automatic absorption lineshape recording device applied to the J: 2 → 3 OCS gas transition

This paper describes an automatic lineshape recording device applied to the study of the rotational molecular transition J: 2 → 3 of OCS gas at 36.489 GHz. The device includes a microwave oversized cell associated with a DC voltage amplifier and a microcontroller stabilizer. It particularly permits the automatic recording of the lineshape with an accuracy better than 1 kHz for the frequency and 1 mV for the voltage. By fitting with a Lorentz or Voigt profile, we directly determine the evolution of the shape, the center frequency, the broadening parameter and the intensity of the line versus the pressure. At low pressure, the Doppler broadening effect has been measured

A Systematic Approach to Express IS Evolution Requirements Using Gap Modelling and Similarity Modelling Techniques

International audienceGaps and similarities are two important concepts used in Information System (IS) projects that deal with the evolution issue. The idea in using these concepts is to analyse what changes or what remains similar between two situations, typically the changed situation and the new one, rather than just describing the new situation. Although in the industry, the daily practice consists in expressing evolution requirements with gaps and similarities, little attention has been paid in research to better systematically define these two kinds of concepts so as to better support the expression of evolution requirements. This paper proposes an approach that combines meta-modelling with generic typologies of gap operators and similarity predicates. Our purpose is not to define yet another requirement modelling language. On the contrary, the two generic typologies can be adapted to existing modelling language such as Use Cases, I* and KAOS goal models, Goal/Strategy maps, Entity-Relationship diagrams, and Workflow models

Supporting flexible object database evolution with aspects

Abstract. Object database management systems (ODBMSs) typically offer fixed approaches to evolve the schema of the database and adapt existing instances accordingly. Applications, however, have very specialised evolution requirements that can often not be met by the fixed approach offered by the ODBMS. In this paper, we discuss how aspect-oriented programming (AOP) has been employed in the AspOEv evolution framework, which supports flexible adaptation and introduction of evolution mechanisms – for dynamic evolution of the schema and adaptation of existing instances – governing an object database. We argue that aspects support flexibility in the framework by capturing crosscutting hot spots (customisation points in the framework) and establishing their causality relationships with the custom evolution approaches. Furthermore, aspects help in information hiding by screening the database programmer from the complexity of the hot spots manipulated by custom evolution mechanisms. They also make it possible to preserve architectural constraints and specify custom version polymorphism policies. 1