Two case studies on generating administrative process applications with AdminDSL

Some organizations end up reimplementing the same class of business process over and over: an "administrative process", which consists of managing a form through several states and involving various roles in the organization. This results in wasted time that could be dedicated to better understanding the process or dealing with the fine details that are specific to the process. Existing virtual office solutions require specific training and infrastructure andmay result in vendor lock-in. In this paper, we propose using a high-level domain-specific language (AdminDSL) to describe the administrative process and a separate code generator targeting a standard web framework. We have implemented the approach using Xtext, EGL and the Django web framework, and we illustrate it through two case studies: a synthetic examination process which illustrates the architecture of the generated code, and a real-world workplace survey process that identified several future avenues for improvement

Inference of performance annotations in web service composition models

High-quality services must keep working reliably and efficiently, and service compositions are no exception. As they integrate several internal and external services over the network, they need to be carefully designed to meet their performance requirements. Current approaches assist developers in estimating whether the selected services can fulfill those requirements. However, they do not help developers define requirements for services lacking performance constraints and historical data. Manually estimating these constraints is a time-consuming process which might underestimate or overestimate the required performance, incurring in additional costs. This work presents the first version of two algorithms which infer the missing performance constraints from a service composition model. The algorithms are designed to spread equally the load across the composition according to the probability and frequency each service is invoked, and to check the consistency of the performance constraints of each service with those of the composition

Type Ia supernovae: Can Coriolis force break the symmetry of the gravitational confined detonation explosion mechanism?

© 2016. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.. Currently the number of models aimed at explaining the phenomena of type Ia supernovae is high and distinguishing between them is a must. In this work we explore the influence of rotation on the evolution of the nuclear flame that drives the explosion in the so-called gravitational confined detonation models. Assuming that the flame starts in a pointlike region slightly above the center of the white dwarf (WD) and adding a moderate amount of angular velocity to the star we follow the evolution of the deflagration using a smoothed particle hydrodynamics code. We find that the results are very dependent on the angle between the rotational axis and the line connecting the initial bubble of burned material with the center of the WD at the moment of ignition. The impact of rotation is larger for angles close to 90° because the Coriolis force on a floating element of fluid is maximum and its principal effect is to break the symmetry of the deflagration. Such symmetry breaking weakens the convergence of the nuclear flame at the antipodes of the initial ignition volume, changing the environmental conditions around the convergence region with respect to non-rotating models. These changes seem to disfavor the emergence of a detonation in the compressed volume at the antipodes and may compromise the viability of the so-called gravitational confined detonation mechanism.Postprint (author's final draft

GiGAn: evolutionary mutation testing for C++ object-oriented systems

The reduction of the expenses of mutation testing should be based on well-studied cost reduction techniques to avoid biased results. Evolutionary Mutation Testing (EMT) aims at generating a reduced set of mutants by means of an evolutionary algorithm, which searches for potentially equivalent and difficult to kill mutants to help improve the test suite. However, there is little evidence of its applicability to other contexts beyond WS-BPEL compositions. This study explores its performance when applied to C++ object-oriented programs thanks to a newly developed system, GiGAn. The conducted experiments reveal that EMT shows stable behavior in all the case studies, where the best results are obtained when a low percentage of the mutants is generated. They also support previous studies of EMT when compared to random mutant selection, reinforcing its use for the goal of improving the fault detection capability of the test suite

Class mutation operators for C++ object-oriented systems

Mutation testing is a fault injection testing technique around which a great variety of studies and tools for different programming languages have been developed. Nevertheless, the mutation testing research with respect to C++ is pending. This paper proposes a set of class mutation operators related to this language and its particular object-oriented (OO) features. In addition, an implementation technique to apply mutation testing based on the traversal of the abstract syntax tree (AST) is presented. Finally, an experiment is conducted to study the operator behaviour with different C++ programs, suggesting their usefulness in the creation of complete test suites. The analysis includes a Web service (WS) library, one of the domains where this technique can prove useful, considering its challenging testing phase and that C++ is still a reference language for critical distributed systems WS

The impact of immigration on the financial- actuarial of the spanish pension system sustainability

En los últimos años una parte importante del esfuerzo investigador se ha centrado en analizar las interrelaciones entre la inmigración y la sostenibilidad del sistema de pensiones español. La mayoría de las investigaciones publicadas estudian el impacto de la inmigración desde un enfoque puro de caja, es decir, comparando sus flujos anuales de pensiones y cotizaciones. La principal aportación de este trabajo es que, a diferencias de estudios anteriores, el análisis se realiza desde un punto de vista actuarial ya que el objetivo es comprobar si existe un adecuado equilibrio financiero-actuarial entre las aportaciones que realizan los inmigrantes a lo largo de su vida laboral y las prestaciones que percibirán después de jubilarse. Para ello, se utilizarán una serie de indicadores entre los cuales destaca el tanto interno de rendimiento. Los datos del estudio empírico proceden de la MCVL del año 2008. Los resultados obtenidos indican que la inmigración está lejos de ser la solución para la sostenibilidad de las pensiones en el largo plazo.In recent years an important part of the research effort has focused on analyzing the interrelationships between immigration and the sustainability of the spanish pension system. The majority of published researches study the impact of immigration from a pure cash approach, i.e., comparing their annual pensions and contributions flows. The main contribution of this work is that, unlike previous studies, testing is performed from an actuarial point of view since the objective is to see if there was a proper financial-actuarial balance between contributions made by immigrants throughout their working lives and benefits which will receive after retirement. To do this, a series of indicators among them both inside the performance will be used. The data of the empirical study comes from the MCVL of the year 2008. The results obtained indicate that immigration is far from being the solution for the sustainability of pensions in the long term

Mutation-inspired symbolic execution for software testing

Software testing is a complex and costly stage during the software development lifecycle. Nowadays, there is a wide variety of solutions to reduce testing costs and improve test quality. Focussing on test case generation, Dynamic Symbolic Execution (DSE) is used to generate tests with good structural coverage. Regarding test suite evaluation, Mutation Testing (MT) assesses the detection capability of the test cases by introducing minor localised changes that resemble real faults. DSE is however known to produce tests that do not have good mutation detection capabilities: in this paper, the authors set out to solve this by combining DSE and MT into a new family of approaches that the authors call Mutation-Inspired Symbolic Execution (MISE). First, this known result on a set of open source programs is confirmed: DSE by itself is not good at killing mutants, detecting only 59.9% out of all mutants. The authors show that a direct combination of DSE and MT (naive MISE) can produce better results, detecting up to 16% more mutants depending on the programme, though at a high computational cost. To reduce these costs, the authors set out a roadmap for more efficient versions of MISE, gaining its advantages while avoiding a large part of its additional costs

Propuesta metodológica para la implementación de una arquitectura orientada a servicios en entornos de Sistemas de Fabricación Distribuida

Los Sistemas de Fabricación de Siguiente Generación, concebidos por la organización IMS (Intelligent Manufacturing Systems), cubrirán la demanda de un mercado cada vez más cambiante y exigente, reuniendo de forma dinámica las funciones de múltiples sistemas internos y externos a la propia empresa de fabricación en lo que conocemos por una empresa extendida. Sin embargo, resulta difícil estructurar estos sistemas para conseguir la flexibilidad deseada y la interoperabilidad con los de las demás organizaciones. Además, un defecto en el sistema tendría un fuerte impacto: afectaría no sólo a la empresa propietaria del sistema, sino también a sus colaboradores. Por estas razones, creemos que una buena decisión sería emplear una arquitectura orientada a servicios diseñada siguiendo una metodología que adopte los servicios como concepto central, en vez de como un detalle de implementación. Para que la arquitectura sea fiable en su conjunto, tendrá que ayudar a localizar errores antes de que sucedan en un entorno de producción. En este artículo proponemos el uso de técnicas de pruebas específicas para este tipo de sistemas, realizamos una comparación de las metodologías existentes para el desarrollo de arquitecturas orientadas a servicios y esbozamos una serie de extensiones sobre una de las existentes para integrar técnicas de prueba.As envisioned by the IMS (Intelligent Manufacturing Systems), Next Generation Manufacturing Systems will satisfy the needs of an increasingly fast-paced and demanding market by dynamically integrating systems from inside and outside the manufacturing firm itself into a so-called extended enterprise. However, organizing these systems to ensure the maximum flexibility and interoperability with those from other organizations is difficult. Additionally, a defect in the system would have a great impact: it would affect not only its owner, but also its partners. For these reasons, we argue that a service-oriented architecture (SOA) would be a good candidate. It should be designed following a methodology where services play a central role, instead of being an implementation detail. In order for the architecture to be reliable enough as a whole, the methodology will need to help find errors before they arise in a production environment. In this paper we propose using SOA-specific testing techniques, compare some of the existing SOA methodologies and outline several extensions upon one of them to integrate testing techniques

Creencias populares sobre la menstruación y el trabajo

La menstruación sigue siendo vivida aún hoy por muchas mujeres como trauma, ya que todavía existen creencias populares en torno a la misma que pueden llegar a actuar como modificadores de la conducta. Quizás porque los mitos han dotado a la mujer menstruante con toda clase de poderes sobrenaturales, desde curativos hasta destructivos. El hecho de que durante ese periodo se les privase de acceso a ciertas actividades tuvo múltiples efectos, tanto estigmatizantes como terapéuticos, condicionados por la vivencia negativa que obliga a las mujeres a esconder la existencia del flujo menstruante porque se consideraba que era sucio, impuro o tóxico. En esta investigación se ha planteado conocer las creencias populares de las mujeres relacionadas con la menstruación y con el trabajo. El enfoque ha sido el conocimiento de estas creencias y de sus prácticas desde el punto de vista de las propias mujeres. Al ser, por esta razón, un estudio subjetivista la metodología elegida ha sido la cualitativa, con el objetivo de descubrir cuáles son sus creencias, practicas, recursos fortalezas y estrategias

An Optimization Approach to Eliminate Crosstalk in Zero-Potential Circuits for Reading Resistive Sensor Arrays

Crosstalk is a well-known problem in resistive sensor arrays (RSAs). The zero-potential method (ZPM) is a commonly used readout circuit that uses multiplexers and demultiplexers to reduce the main sources of crosstalk. However, the internal resistors of these switches cause a secondary crosstalk in the RSA that alters the RSA sensor values read. The solution to the effects of this secondary crosstalk is still a case of study. In previous literature, these resistances have been considered as known and, in most cases, equal for all switch channels. However, in a real situation, they are unknown and may vary between channels. In this work, a least-squares (LSQR) method is presented to obtain the true values of the switches from the read voltage signals. Calibration columns are added to the RSA for this purpose. To prove the performance of the method proposed, several simulations have been carried out with different values of RSA sensors, switch resistances, size of the RSA, and noise level. Results show that the proposed LSQR method allows obtaining simultaneously accurate values for both the RSA sensors and switch internal resistors. In this way, the problem of secondary crosstalk is neutralized. It also shows better performance when compared with existing approaches