SUPPORTING SEARCH FOR REUSABLE SOFTWARE OBJECTS

Software reuse in the presence of a repository and object-based CASE tool is likely to be "biased" Prior research has shown that a developer will be: (1) most likely to reuse her own objects; (2) somewhat less likely to reuse objects developed by her project team members; and, (3) even less likely to reuse objects stored in the repository, but developed elsewhere in the corporation. These biases can result in sub-optimal levels of software reuse. In the presence of such biases it is appropriate to deploy tools that support the search for software reuse, so that developers find it easier to reuse software objects authored by developers other than themselves or project team members. However; the tools that are chosen or created for this purpose must adequately treat the technical and cognitive fundamentals of the problem for individual developers, and recognize the organizational and economic perspectives of a firm that wishes to maximize the business value of its software development activities. In this paper we present a two-stage descriptive model that represents the search process for reusable software objects. We evaluate appropriate technologies, propose a technical solution to the problem of searching for reusable objects, and demonstrate its feasibility via a prototype implementation. The technical tool combines an automated classifier and a hypertext system. We describe an architecture to automatically create hypertext networks based on the classification schema. We illustrate our architecture using a classification of software objects obtained through structured interviews with software developers.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

ON THE NEED FOR TOOLS TO SUPPORT SEARCH IN SOFTWARE REUSE: A Perspective Paper Presented to Seer Technologies, Inc.

Software reuse in the presence of a repository and object-based CASE tool is likely to be "biased." Prior research (Banker, Kauffman and Zweig, 1991) showed that a developer will be: most likely to reuse her own objects; somewhat less likely to reuse objects developed by her project team members; and, even less likely to reuse objects stored in the repository, but developed elsewhere in the corporation. This paper characterizes this problem in terms of three familiarity biases: personal bias, project bias and time bias. In the presence of these biases it is appropriate to deploy tools that support the search for software reuse, so that they may be overcome. However, the tools that are chosen or created for this purpose must adequately treat the technical and cognitive fundamentals for individual developers, and recognize the organizational and economic perspectives of a firm that wishes to maximize the business value of its software development activities.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

SUPPORTING SEARCH FOR REUSABLE SOFTWARE OBJECTS

Software reuse in the presence of a repository and object-based CASE tool is likely to be "biased" Prior research has shown that a developer will be: (1) most likely to reuse her own objects; (2) somewhat less likely to reuse objects developed by her project team members; and, (3) even less likely to reuse objects stored in the repository, but developed elsewhere in the corporation. These biases can result in sub-optimal levels of software reuse. In the presence of such biases it is appropriate to deploy tools that support the search for software reuse, so that developers find it easier to reuse software objects authored by developers other than themselves or project team members. However; the tools that are chosen or created for this purpose must adequately treat the technical and cognitive fundamentals of the problem for individual developers, and recognize the organizational and economic perspectives of a firm that wishes to maximize the business value of its software development activities. In this paper we present a two-stage descriptive model that represents the search process for reusable software objects. We evaluate appropriate technologies, propose a technical solution to the problem of searching for reusable objects, and demonstrate its feasibility via a prototype implementation. The technical tool combines an automated classifier and a hypertext system. We describe an architecture to automatically create hypertext networks based on the classification schema. We illustrate our architecture using a classification of software objects obtained through structured interviews with software developers.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

ON THE NEED FOR TOOLS TO SUPPORT SEARCH IN SOFTWARE REUSE: A Perspective Paper Presented to Seer Technologies, Inc.

Software reuse in the presence of a repository and object-based CASE tool is likely to be "biased." Prior research (Banker, Kauffman and Zweig, 1991) showed that a developer will be: most likely to reuse her own objects; somewhat less likely to reuse objects developed by her project team members; and, even less likely to reuse objects stored in the repository, but developed elsewhere in the corporation. This paper characterizes this problem in terms of three familiarity biases: personal bias, project bias and time bias. In the presence of these biases it is appropriate to deploy tools that support the search for software reuse, so that they may be overcome. However, the tools that are chosen or created for this purpose must adequately treat the technical and cognitive fundamentals for individual developers, and recognize the organizational and economic perspectives of a firm that wishes to maximize the business value of its software development activities.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

TOOLS FOR MANAGING REPOSITORY OBJECTS

Information Systems Working Papers Serie

TOOLS FOR MANAGING REPOSITORY OBJECTS

Information Systems Working Papers Serie

Model inference for spreadsheets

Many errors in spreadsheet formulas can be avoided if spreadsheets are built automati- cally from higher-level models that can encode and enforce consistency constraints in the generated spreadsheets. Employing this strategy for legacy spreadsheets is dificult, because the model has to be reverse engineered from an existing spreadsheet and existing data must be transferred into the new model-generated spreadsheet. We have developed and implemented a technique that automatically infers relational schemas from spreadsheets. This technique uses particularities from the spreadsheet realm to create better schemas. We have evaluated this technique in two ways: First, we have demonstrated its appli- cability by using it on a set of real-world spreadsheets. Second, we have run an empirical study with users. The study has shown that the results produced by our technique are comparable to the ones developed by experts starting from the same (legacy) spreadsheet data. Although relational schemas are very useful to model data, they do not t well spreadsheets as they do not allow to express layout. Thus, we have also introduced a mapping between relational schemas and ClassSheets. A ClassSheet controls further changes to the spreadsheet and safeguards it against a large class of formula errors. The developed tool is a contribution to spreadsheet (reverse) engineering, because it lls an important gap and allows a promising design method (ClassSheets) to be applied to a huge collection of legacy spreadsheets with minimal effort.We would like to thank Orlando Belo for his help on running and analyzing the empirical study. We would also like to thank Paulo Azevedo for his help in conducting the statistical analysis of our empirical study. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions which helped us to improve the paper. This work is funded by ERDF - European Regional Development Fund through the COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) and by National Funds through the FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within project FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-010048. The first author was also supported by FCT grant SFRH/BPD/73358/2010

Patterns of geohelminth infection, impact of albendazole treatment and re-infection after treatment in schoolchildren from rural KwaZulu-Natal/South-Africa

BACKGROUND: Geohelminth infection is a major health problem of children from rural areas of developing countries. In an attempt to reduce this burden, the Department of Health of the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) established in 1998 a programme for helminth control that aimed at regularly treating primary school children for schistosomiasis and intestinal helminths. This article describes the baseline situation and the effect of treatment on geohelminth infection in a rural part of the province. METHODS: Grade 3 schoolchildren from Maputaland in northern KZN were examined for infections with hookworm, Ascaris lumbricoides, and Trichuris trichiura, treated twice with 400 mg albendazole and re-examined several times over one year after the first treatment in order to assess the impact of treatment and patterns of infection and re-infection. RESULTS: The hookworm prevalence in the study population (83.2%) was considerably higher than in other parts of the province whereas T. trichiura and especially A. lumbricoides prevalences (57.2 and 19.4%, respectively) were much lower than elsewhere on the KZN coastal plain. Single dose treatment with albendazole was very effective against hookworm and A. lumbricoides with cure rates (CR) of 78.8 and 96.4% and egg reduction rates (ERR) of 93.2 and 97.7%, respectively. It was exceptionally ineffective against T. trichiura (CR = 12.7%, ERR = 24.8%). Re-infection with hookworm and A. lumbricoides over 29 weeks after treatment was considerable but still well below pre-treatment levels. CONCLUSION: High geohelminth prevalences and re-infection rates in the study population confirm the need for regular treatment of primary school children in the area. The low effectiveness of single course albendazole treatment against T. trichiura infection however demands consideration of alternative treatment approaches

Bright polar mesospheric clouds formed by main engine exhaust from the space shuttle's final launch

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/94747/1/jgrd18009.pd