Interactive User-Oriented Views for Better Understanding Software Systems

Abstract Understanding software artefacts is a crucial task for people who want to participate in any software development process. However, because of the large amount of detailed and scattered information in software artefacts, understanding them is usually time-consuming and vulnerable to human errors and subjectivities. A system that aids practitioners to investigate understanding about software artefacts could reduce the vulnerabilities and speed up software development/maintenance process. Our research focuses on building a comprehensive view of software system in order for developers to achieve the two goals: (i) to save the time spending on searching and navigating on source code; and (ii) to gain better understanding about software artefacts regarding to domain-specific tasks. To achieve these goals, we propose an emprical approach in which the visualisation and the generation of high-level design and architectural views from source code and design documentations have been played central roles. The research is on-going and could potentially be extended to di↵erent software artefacts (such as requirements, use-cases, test-cases, revision logs)

A Vision on a New Generation of Software Design Environments (Empirical Theory)

Abstract-In this paper we explain our vision for a new generation of software design environments. We aim to generalize existing software development tools in several key ways -which include: integration of rigorous and informal notations, and support for multiple modes of interaction. We describe how we can consolidate the environment by integrating it with other software engineering tools. Furthermore, we describe some methods which could permit the environment to provide a flexible collaborative medium and have a practical and inspiring user experience. Index Terms-software engineering, modeling tools, collaborative design, IDE

Ready for Prime Time, - Yes, Industrial-Grade Modelling Tools can be Used in Education

It has been stated that industrial-grade modelling tools are unsuit- able for teaching modelling. In this paper, we present our experience with a university course on software modelling. In the first year of the course, we used a commercial modelling tool, in the second year the open- source alternative Papyrus. Both tools are considered to be of industrial grade and used in industry. Our quantitative analysis shows that the industrial-grade modelling tools with all their complexity did not have a negative impact on the students’ experience of modelling. This shows that industrial-grade modelling tools can be used in the classroom. We analyse why our experience differs from published accounts and conclude that the availability of a tool champion and tailored instruction mate- rial is key. From this, we derive recommendations for teacher support from tool-providers (vendors and open source), research directions for researchers and teachers, and for training efforts in the industry

A Method for the Design of Parallel Algorithms A Case Study: Solving Triangular Systems

This paper illustrates a method for the design of parallel programs that is based on the separation of computation and coordination. We use Gamma programs to specify computations and show how to prove their corr ectness using a UNITYlike programming logic. A separate coordinationlanguage is used to determine behavioural aspects of the program. We illustr ate how behaviour can be structured through a process of suc cessive stepwise refinements. R easoning ab out refinement is supported formally by two types of simulation. As an illustration of our method we study the problem of solving triangular systems of linear equations. F or this problem we derive a number of known algorithms and show how they are relate d by our refinement ordering