Enhancing Interaction Flow Modeling Language Metamodels for Designing Features of Rich Internet Applications

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) became to standard of interactive web applications on the internet fastly. It is a complex application with a rich user interface that distributed the data between client and server also allowing an asynchronous communication between them, but web engineering methods are not able to design and implement these features impeccably. The recent web engineering method is Interaction Flow Modeling Language (IFML) which adopted by Object Management Group (OMG). It has many features for developing interactions in web application compared with other web engineering methods but also has limitation for designing RIA features. In this paper, we enhance IFML method through extension the metamodels by using UML extension mechanism, in which, we define new IFML metamodel and some new elements to cope RIA features designing in data distribution between client and server. The results show that this enhancement enables IFML to develop the new types of web applications efficiently

Comparative analysis of interaction flow modeling language tools

Modeling approaches based on standards are of paramount importance in the field of front-end design for web and mobile applications. Problems are often encountered during the selection of tools for designing applications for developers and researchers, particularly applications that are related to time and cost in the market and academia. The Interaction Flow Modeling Language (IFML) is a recently standardized modeling language designed for managing the content expression, user interaction and behavior control of front-end applications. IFML brings several benefits to the development process of web and mobile front-end applications. Thus, several tools have been developed for the exploitation of technical artifacts offered by current specifications. In this study, we discuss the tools proposed for modeling IFML to provide a comparative analysis while considering various criteria. The result can be used as a basis of tool selection for specific aspects

Preventing enterprise resource planning failure through an enhanced approach to solve ineffective communication

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a widely known type of software that eases the managerial aspect in enterprises. It increases their efficiency and productivity which helps them to exponentially grow in a short span of time compared to organizations that are not using it. However, as much as productive it is, implementing it does not often succeed. Majority of ERP implementations ends up failing due to different types of factors. Spotting the light on technical aspects showed that several factors contribute to this failure. Starting from pre-implementation phase with Business Process Reengineering (BPR) execution failure, or during the implementation phase due to miscommunication or incapable project members. The research amount in this field, particularly in critical failure factors is not sufficient to learn from and avoid future implementations, hence this topic provides insights about this specific issue. Quantitative method is used to analyse the data collected from a survey questionnaire for those who got involved in ERP or BPR implementations. The research process goes through objectives from problem identification to an in-detail explanation about its causes and effects, to how it is going to be addressed, how the data is going to be collected and analysed, and finally the proposed approach with a technical evaluation for it. The final objective of the research results in developing an approach that minimises the negative contribution of two failure factors, poor BPR and ineffective communication on the mentioned implementations, or prevent them entirely. The reason these two were chosen were due to their high occurrence frequency and lack of research regarding why they are considered failure factors. Concluding the research, the mentioned enhanced approach is being evaluated showing its potential to solve these factors, as they are relying on each other, with additional suggestions to further improve the approach in future work

Enhancing similarity distances using mandatory and optional forearly fault detection

Software Product Line (SPL) describes procedures, techniques, and tools in software engineering by using a common method of production for producing a group of software systems that identical from a shared set of software assets. In SPL, the similarity-based prioritization can resemble combinatorial interaction testing in scalable and efficient way by choosing and prioritize configurations that most dissimilar. However, the similarity distances in SPL still not so much cover the basic detail of feature models which are the notations. Plus, the configurations always have been prioritized based on domain knowledge but not much attention has been paid to feature model notations. In this paper, we proposed the usage of mandatory and optional notations for similarity distances. The objective is to improve the average percentage of faults detected (APFD). We investigate four different distances and make modifications on the distances to increase APFD value. These modifications are the inclusion of mandatory and optional notations with the similarity distances. The results are the APFD values for all the similarity distances including the original and modified similarity distances. Overall, the results shown that by subtracting the optional notation value can increase the APFD by 3.71% from the original similarity distance

Strategy for scalable scenarios modeling and calculation in early software reliability engineering

System scenarios derived from requirements specification play an important role in the early software reliability engineering. A great deal of research effort has been devoted to predict reliability of a system at early design stages. The existing approaches are unable to handle scalability and calculation of scenarios reliability for large systems. This paper proposes modeling of scenarios in a scalable way by using a scenario language that describes system scenarios in a compact and concise manner which can results in a reduced number of scenarios. Furthermore, it proposes a calculation strategy to achieve better traceability of scenarios, and avoid computational complexity. The scenarios are pragmatically modeled and translated to finite state machines, where each state machine represents the behaviour of component instance within the scenario. The probability of failure of each component exhibited in the scenario is calculated separately based on the finite state machines. Finally, the reliability of the whole scenario is calculated based on the components’ behaviour models and their failure information using modified mathematical formula. In this paper, an example related to a case study of an automated railcar system is used to verify and validate the proposed strategy for scalability of system modeling

Test case prioritization approaches in regression testing: A systematic literature review

Context Software quality can be assured by going through software testing process. However, software testing phase is an expensive process as it consumes a longer time. By scheduling test cases execution order through a prioritization approach, software testing efficiency can be improved especially during regression testing. Objective It is a notable step to be taken in constructing important software testing environment so that a system's commercial value can increase. The main idea of this review is to examine and classify the current test case prioritization approaches based on the articulated research questions. Method Set of search keywords with appropriate repositories were utilized to extract most important studies that fulfill all the criteria defined and classified under journal, conference paper, symposiums and workshops categories. 69 primary studies were nominated from the review strategy. Results There were 40 journal articles, 21 conference papers, three workshop articles, and five symposium articles collected from the primary studies. As for the result, it can be said that TCP approaches are still broadly open for improvements. Each approach in TCP has specified potential values, advantages, and limitation. Additionally, we found that variations in the starting point of TCP process among the approaches provide a different timeline and benefit to project manager to choose which approaches suite with the project schedule and available resources. Conclusion Test case prioritization has already been considerably discussed in the software testing domain. However, it is commonly learned that there are quite a number of existing prioritization techniques that can still be improved especially in data used and execution process for each approach

StakeMeter: value-based stakeholder identification and quantification framework for value-based software systems

Value-based requirements engineering plays a vital role in the development of value-based software (VBS). Stakeholders are the key players in the requirements engineering process, and the selection of critical stakeholders for the VBS systems is highly desirable. Based on the stakeholder requirements, the innovative or value-based idea is realized. The quality of the VBS system is associated with the concrete set of valuable requirements, and the valuable requirements can only be obtained if all the relevant valuable stakeholders participate in the requirements elicitation phase. The existing value-based approaches focus on the design of the VBS systems. However, the focus on the valuable stakeholders and requirements is inadequate. The current stakeholder identification and quantification (SIQ) approaches are neither state-of-the-art nor systematic for the VBS systems. The existing approaches are time-consuming, complex and inconsistent which makes the initiation process difficult. Moreover, the main motivation of this research is that the existing SIQ approaches do not provide the low level implementation details for SIQ initiation and stakeholder metrics for quantification. Hence, keeping in view the existing SIQ problems, this research contributes in the form of a new SIQ framework called 'StakeMeter'. The StakeMeter framework is verified and validated through case studies. The proposed framework provides low-level implementation guidelines, attributes, metrics, quantification criteria and application procedure as compared to the other methods. The proposed framework solves the issues of stakeholder quantification or prioritization, higher time consumption, complexity, and process initiation. The framework helps in the selection of highly critical stakeholders for the VBS systems with less judgmental error