UNDERSTANDING THE SOCIO-TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF LOW-CODE ADOPTION FOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

The digital transformation of organizations’ leverages several approaches for creating software applications that meet the requirements of the specific context. Besides well-researched approaches like software development, outsourcing, or customizing commercial software packages, low-code platforms today offer a new approach for creating software. The low-code approach allows to develop software without or with limited actual coding, but by combining executable software components into workflows. While the low-code approach simplifies software development and offers a reduction in effort and time, we lack explanations on why organizations adopt it, and which challenges are associated with this adoption. We, therefore, investigate the adoption of the low-code approach based on the technology-organization-environment framework. We identified ten aspects supporting and six aspects hindering the adoption of the low-code approach. For practice, we propose a model that can assist organizations in determining the adequacy for adopting the low-code approach

The Low-Code Phenomenon: Mapping the Intellectual Structure of Research

The term low-code has been closely associated with simplifying and accelerating software development. Driven by the idea that low-code can help to meet the increased digitalization demands, the low-code phenomenon is rising in academia and industry. This resulted in an immense increase in publications on low-code, posing the question of what research streams characterize the low-code literature. Conducting bibliometric analysis on 725 articles, we unpack the intellectual structure of low-code literature and uncover how it relates to other research fields. Our contribution is to clarify the conceptual understanding of low-code by identifying six research streams, namely, origins of low-code within software engineering (SE), low-code as an enabler for emerging SE trends, workplace transformation, establishing low-code methodologies, understanding low-code adoption and leveraging low-code for digital transformation. We conclude with future research directions that still need to be explored within the low-code literature

The Low-Code Phenomenon: Mapping the Intellectual Structure of Research

The term low-code has been closely associated with simplifying and accelerating software development. Driven by the idea that low-code can help to meet the increased digitalization demands, the low-code phenomenon is rising in academia and industry. This resulted in an immense increase in publications on low-code, posing the question of what research streams characterize the low-code literature. Conducting bibliometric analysis on 725 articles, we unpack the intellectual structure of low-code literature and uncover how it relates to other research fields. Our contribution is to clarify the conceptual understanding of low-code by identifying six research streams, namely, origins of low-code within software engineering (SE), low-code as an enabler for emerging SE trends, workplace transformation, establishing low-code methodologies, understanding low-code adoption and leveraging low-code for digital transformation. We conclude with future research directions that still need to be explored within the low-code literature

Antioxidants: Natural Antibiotics

The aim of this current piece of writing is to draw the attention of readers and researchers toward the natural antioxidants that can take the place of synthetic antibiotics to avoid bacterial resistance and gastrotoxicity/nephrotoxicity. Antioxidants such as polyphenols, vitamins, and carotenoids are the organic compounds mainly extracted from natural sources and dominantly involved in boosting the defense system of organisms. The main public health-related issue over the globe is ever-growing bacterial resistance to synthetic antibiotics, which is being continuously reported during the last decade. Further, the pipeline of the development of new synthetic antibacterial agents to replace the resistant antibiotics in clinical set-up is gradually drying up. This scenario originated the concept to revive the interest toward natural antibacterial products due to their chemical diversity, which provide important therapeutic effect and make the microbes unable to copy them for creating resistance. Natural products, especially polyphenols had been seen in antioxidant, antibacterial, anticancer, anti-inflammation, and antiviral activities with encouraging results. In this chapter, we will focus over the role of natural antioxidants as antibacterial agents

The good, the bad and the ugly:a study of security decisions in a cyber-physical systems game

Stakeholders' security decisions play a fundamental role in determining security requirements, yet, little is currently understood about how different stakeholder groups within an organisation approach security and the drivers and tacit biases underpinning their decisions. We studied and contrasted the security decisions of three demographics -- security experts, computer scientists and managers -- when playing a tabletop game that we designed and developed. The game tasks players with managing the security of a cyber-physical environment while facing various threats. Analysis of 12 groups of players (4 groups in each of our demographics) reveals strategies that repeat in particular demographics, e.g., managers and security experts generally favoring technological solutions over personnel training, which computer scientists preferred. Surprisingly, security experts were not ipso facto better players -- in some cases, they made very questionable decisions -- yet they showed a higher level of confidence in themselves. We classified players' decision-making processes, i.e., procedure-, experience-, scenario- or intuition-driven. We identified decision patterns, both good practices and typical errors and pitfalls. Our game provides a requirements sandbox in which players can experiment with security risks, learn about decision-making and its consequences, and reflect on their own perception of security

An evaluation of aspect oriented testing techniques

Aspect oriented programming (R.T. Alexander, et al) promises to enhance software quality by increasing the cohesion of classes and localizing both core and crosscutting concerns. The quality of software, however, can only be validated by testing the software. Testing aspect oriented programs remains just as important as testing any other software. This paper presents an analysis of the testing strategies for AOPs. Three testing strategies have been examined and their effectiveness is measured in terms of their ability to find different kind of faults as described in a fault model by R.T. Alexander, et al. Based on this analysis, conclusions have been drawn about the current state of the research in the testing of aspect oriented programs and future directions have been explored

Evaluation of Prevalence Patterns of Dengue Fever in Lahore District through Geo-Spatial Techniques

Dengue and its impacts are growing environmental, economic and health concerns in Lahore. Disease pattern is important to know for better control and effective management, GIS is one of the tested tools and quite efficient for this purpose. In this study, firstly month-wise dengue cases mapping for seven consecutive years (2007-2013) is performed in order to reveal temporal or seasonal pattern of dengue disease in Lahore district. Then a composite analysis was conducted using Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) technique in order to show dengue most affected locations (towns) and in this analysis, all cases of the study period (2007-2013) were appended and visualized by IDW. Temporally, September (6548 cases) was the most dengue affected month of all years whereas February (4 cases) was marked as least affected throughout the dengue incidence period. Endemic Foci is noticed in 2011 most affected months. This cluster of disease is agglomerated near Ravi River and Densely Populated Towns, which further aggravated the incidence of dengue in economically deprived areas. Data Gunj Baksh town was the most affected town and IDW results showed that this town is composite endemic foci where cases were agglomerated most frequently. The reason of prevalence in this town would possibly be due to its more density of population and proximity of Ravi River