Guest editors' introduction

AbstractThis special issue collects 5 contributions that are substantially revised and extended versions of papers that appeared in the conference proceedings of ICPC 2008 — The 16th IEEE International Conference on Program Comprehension. In this introduction of the special issue, we briefly summarize the mission of the ICPC conference series, report on the actual conference event, and characterize the collected contributions

Relation algebra with multi-relation

This report proposes a theory of multi-relations, which are similar to normal mathematical relations, except for the fact that each tuple has a given multiplicity. It is shown that most of the set-oriented operations on relations, such as union and intersection can be generalised (in the same way in which sets can be generalised to multisets). The typical relational operations of composition and transposition and the theory of ‘lifting’ can be generalised too. Several alternative representations are discussed, including ternary relations, and multisets of tuples. Multi-relations can be visualised as directed graphs where each edge is labeled with a number. Alternatively, the multiplicity could be visualised by giving the edge a certain thickness. The approach is helpful in situations where one is not satisfied with the knowledge that there is a certain connection ('uses', 'calls'etc.) between two units (components, modules, processes), but where one wants to have quantitative information on how many sub-connections exist

Software engineering technology innovation - Turning research results into industrial success

This paper deals with the innovation of software engineering technologies. These technologies are methods and tools for conducting software development and maintenance. We consider innovation as a process consisting of two phases, being technology creation and technology transfer. In this paper, we focus mainly on the transfer phase. Technology transfer is of mutual interest to both academia and industry. Transfer is important for academia, because it shows the industrial relevance of their research results to, for example, their sponsoring authorities. Showing the industrial applicability of research results is sometimes referred to as valorization of research. Nowadays, valorization is often required by research funding bodies. The transfer is important for industries, because innovating their development processes and their products is supportive in gaining a competitive edge or remaining competitive in their business. We describe the technology transfer phase by means of three activities: technology evaluation, technology engineering, and technology embedding. The technology evaluation activity is perceived as the main gate between the technology creation phase and the technology transfer phase. With two case studies, originating from the Dutch high-tech systems industry, we will illustrate the activities in the transfer phase. In addition to the process we will also define the main roles in a software engineering technology innovation, namely: the technology provider (academic research, industrial research and technology vendor) and the technology receiver (industrial development). With those roles we also address the issues concerning the ownership of technologies. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved