A Web-Service Based Approach for Software Sharing

A Web-service based approach is presented which enables geographically dispersed users to share software resources over the Internet. A service-oriented software sharing system has been developed, which consists of shared applications, client applications and three types of services: application proxy service, proxy implementation service and application manager service. With the aids of the services, the client applications interact with the shared applications to implement a software sharing task. The approach satisfies the requirements of copyright protection and reuse of legacy codes. In this paper, the role of Web-services and the architecture of the system are presented first, followed by a case study to illustrate the approach developed.

Managing Software Requirements Changes Based On Negotiation-Style Revision

For any proposed software project, when the software requirements specification has been established, requirements changes may result in not only a modification of the requirements specification but also a series of modifications of all existing artifacts during the development. Then it is necessary to provide effective and flexible requirements changes management. In this paper, we present an approach to managing requirements changes based on Booth’s negotiation-style framework for belief revision. Informally, we consider the current requirements specification as a belief set about the system-to-be. The request of requirements change is viewed as new information about the same system-to-be. Then the process of executing the requirements change is a process of revising beliefs about the system-to-be. We design a family of belief negotiation models appropriate for different processes of requirements revision, including the setting of the request of requirements change being fully accepted, the setting of the current requirements specification being fully preserved, and that of the current specification and the request of requirements change reaching a compromise. In particular, the prioritization of requirements plays an important role in reaching an agreement in each belief negotiation model designed in this paper.

Assessing software upgrades, plan properties and patient geometry using intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) complexity metrics

Purpose: The aim of this study is to compare the sensitivity of different metrics to detect differences in complexity of intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) plans following upgrades, changes to planning parameters, and patient geometry. Correlations between complexity metrics are also assessed.