Improving data perturbation testing techniques for Web services

The widespread use of service-oriented architectures (SOAs) and Web services in commercial software requires the adoption of development techniques to ensure the quality of Web services. Testing techniques and tools concern quality and play a critical role in accomplishing quality of SOA based systems. Existing techniques and tools for traditional systems are not appropriate to these new systems, making the development of Web services testing techniques and tools required. This article presents new testing techniques to automatically generate a set of test cases and data for Web services. The techniques presented here explore data perturbation of Web services messages upon data types, integrity and consistency. To support these techniques, a tool (GenAutoWS) was developed and applied to real problems. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Photometric redshifts and k-corrections for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7

We present a catalogue of galaxy photometric redshifts and k-corrections for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 (SDSS-DR7), available on the World Wide Web. The photometric redshifts were estimated with an artificial neural network using five ugriz bands, concentration indices and Petrosian radii in the g and r bands. We have explored our redshift estimates with different training sets, thus concluding that the best choice for improving redshift accuracy comprises the main galaxy sample (MGS), the luminous red galaxies and the galaxies of active galactic nuclei covering the redshift range 0 < z < 0.3. For the MGS, the photometric redshift estimates agree with the spectroscopic values within rms = 0.0227. The distribution of photometric redshifts derived in the range 0 < z(phot) < 0.6 agrees well with the model predictions. k-corrections were derived by calibration of the k-correct_v4.2 code results for the MGS with the reference-frame (z = 0.1) (g - r) colours. We adopt a linear dependence of k-corrections on redshift and (g - r) colours that provide suitable distributions of luminosity and colours for galaxies up to redshift z(phot) = 0.6 comparable to the results in the literature. Thus, our k-correction estimate procedure is a powerful, low computational time algorithm capable of reproducing suitable results that can be used for testing galaxy properties at intermediate redshifts using the large SDSS data base.

The perception of accessibility in Web development by academy, industry and government: a survey of the Brazilian scenario

Accessibility has become a serious issue to be considered by various sectors of the society. However, what are the differences between the perception of accessibility by academy, government and industry? In this paper, we present an analysis of this issue based on a large survey carried out with 613 participants involved with Web development, from all of the 27 Brazilian states. The paper presents results from the data analysis for each sector, along with statistical tests regarding the main different issues related to each of the sectors, such as: government and law, industry and techniques, academy and education. The concern about accessibility law is poor even amongst people from government sector. The analyses have also pointed out that the academy has not been addressing accessibility training accordingly. The knowledge about proper techniques to produce accessible contents is better than other sectors`, but still limited in industry. Stronger investments in training and in the promotion of consciousness about the law may be pointed as the most important tools to help a more effective policy on Web accessibility in Brazil.

Upgrading a TCABR data analysis and acquisition system for remote participation using Java, XML, RCP and modern client/server communication/authentication

The TCABR data analysis and acquisition system has been upgraded to support a joint research programme using remote participation technologies. The architecture of the new system uses Java language as programming environment. Since application parameters and hardware in a joint experiment are complex with a large variability of components, requirements and specification solutions need to be flexible and modular, independent from operating system and computer architecture. To describe and organize the information on all the components and the connections among them, systems are developed using the extensible Markup Language (XML) technology. The communication between clients and servers uses remote procedure call (RPC) based on the XML (RPC-XML technology). The integration among Java language, XML and RPC-XML technologies allows to develop easily a standard data and communication access layer between users and laboratories using common software libraries and Web application. The libraries allow data retrieval using the same methods for all user laboratories in the joint collaboration, and the Web application allows a simple graphical user interface (GUI) access. The TCABR tokamak team in collaboration with the IPFN (Instituto de Plasmas e Fusao Nuclear, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa) is implementing this remote participation technologies. The first version was tested at the Joint Experiment on TCABR (TCABRJE), a Host Laboratory Experiment, organized in cooperation with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) in the framework of the IAEA Coordinated Research Project (CRP) on ""Joint Research Using Small Tokamaks"". (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.