Fuel consumption study. Urban traffic control system (UTCS) software support project. Final report.

Federal Energy Administration, Office of Transportation Policy and Research, Washington, D.C.

SubCM: A tool for improved visibility of software change in an industrial setting

Software Configuration Management is the discipline of managing large collections of software development artefacts from which software products are built. Software configuration management tools typically deal with artefacts at fine levels of granularity - such as individual source code files - and assist with coordination of changes to such artefacts. This paper describes a lightweight tool, designed to be used on top of a traditional file-based configuration management system. The add-on tool support enables users to flexibly define new hierarchical views of product structure, independent of the underlying artefact-repository structure. The tool extracts configuration and change data with respect to the user-defined hierarchy, leading to improved visibility of how individual subsystems have changed. The approach yields a range of new capabilities for build managers, and verification and validation teams. The paper includes a description of our experience using the tool in an organization that builds large embedded software systems.

mecA locus diversity in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolates in Brisbane, Australia, and the development of a novel diagnostic procedure for the Western Samoan phage pattern clone

An emerging public health phenomenon is the increasing incidence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections that are acquired outside of health care facilities. One lineage of community-acquired MRSA (CA-MRSA) is known as the Western Samoan phage pattern (WSPP) clone. The central aim of this study was to develop an efficient genotyping procedure for the identification of WSPP isolates. The approach taken was to make use of the highly variable region downstream of mecA in combination with a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) defined by the S. aureus multilocus sequence typing (MLST) database. The premise was that a combinatorial genotyping method that interrogated both a highly variable region and the genomic backbone would deliver a high degree of informative power relative to the number of genetic polymorphisms-interrogated. Thirty-five MRSA isolates were used for this study, and their gene contents and order downstream of mecA were determined. The CA-MRSA isolates were found to contain a truncated mecA downstream region consisting of mecA-HVR-IS431 mec-dcs-Ins117, and a PCR-based method for identifying this structure was developed. The hospital-acquired isolates were found to contain eight different mecA downstream regions, three of which were novel. The Minimum SNPs computer software program was used to mine the S. aureus MLST database, and the arcC 2726 polymorph was identified as 82% discriminatory for ST-30. A real-time PCR assay was developed to interrogate this SNP. We found that the assay for the truncated mecA downstream region in combination with the interrogation of arcC position 272 provided an unambiguous identification of WSPP isolates.

The role of management incentives in successful information systems development and implementation

Because organizations are making large investments in Information systems (IS), efficient IS project management has been found critical to success. This study examines how the use of incentives can improve the project success. Agency theory is used to: identify motivational factors of project success, help the IS owners to understand to what extent management incentives can improve IS development and implementation (ISD/I). The outcomes will help practitioners and researchers to build on theoretical model of project management elements which lead to project success. Given the principal-agent nature of most significant scale of IS development, insights that will allow for greater alignment of the agent’s goals with those of the principal through incentive contracts, will serve to make ISD/I both more efficient and more effective, leading to more successful IS projects.

Applying a disciplined approach to the development of a context-aware communication application

Pervasive computing applications must be engineered to provide unprecedented levels of flexibility in order to reconfigure and adapt in response to changes in computing resources and user requirements. To meet these challenges, appropriate software engineering abstractions and infrastructure are required as a platform on which to build adaptive applications. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of a disciplined, model-based approach to engineer a context-aware Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) based communication application. This disciplined approach builds on our previously developed conceptual models and infrastructural components, which enable the description, acquisition, management and exploitation of arbitrary types of context and user preference information to enable adaptation to context changes

Computer-aided programming using formally specificed design templates

This paper describes a formal component language, used to support automated component-based program development. The components, referred to as templates, are machine processable, meaning that appropriate tool support, such as retrieval support, can be developed. The templates are highly adaptable, meaning that they can be applied to a wide range of problems. Some of the main features of the language are described, including: higher-order parameters; state variable declarations; specification statements and conditionals; applicability conditions and theories; meta-level place holders; and abstract data structures.

Supporting the software testing process through specification animation

Achieving consistency between a specification and its implementation is an important part of software development. In this paper, we present a method for generating passive test oracles that act as self-checking implementations. The implementation is verified using an animation tool to check that the behavior of the implementation matches the behavior of the specification. We discuss how to integrate this method into a framework developed for systematically animating specifications, which means a tester can significantly reduce testing time and effort by reusing work products from the animation. One such work product is a testgraph: a directed graph that partially models the states and transitions of the specification. Testgraphs are used to generate sequences for animation, and during testing, to execute these same sequences on the implementation.

Developing relational navigation to effectively understand software

Effective comprehension of complex software systems requires understanding of both the individual documents that represent software and the complex relationships that exist within and between documents. Relationships of all kinds play a vital role in a software engineer's comprehension of, and navigation within and between, software documents. User-determined relationships have the additional role of enabling the engineer to create and maintain relational documentation that cannot be generated by tools or derived from other relationships. We argue that for a software development environment to effectively support the understanding of complex software systems, relational navigation must be supported at both the document-focused (intra-document) and relation-focused (inter-document) levels. The need for a relation-focused approach is highlighted by an evaluation of an existing document-focused relational interface. We conclude with the requirements for a relation-focused approach to relational navigation. These requirements focus on the user's perspective when interacting with a collection of related documents. We define the requirements for a software development environment that effectively supports the understanding of the software documents and relationships that define a complex software system.

Development of real-time process control systems using formal techniques

A major application of computers has been to control physical processes in which the computer is embedded within some large physical process and is required to control concurrent physical processes. The main difficulty with these systems is their event-driven characteristics, which complicate their modelling and analysis. Although a number of researchers in the process system community have approached the problems of modelling and analysis of such systems, there is still a lack of standardised software development formalisms for the system (controller) development, particular at early stage of the system design cycle. This research forms part of a larger research programme which is concerned with the development of real-time process-control systems in which software is used to control concurrent physical processes. The general objective of the research in this thesis is to investigate the use of formal techniques in the analysis of such systems at their early stages of development, with a particular bias towards an application to high speed machinery. Specifically, the research aims to generate a standardised software development formalism for real-time process-control systems, particularly for software controller synthesis. In this research, a graphical modelling formalism called Sequential Function Chart (SFC), a variant of Grafcet, is examined. SFC, which is defined in the international standard IEC1131 as a graphical description language, has been used widely in industry and has achieved an acceptable level of maturity and acceptance. A comparative study between SFC and Petri nets is presented in this thesis. To overcome identified inaccuracies in the SFC, a formal definition of the firing rules for SFC is given. To provide a framework in which SFC models can be analysed formally, an extended time-related Petri net model for SFC is proposed and the transformation method is defined. The SFC notation lacks a systematic way of synthesising system models from the real world systems. Thus a standardised approach to the development of real-time process control systems is required such that the system (software) functional requirements can be identified, captured, analysed. A rule-based approach and a method called system behaviour driven method (SBDM) are proposed as a development formalism for real-time process-control systems.

An Exploration of parametric software cost estimating models for Jackson Systems Development

Most parametric software cost estimation models used today evolved in the late 70's and early 80's. At that time, the dominant software development techniques being used were the early 'structured methods'. Since then, several new systems development paradigms and methods have emerged, one being Jackson Systems Development (JSD). As current cost estimating methods do not take account of these developments, their non-universality means they cannot provide adequate estimates of effort and hence cost. In order to address these shortcomings two new estimation methods have been developed for JSD projects. One of these methods JSD-FPA, is a top-down estimating method, based on the existing MKII function point method. The other method, JSD-COCOMO, is a sizing technique which sizes a project, in terms of lines of code, from the process structure diagrams and thus provides an input to the traditional COCOMO method.The JSD-FPA method allows JSD projects in both the real-time and scientific application areas to be costed, as well as the commercial information systems applications to which FPA is usually applied. The method is based upon a three-dimensional view of a system specification as opposed to the largely data-oriented view traditionally used by FPA. The method uses counts of various attributes of a JSD specification to develop a metric which provides an indication of the size of the system to be developed. This size metric is then transformed into an estimate of effort by calculating past project productivity and utilising this figure to predict the effort and hence cost of a future project. The effort estimates produced were validated by comparing them against the effort figures for six actual projects.The JSD-COCOMO method uses counts of the levels in a process structure chart as the input to an empirically derived model which transforms them into an estimate of delivered source code instructions.