Configuración de un entorno de trabajo para el desarrollo de software ágil con integración continua

Hoy en día, existen numerosos sistemas (financieros, fabricación industrial, infraestructura de servicios básicos, etc.) que son dependientes del software. Según la definición de Ingeniería del Software realizada por I. Sommerville, “la Ingeniería del Software es una disciplina de la ingeniería que comprende todos los aspectos de la producción de software desde las etapas iniciales de la especificación del sistema, hasta el mantenimiento de éste después de que se utiliza.” “La ingeniería del software no sólo comprende los procesos técnicos del desarrollo de software, sino también actividades tales como la gestión de proyectos de software y el desarrollo de herramientas, métodos y teorías de apoyo a la producción de software.” Los modelos de proceso de desarrollo software determinan una serie de pautas para poder desarrollar con éxito un proyecto de desarrollo software. Desde que surgieran estos modelos de proceso, se investigado en nuevas maneras de poder gestionar un proyecto y producir software de calidad. En primer lugar surgieron las metodologías pesadas o tradicionales, pero con el avance del tiempo y la tecnología, surgieron unas nuevas llamadas metodologías ágiles. En el marco de las metodologías ágiles cabe destacar una determinada práctica, la integración continua. Esta práctica surgió de la mano de Martin Fowler, con el objetivo de facilitar el trabajo en grupo y automatizar las tareas de integración. La integración continua se basa en la construcción automática de proyectos con una frecuencia alta, promoviendo la detección de errores en un momento temprano para poder dar prioridad a corregir dichos errores. Sin embargo, una de las claves del éxito en el desarrollo de cualquier proyecto software consiste en utilizar un entorno de trabajo que facilite, sistematice y ayude a aplicar un proceso de desarrollo de una forma eficiente. Este Proyecto Fin de Grado (PFG) tiene por objetivo el análisis de distintas herramientas para configurar un entorno de trabajo que permita desarrollar proyectos aplicando metodologías ágiles e integración continua de una forma fácil y eficiente. Una vez analizadas dichas herramientas, se ha propuesto y configurado un entorno de trabajo para su puesta en marcha y uso. Una característica a destacar de este PFG es que las herramientas analizadas comparten una cualidad común y de alto valor, son herramientas open-source. El entorno de trabajo propuesto en este PFG presenta una arquitectura cliente-servidor, dado que la mayoría de proyectos software se desarrollan en equipo, de tal forma que el servidor proporciona a los distintos clientes/desarrolladores acceso al conjunto de herramientas que constituyen el entorno de trabajo. La parte servidora del entorno propuesto proporciona soporte a la integración continua mediante herramientas de control de versiones, de gestión de historias de usuario, de análisis de métricas de software, y de automatización de la construcción de software. La configuración del cliente únicamente requiere de un entorno de desarrollo integrado (IDE) que soporte el lenguaje de programación Java y conexión con el servidor. ABSTRACT Nowadays, numerous systems (financial, industrial production, basic services infrastructure, etc.) depend on software. According to the Software Engineering definition made by I.Sommerville, “Software engineering is an engineering discipline that is concerned with all aspects of software production from the early stages of system specification through to maintaining the system after it has gone into use.” “Software engineering is not just concerned with the technical processes of software development. It also includes activities such as software project management and the development of tools, methods, and theories to support software production.” Software development process models determine a set of guidelines to successfully develop a software development project. Since these process models emerged, new ways of managing a project and producing software with quality have been investigated. First, the so-called heavy or traditional methodologies appeared, but with the time and the technological improvements, new methodologies emerged: the so-called agile methodologies. Agile methodologies promote, among other practices, continuous integration. This practice was coined by Martin Fowler and aims to make teamwork easier as well as automate integration tasks. Nevertheless, one of the keys to success in software projects is to use a framework that facilitates, systematize, and help to deploy a development process in an efficient way. This Final Degree Project (FDP) aims to analyze different tools to configure a framework that enables to develop projects by applying agile methodologies and continuous integration in an easy and efficient way. Once tools are analyzed, a framework has been proposed and configured. One of the main features of this FDP is that the tools under analysis share a common and high-valued characteristic: they are open-source. The proposed framework presents a client-server architecture, as most of the projects are developed by a team. In this way, the server provides access the clients/developers to the tools that comprise the framework. The server provides continuous integration through a set of tools for control management, user stories management, software quality management, and software construction automatization. The client configuration only requires a Java integrated development environment and network connection to the server.

Implantación de técnicas de QA en un proyecto de desarrollo software

Hoy en día existe una preocupación creciente por la calidad del software entregado en los proyectos que se realizan a lo largo del mundo. El trabajo de fin de grado que va a ser desarrollado en estas páginas pretende demostrar la importancia de la realización de tests funcionales durante el proceso de desarrollo de software para que el proyecto alcance la calidad requerida tan demandada en estos días. Para ello, después de una pequeña introducción a la historia del software, se presentarán y compararán diversos tipos de metodologías de desarrollo de software, tanto pesadas (cascada, espiral, etc.) como ágiles (Extreme Programming y Scrum), se enfatizará en dichas metodologías ágiles y cómo el proceso de testing y control de calidad encaja perfectamente con la filosofía de las citadas metodologías ágiles. Se desarrollará una explicación del papel de QA en el desarrollo de software, asi como una explicación de los tipos de test existentes, y las herramientas, tecnologías y patrones que existen a disposición de aquellos que quieran desempeñar el papel de QA. Para complementar el punto de vista teórico de este trabajo se presentará un caso práctico real realizado en la empresa bq bajo una metodología Scrum. Dicho caso práctico muestra el uso de ciertas herramientas y su aporte para el control de calidad del proyecto bajo desarrollo, demostrando su importancia. Se realizará énfasis en el proceso de automatización de ciertas baterías de test (llamadas test suites), mostrando desde el planteamiento inicial de las diferentes historias de usuario y la batería de test, pasando por la elección de las tecnologías más adecuadas para la elaboración de los test hasta llegar al lanzamiento de dicha batería de pruebas y la comprobación de éstas. El punto de vista práctico quedará complementado por una explicación del framework nightwatch.js, framework utilizado en el desarrollo del proyecto en bq para la automatización de test funcionales. Esta explicación comprenderá tanto la configuración y uso del framework como el uso de patrones y la estructura de las pruebas. ABSTRACT Nowadays there is a growing concern about the Quality of the software delivered in the projects that are made all around the world. This final project will try to prove the importance of performing functional tests during the Software Development Process in order to be able to reach the demanded Quality. To fulfill this objective, different types of Software Development methodologies will be presented and compared. Heavy methodologies (waterfall, spiral methodologies, etc.) as well as agile methodologies (Extreme Programming and Scrum). There will be an emphasis in the second kind (agile methodologies) and how the testing and quality assurance process fits perfectly in their philosophy. A deep explanation of the role that Quality Assurance holds on software development will be presented, as well as an explanation on the current types of testing and an explanation of the different tools; technologies and patrons that exist to help anyone who wants to perform the role of QA. To complement the theoretical perspective of this work a real case study, performed at the company bq under a Scrum methodology, will be presented. The mentioned study covers the use of certain tools and their input for the quality assurance of the project under development, proving its relevance. Emphasis will be made in the process of conducting a set of tests (called test suite), showing from the initial approach of the different users stories and the set of tests, going through the choosing of the most suitable technologies for the tests development, and ending with the performance of this battery of tests and their checkout. The practical point of view will be complemented by a deep explanation of the creation process using the nightwatch.js automated test framework, used in the project in bq. This explanation will cover both the configuration and use of the framework as the use of patterns and structure of the tests.

Desarrollo de frameworks con .NET

La expansión experimentada por la informática, las nuevas tecnologías e internet en los últimos años, no solo viene dada por la evolución del hardware subyacente, sino por la evolución del desarrollo de software y del crecimiento del número de desarrolladores. Este incremento ha hecho evolucionar el software de unos sistemas de gestión basados en ficheros, prácticamente sin interfaz gráfico y de unos pocos miles de líneas a grandes sistemas distribuidos multiplataforma. El desarrollo de estos grandes sistemas, requiere gran cantidad de personas involucradas en el desarrollo, y que las herramientas de desarrollo hayan crecido también para facilitar su análisis, diseño, codificación, pruebas, implantación y mantenimiento. La base de estas herramientas software las proveen las propias plataformas de desarrollo, pero la experiencia de los desarrolladores puede aportar un sinfín de utilidades y de técnicas que agilicen los desarrollos y cumplan los requisitos del software en base a la reutilización de soluciones lo suficientemente probadas y optimizadas. Dichas herramientas se agrupan ordenadamente, creando así frameworks personalizados, con herramientas de todo tipo, clases, controles, interfaces, patrones de diseño, de tal manera que se dan soluciones personalizadas a un amplio número de problemas para emplearlas cuantas veces se quiera, bien marcando directrices de desarrollo mediante el uso de patrones, bien con la encapsulación de complejidades de tal modo que los desarrolladores ya dispongan de componentes que asuman cierta lógica o cierta complejidad aliviando así la fase de construcción. En este trabajo se abordan temas sobre las tecnologías base y plataformas de desarrollo para poder acometer la creación de un framework personalizado, necesidades a evaluar antes de acometerlo, y técnicas a emplear para la consecución del mismo, orientadas a la documentación, mantenimiento y extensión del framework. La exposición teórica consiste en mostrar y evaluar los requisitos para crear un framework, requisitos de la plataforma de desarrollo, y explicar cómo funcionan las grandes plataformas de desarrollo actuales, que elementos los componen y su funcionamiento, así como marcar ciertas pautas de estructuración y nomenclatura que el desarrollo de un framework debe contemplar para su mantenimiento y extensión. En la parte metodológica se ha usado un subconjunto de Métrica V3, ya que para el desarrollo de controles no aplica dicha metodología en su totalidad, pero contempla el catálogo de requisitos, los casos de uso, diagramas de clase, diagramas de secuencia, etc… Aparte de los conceptos teóricos, se presenta un caso práctico con fines didácticos de cómo parametrizar y configurar el desarrollo bajo la plataforma .NET. Dicho caso práctico consiste en la extensión de un control de usuario genérico de la plataforma .NET, de tal modo que se aplican conceptos más allá del hecho de crear funciones como las funcionalidades que puede brindar un API. Conceptos sobre como extender y modificar controles ya existentes, que interactúan por medio de eventos con otros controles, con vistas a que ese nuevo control forme parte de una biblioteca de controles de usuario personalizados ampliamente divulgada. Los controles de usuario son algo que no solo tienen una parte funcional, sino que también tienen una parte visual, y definiciones funcionales distintas de las típicas del software de gestión, puesto que han de controlar eventos, visualizaciones mientras se dan estos eventos y requisitos no funcionales de optimización de rendimiento, etc… Para el caso práctico se toma como herramienta la plataforma de desarrollo .Net Framework, en todas sus versiones, ya que el control a extender es el control ListView y hacerlo editable. Este control está presente en todas las versiones de .NET framework y con un alto grado de reutilización. Esta extensión muestra además como se puede migrar fácilmente este tipo de extensiones sobre todos los frameworks. Los entornos de desarrollo usados son varias versiones de Visual Studio para el mostrar dicha compatibilidad, aunque el desarrollo que acompaña este documento esté realizado sobre Visual Studio 2013. ABSTRACT The expansion in computer science, new technologies and the Internet in recent years, not only is given by the evolution of the underlying hardware, but for the evolution of software development and the growing number of developers. This increase has evolved software from management systems based on files almost without graphical interface and a few thousand of code lines, to large multiplatform distributed systems. The development of these large systems, require lots of people involved in development, and development tools have also grown to facilitate analysis, design, coding, testing, deployment and maintenance. The basis of these software tools are providing by their own development platforms, but the experience of the developers can bring a lot of utilities and techniques to speed up developments and meet the requirements of software reuse based on sufficiently proven solutions and optimized. These tools are grouped neatly, creating in this way custom frameworks, with tools of all types, classes, controls, interfaces, design patterns,… in such a way that they provide customized solutions to a wide range of problems to use them many times as you want to occur, either by dialing development guidelines by using patterns or along with the encapsulation of complexities, so that developers already have components that take some logic or some complexity relieving the construction phase. This paper cover matters based on technologies and development platforms to undertake the creation of a custom framework, needs to evaluate before rush it and techniques to use in order to achieve it, a part from techniques oriented to documentation, maintenance and framework extension. The theoretical explanation consists in to demonstrate and to evaluate the requirements for creating a framework, development platform requirements, and explain how large current development platforms work, which elements compose them and their operation work, as well as mark certain patterns of structure and nomenclature that the development of a framework should include for its maintenance and extension. In the methodological part, a subset of Métrica V3 has been used, because of, for the development of custom controls this methodology does not apply in its entirety, but provides a catalogue of requirements, use cases, class diagrams, sequence diagrams, etc ... Apart from the theoretical concepts, a study case for teaching purposes about how to parameterize and configure the development under the .NET platform is presented. This study case involves the extension of a generic user control of the .NET platform, so that concepts apply beyond the fact of creating functions as the functionalities that can provide an API. Concepts on how to extend and modify existing controls that interact through events with other controls, overlooking that new control as a part of a custom user controls library widely publicized. User controls are something that not only have a functional part, but also have a visual part, and various functional definitions of typical management software, since that they have to control events, visualizations while these events are given and not functional of performance optimization requirements, etc ... For the study case the development platform .Net Framework is taken as tool, in all its versions, considering that control to extend is the ListView control and make it editable. This control is present in all versions of .NET framework and with a high degree of reuse. This extension also shows how you can easily migrate these extensions on all frameworks. The used development environments are several versions of Visual Studio to show that compatibility, although the development that accompanies this document is done on Visual Studio 2013.

Towards moldable development tools

Developers commonly ask detailed and domain-specific questions about the software systems they are developing and maintaining. Integrated development environments (IDEs) form an essential category of tools for developing software that should support software engineering decision making. Unfortunately, rigid and generic IDEs that focus on low-level programming tasks, that promote code rather than data, and that suppress customization, offer limited support for informed decision making during software development. We propose to improve decision making within IDEs by moving from generic to context-aware IDEs through moldable tools. In this paper, we promote the idea of moldable tools, illustrate it with concrete examples, and discuss future research directions.

Approaches and Strategy for Cancer Research and Surveillance Data: Integration, Information Pipeline, Data Models, and Informatics Opportunities

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-04

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.

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.

Data driven graphical applications:a fluid approach

The inclusion of high-level scripting functionality in state-of-the-art rendering APIs indicates a movement toward data-driven methodologies for structuring next generation rendering pipelines. A similar theme can be seen in the use of composition languages to deploy component software using selection and configuration of collaborating component implementations. In this paper we introduce the Fluid framework, which places particular emphasis on the use of high-level data manipulations in order to develop component based software that is flexible, extensible, and expressive. We introduce a data-driven, object oriented programming methodology to component based software development, and demonstrate how a rendering system with a similar focus on abstract manipulations can be incorporated, in order to develop a visualization application for geospatial data. In particular we describe a novel SAS script integration layer that provides access to vertex and fragment programs, producing a very controllable, responsive rendering system. The proposed system is very similar to developments speculatively planned for DirectX 10, but uses open standards and has cross platform applicability. © The Eurographics Association 2007.

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.

CADS*: Computer-Aided Development of self-* systems

We present the prototype tool CADS* for the computer-aided development of an important class of self-* systems, namely systems whose components can be modelled as Markov chains. Given a Markov chain representation of the IT components to be included into a self-* system, CADS* automates or aids (a) the development of the artifacts necessary to build the self-* system; and (b) their integration into a fully-operational self-* solution. This is achieved through a combination of formal software development techniques including model transformation, model-driven code generation and dynamic software reconfiguration.

FlexSIG-Flexible software inspection groupware

The objective of this research is to design and build a groupware system which will allow members of a distributed group more flexibility in performing software inspection. Software inspection, which is part of non-execution based testing in software development, is a group activity. The groupware system aims to provide a system that will improve acceptability of groupware and improve software quality by providing a software inspection tool that is flexible and adaptable. The groupware system provide a flexible structure for software inspection meetings. The groupware system will extend the structure of the software inspection meeting itself, allowing software inspection meetings to use all four quadrant of the space-time matrix: face-to-face, distributed synchronous, distributed asynchronous, and same place-different time. This will open up new working possibilities. The flexibility and adaptability of the system allows work to switch rapidly between synchronous and asynchronous interaction. A model for a flexible groupware system was developed. The model was developed based on review of the literature and questionnaires. A prototype based on the model was built using java and WWW technology. To test the effectiveness of the system, an evaluation was conducted. Questionnaires was used to gather response from the users. The evaluations ascertained that the model developed is flexible and adaptable to the different working modes, and the system is capable of supporting several different models of the software inspection process.

Enhanced semantic access to formal software models

The success of the Semantic Web, as the next generation of Web technology, can have profound impact on the environment for formal software development. It allows both the software engineers and machines to understand the content of formal models and supports more effective software design in terms of understanding, sharing and reusing in a distributed manner. To realise the full potential of the Semantic Web in formal software development, effectively creating proper semantic metadata for formal software models and their related software artefacts is crucial. In this paper, a methodology with tool support is proposed to automatically derive ontological metadata from formal software models and semantically describe them.

Modeling and validating dynamic adaptation

This paper discusses preliminary work on modeling and validation dynamic adaptation. The proposed approach is on the use of aspect-oriented modeling (AOM) and models at runtime. Our approach covers design and runtime phases. At design-time, a base model and different variant architecture models are designed and the adaptation model is built. Crucially, the adaptation model includes invariant properties and constraints that allow the validation of the adaptation rules before execution. During runtime, the adaptation model is processed to produce a correct system configuration that can be executed.

Developing a knowledge-based perspective on coordination:the case of global software projects

We have attempted to bring together two areas which are challenging for both IS research and practice: forms of coordination and management of knowledge in the context of global, virtual software development projects. We developed a more comprehensive, knowledge-based model of how coordination can be achieved, and\illustrated the heuristic and explanatory power of the model when applied to global software projects experiencing different degrees of success. We first reviewed the literature on coordination and determined what is known about coordination of knowledge in global software projects. From this we developed a new, distinctive knowledge-based model of coordination, which was then employed to analyze two case studies of global software projects, at SAP and Baan, to illustrate the utility of the model.