APSEE-Monitor: um mecanismo de apoio a visualização de modelos de processos de software

A tecnologia de processos de desenvolvimento de software ´e uma importante área de estudo e pesquisas na Engenharia de Software que envolve a construção de ferramentas e ambientes para modelagem, execução, simulação e evolução de processos de desenvolvimento de software, conhecidos como PSEEs (do inglês: Process-Centered Software Engineering Environments). Um modelo de processo de software é uma estrutura complexa que relaciona elementos gerenciáveis (i.e. artefatos, agentes, e atividades) que constituem o processo de software. Esta complexidade, geralmente, dificulta a percepção e entendimento do processo por parte dos profissionais envolvidos, principalmente quando estes profissionais têm acesso apenas a uma visão geral do modelo. Desta forma, há necessidade de mecanismos para visualização e acompanhamento dos processos, fornecendo informações adequadas aos diferentes estados, abstraindo as informações relevantes tanto as fases presentes no processo de desenvolvimento quanto ao agente envolvido, além de facilitar a interação e o entendimento humano sobre os elementos do processo. Estudos afirmam que a maneira como são apresentadas as informações do modelo de processo pode influenciar no sucesso ou não do desenvolvimento do software, assim como facilitar a adoção da tecnologia pela indústria de software. Este trabalho visa contribuir nas pesquisas que buscam mecanismos e cientes para a visualização de processos de software apresentando a abordagem APSEE-Monitor destinada ao apoio a visualização de processos de software durante a sua execução. O principal objetivo desta pesquisa é apresentar um modelo formal de apoio a visualização de processos capaz de extrair dados de processos e organizá-los em sub-domínios de informações de interesse do gerente de processos. Neste trabalho aplica-se o conceito de múltiplas perspectivas como uma estratégia viável para a abstração e organização das informações presentes no modelo de processos. A solução proposta destaca-se por estender a definção original de perspectivas e fornecer uma estratégia de extração dos dados através de uma especificação formal utilizando o paradigma PROSOFT-Algébrico. Além disso, o trabalho apresenta um conjunto de requisitos relativos a interação entre gerentes de processos e PSEEs, a definição formal das perspectivas, uma gramática que define a linguagem de consulta aos processos, e um protótipo da aplicação.

Globalização de capacidades tecnológicas inovadoras e o papel de subsidiárias de empresas transnacionais (ETNs) no contexto de países em desenvolvimento: a trajetória de uma empresa do setor de TIC no Brasil

This dissertation seeks to add new evidence to the international debate on globalization of innovation in the developing countries context. Globalization of innovation, in this dissertation, is defined and measured by the types, levels and rate of innovative technological capability accumulation and the underlying technological learning processes (sources of capabilities) at the firm level in late-industrializing countries ¿ or developing countries. This relationship is examined within a large transnational corporation (TNC) subsidiary of the information and communication technology (ICT) sector in Brasil: Motorola do Brasil during over the period from 1996 to 2006. In the international literature there is a strong debate on the extent to which innovative technological capabilities have been spreading internationally. But, the most of the studies are focused on early industrialized countries. In other words, there is still a scarcity of analysis, mainly at the firm level, from the perspective of developing countries. This dissertation supports itself in analytical basis developed in the international literature on accumulation of technological capabilities and learning in the context of developing countries. The learning processes examined in this dissertation are: (i) intra-firm learning processes; (ii) inter-firm learning processes (links between mother and sister companies); and (iii) links between the firm and other organizations of the innovation system (universities, research institutes, among others). Based on first-hand empirical evidence, qualitative and quantitative, collected on the basis of extensive fieldwork, this dissertation examines these issues with adequate level of detail and depth, in this large company in Brazil. The study results suggest that: Concerning the path of the technological capability accumulation, the firm exhibited heterogeneity in the path of accumulation of technological capabilities to distinct functions. For the functions Software Engineering and Process and Management Project the firm reached the Level 6 (Innovative Intermediate Superior), on a scale that ranges from 1 to 7; In relation to technological capability sources, the firm deliberately sought and built sources of knowledge in order to develop and sustain its innovative technological capabilities. The dissertation, thus, contributes to adding new empirical evidence to the debate on globalization of innovative capabilities from a late-industrializing perspective.

Globalização de capacidades tecnológicas inovadoras e o papel de subsidiárias de empresas transnacionais( ETNs) No contexto de países em desenvolvimento: a trajetória de uma empresa do setor de TIC no Brasil

This dissertation seeks to add new evidence to the international debate on globalization of innovation in the developing countries context. Globalization of innovation, in this dissertation, is defined and measured by the types, levels and rate of innovative technological capability accumulation and the underlying technological learning processes (sources of capabilities) at the firm level in late-industrializing countries ¿ or developing countries. This relationship is examined within a large transnational corporation (TNC) subsidiary of the information and communication technology (ICT) sector in Brasil: Motorola do Brasil during over the period from 1996 to 2006. In the international literature there is a strong debate on the extent to which innovative technological capabilities have been spreading internationally. But, the most of the studies are focused on early industrialized countries. In other words, there is still a scarcity of analysis, mainly at the firm level, from the perspective of developing countries. This dissertation supports itself in analytical basis developed in the international literature on accumulation of technological capabilities and learning in the context of developing countries. The learning processes examined in this dissertation are: (i) intra-firm learning processes; (ii) inter-firm learning processes (links between mother and sister companies); and (iii) links between the firm and other organizations of the innovation system (universities, research institutes, among others). Based on first-hand empirical evidence, qualitative and quantitative, collected on the basis of extensive fieldwork, this dissertation examines these issues with adequate level of detail and depth, in this large company in Brazil. The study results suggest that: Concerning the path of the technological capability accumulation, the firm exhibited heterogeneity in the path of accumulation of technological capabilities to distinct functions. For the functions Software Engineering and Process and Management Project the firm reached the Level 6 (Innovative Intermediate Superior), on a scale that ranges from 1 to 7; In relation to technological capability sources, the firm deliberately sought and built sources of knowledge in order to develop and sustain its innovative technological capabilities. The dissertation, thus, contributes to adding new empirical evidence to the debate on globalization of innovative capabilities from a late-industrializing perspective.

A Framework supporting collaboration on the distributed design of integrated systems

The work described in this thesis aims to support the distributed design of integrated systems and considers specifically the need for collaborative interaction among designers. Particular emphasis was given to issues which were only marginally considered in previous approaches, such as the abstraction of the distribution of design automation resources over the network, the possibility of both synchronous and asynchronous interaction among designers and the support for extensible design data models. Such issues demand a rather complex software infrastructure, as possible solutions must encompass a wide range of software modules: from user interfaces to middleware to databases. To build such structure, several engineering techniques were employed and some original solutions were devised. The core of the proposed solution is based in the joint application of two homonymic technologies: CAD Frameworks and object-oriented frameworks. The former concept was coined in the late 80's within the electronic design automation community and comprehends a layered software environment which aims to support CAD tool developers, CAD administrators/integrators and designers. The latter, developed during the last decade by the software engineering community, is a software architecture model to build extensible and reusable object-oriented software subsystems. In this work, we proposed to create an object-oriented framework which includes extensible sets of design data primitives and design tool building blocks. Such object-oriented framework is included within a CAD Framework, where it plays important roles on typical CAD Framework services such as design data representation and management, versioning, user interfaces, design management and tool integration. The implemented CAD Framework - named Cave2 - followed the classical layered architecture presented by Barnes, Harrison, Newton and Spickelmier, but the possibilities granted by the use of the object-oriented framework foundations allowed a series of improvements which were not available in previous approaches: - object-oriented frameworks are extensible by design, thus this should be also true regarding the implemented sets of design data primitives and design tool building blocks. This means that both the design representation model and the software modules dealing with it can be upgraded or adapted to a particular design methodology, and that such extensions and adaptations will still inherit the architectural and functional aspects implemented in the object-oriented framework foundation; - the design semantics and the design visualization are both part of the object-oriented framework, but in clearly separated models. This allows for different visualization strategies for a given design data set, which gives collaborating parties the flexibility to choose individual visualization settings; - the control of the consistency between semantics and visualization - a particularly important issue in a design environment with multiple views of a single design - is also included in the foundations of the object-oriented framework. Such mechanism is generic enough to be also used by further extensions of the design data model, as it is based on the inversion of control between view and semantics. The view receives the user input and propagates such event to the semantic model, which evaluates if a state change is possible. If positive, it triggers the change of state of both semantics and view. Our approach took advantage of such inversion of control and included an layer between semantics and view to take into account the possibility of multi-view consistency; - to optimize the consistency control mechanism between views and semantics, we propose an event-based approach that captures each discrete interaction of a designer with his/her respective design views. The information about each interaction is encapsulated inside an event object, which may be propagated to the design semantics - and thus to other possible views - according to the consistency policy which is being used. Furthermore, the use of event pools allows for a late synchronization between view and semantics in case of unavailability of a network connection between them; - the use of proxy objects raised significantly the abstraction of the integration of design automation resources, as either remote or local tools and services are accessed through method calls in a local object. The connection to remote tools and services using a look-up protocol also abstracted completely the network location of such resources, allowing for resource addition and removal during runtime; - the implemented CAD Framework is completely based on Java technology, so it relies on the Java Virtual Machine as the layer which grants the independence between the CAD Framework and the operating system. All such improvements contributed to a higher abstraction on the distribution of design automation resources and also introduced a new paradigm for the remote interaction between designers. The resulting CAD Framework is able to support fine-grained collaboration based on events, so every single design update performed by a designer can be propagated to the rest of the design team regardless of their location in the distributed environment. This can increase the group awareness and allow a richer transfer of experiences among them, improving significantly the collaboration potential when compared to previously proposed file-based or record-based approaches. Three different case studies were conducted to validate the proposed approach, each one focusing one a subset of the contributions of this thesis. The first one uses the proxy-based resource distribution architecture to implement a prototyping platform using reconfigurable hardware modules. The second one extends the foundations of the implemented object-oriented framework to support interface-based design. Such extensions - design representation primitives and tool blocks - are used to implement a design entry tool named IBlaDe, which allows the collaborative creation of functional and structural models of integrated systems. The third case study regards the possibility of integration of multimedia metadata to the design data model. Such possibility is explored in the frame of an online educational and training platform.

A situation awareness interface for a bi-wheeled industrial hovercraft: design, development and evaluation

The intention of this thesis is to develop a prototype interface that enables an operator to control a bi-wheeled industrial hovercraft that will work within a fusion power plant if the automation system fails. This fusion power plant is part of the ITER project a conjoint effort of various industrialized countries to develop cleaner sources of energy. The development of the interface prototype will be based on situation awareness concepts, which provide a means to understand how human operators perceive the world around, then process that information and make decisions based on the knowledge that they already have and the projected knowledge of the reactions that will occur in the world in response to the actions the operator makes. Two major situation awareness methods will be used, GDTA as a means to discover the requirements the interface needs to solve, and SAGAT to conduct the evaluation on the three interfaces. This technique can isolate the differences an operator has in situation awareness when presented with relevant information given by each of the three interfaces that were built for this thesis. Where the first interface presents the information within the operator’s focal point of view in a pictorial style, the second interface shows the same information within the same point of view has the first interface but only shows it in a textual manner. While the third interface shows the relevant information in the operator’s peripheral field of view. Also SAGAT can provide insight on the question to know if providing the operator with feed-forward information about the stoppage distances of the bi-wheeled industrial hovercraft has any effect on the operator’s decision making.

O impacto da utilização de design patterns nas métricas e estimativas de projetos de software: a utilização de padrões tem alguma influência nas estimativas?

VALENTIM, R. A. M. ; SOUZA NETO, Plácido Antônio de. O impacto da utilização de design patterns nas métricas e estimativas de projetos de software: a utilização de padrões tem alguma influência nas estimativas?. Revista da FARN, Natal, v. 4, p. 63-74, 2006

Visual IMML: um perfil UML para a modelagem de interfaces de usuário

The software development processes proposed by the most recent approaches in Software Engineering make use old models. UML was proposed as the standard language for modeling. The user interface is an important part of the software and has a fundamental importance to improve its usability. Unfortunately the standard UML does not offer appropriate resources to model user interfaces. Some proposals have already been proposed to solve this problem: some authors have been using models in the development of interfaces (Model Based Development) and some proposals to extend UML have been elaborated. But none of them considers the theoretical perspective presented by the semiotic engineering, that considers that, through the system, the designer should be able to communicate to the user what he can do, and how to use the system itself. This work presents Visual IMML, an UML Profile that emphasizes the aspects of the semiotic engineering. This Profile is based on IMML, that is a declarative textual language. The Visual IMML is a proposal that aims to improve the specification process by using a visual modeling (using diagrams) language. It proposes a new set of modeling elements (stereotypes) specifically designed to the specification and documentation of user interfaces, considering the aspects of communication, interaction and functionality in an integrated manner

Estendendo CRefine para o suporte de táticas de refinamento

The use of increasingly complex software applications is demanding greater investment in the development of such systems to ensure applications with better quality. Therefore, new techniques are being used in Software Engineering, thus making the development process more effective. Among these new approaches, we highlight Formal Methods, which use formal languages that are strongly based on mathematics and have a well-defined semantics and syntax. One of these languages is Circus, which can be used to model concurrent systems. It was developed from the union of concepts from two other specification languages: Z, which specifies systems with complex data, and CSP, which is normally used to model concurrent systems. Circus has an associated refinement calculus, which can be used to develop software in a precise and stepwise fashion. Each step is justified by the application of a refinement law (possibly with the discharge of proof obligations). Sometimes, the same laws can be applied in the same manner in different developments or even in different parts of a single development. A strategy to optimize this calculus is to formalise these application as a refinement tactic, which can then be used as a single transformation rule. CRefine was developed to support the Circus refinement calculus. However, before the work presented here, it did not provide support for refinement tactics. The aim of this work is to provide tool support for refinement tactics. For that, we develop a new module in CRefine, which automates the process of defining and applying refinement tactics that are formalised in the tactic language ArcAngelC. Finally, we validate the extension by applying the new module in a case study, which used the refinement tactics in a refinement strategy for verification of SPARK Ada implementations of control systems. In this work, we apply our module in the first two phases of this strategy

Beta: uma ferramenta para geração de testes de unidade a partir de especificações B

Formal methods and software testing are tools to obtain and control software quality. When used together, they provide mechanisms for software specification, verification and error detection. Even though formal methods allow software to be mathematically verified, they are not enough to assure that a system is free of faults, thus, software testing techniques are necessary to complement the process of verification and validation of a system. Model Based Testing techniques allow tests to be generated from other software artifacts such as specifications and abstract models. Using formal specifications as basis for test creation, we can generate better quality tests, because these specifications are usually precise and free of ambiguity. Fernanda Souza (2009) proposed a method to define test cases from B Method specifications. This method used information from the machine s invariant and the operation s precondition to define positive and negative test cases for an operation, using equivalent class partitioning and boundary value analysis based techniques. However, the method proposed in 2009 was not automated and had conceptual deficiencies like, for instance, it did not fit in a well defined coverage criteria classification. We started our work with a case study that applied the method in an example of B specification from the industry. Based in this case study we ve obtained subsidies to improve it. In our work we evolved the proposed method, rewriting it and adding characteristics to make it compatible with a test classification used by the community. We also improved the method to support specifications structured in different components, to use information from the operation s behavior on the test case generation process and to use new coverage criterias. Besides, we have implemented a tool to automate the method and we have submitted it to more complex case studies

Avaliação da contribuição de desenvolvedores para projetos de software usando mineração de repositórios de software e mineração de processos

Software Repository Mining (MSR) is a research area that analyses software repositories in order to derive relevant information for the research and practice of software engineering. The main goal of repository mining is to extract static information from repositories (e.g. code repository or change requisition system) into valuable information providing a way to support the decision making of software projects. On the other hand, another research area called Process Mining (PM) aims to find the characteristics of the underlying process of business organizations, supporting the process improvement and documentation. Recent works have been doing several analyses through MSR and PM techniques: (i) to investigate the evolution of software projects; (ii) to understand the real underlying process of a project; and (iii) create defect prediction models. However, few research works have been focusing on analyzing the contributions of software developers by means of MSR and PM techniques. In this context, this dissertation proposes the development of two empirical studies of assessment of the contribution of software developers to an open-source and a commercial project using those techniques. The contributions of developers are assessed through three different perspectives: (i) buggy commits; (ii) the size of commits; and (iii) the most important bugs. For the opensource project 12.827 commits and 8.410 bugs have been analyzed while 4.663 commits and 1.898 bugs have been analyzed for the commercial project. Our results indicate that, for the open source project, the developers classified as core developers have contributed with more buggy commits (although they have contributed with the majority of commits), more code to the project (commit size) and more important bugs solved while the results could not indicate differences with statistical significance between developer groups for the commercial project

Um método para desenvolvimento de abordagens generativas com composição de linguagens específicas de domínio

The software systems development with domain-specific languages has become increasingly common. Domain-specific languages (DSLs) provide increased of the domain expressiveness, raising the abstraction level by facilitating the generation of models or low-level source code, thus increasing the productivity of systems development. Consequently, methods for the development of software product lines and software system families have also proposed the adoption of domain-specific languages. Recent studies have investigated the limitations of feature model expressiveness and proposing the use of DSLs as a complement or substitute for feature model. However, in complex projects, a single DSL is often insufficient to represent the different views and perspectives of development, being necessary to work with multiple DSLs. In order to address new challenges in this context, such as the management of consistency between DSLs, and the need to methods and tools that support the development with multiple DSLs, over the past years, several approaches have been proposed for the development of generative approaches. However, none of them considers matters relating to the composition of DSLs. Thus, with the aim to address this problem, the main objectives of this dissertation are: (i) to investigate the adoption of the integrated use of feature models and DSLs during the domain and application engineering of the development of generative approaches; (ii) to propose a method for the development of generative approaches with composition DSLs; and (iii) to investigate and evaluate the usage of modern technology based on models driven engineering to implement strategies of integration between feature models and composition of DSLs

Identificando interesses transversais em modelos de requisitos PL-AOVgraph

The occurrence of problems related to the scattering and tangling phenomenon, such as the difficulty to do system maintenance, increasingly frequent. One way to solve this problem is related to the crosscutting concerns identification. To maximize its benefits, the identification must be performed from early stages of development process, but some works have reported that this has not been done in most of cases, making the system development susceptible to the errors incidence and prone to the refactoring later. This situation affects directly to the quality and cost of the system. PL-AOVgraph is a goal-oriented requirements modeling language which offers support to the relationships representation among requirements and provides separation of crosscutting concerns by crosscutting relationships representation. Therefore, this work presents a semi-automatic method to crosscutting concern identification in requirements specifications written in PL-AOVgraph. An adjacency matrix is used to identify the contributions relationships among the elements. The crosscutting concern identification is based in fan-out analysis of contribution relationships from the informations of adjacency matrix. When identified, the crosscutting relationships are created. And also, this method is implemented as a new module of ReqSys-MDD tool