A Taxonomy of Evaluation Approaches in Software Engineering

In various fields of computer science, rapidly growing hardware power, such as high-speed network, high-performance CPU, huge disk capacity, and large memory space, has been fruitfully harnessed. Examples of such usage are large scale data and web mining, grid computing, and multimedia environments. We propose that such rich hardware can also catapult software engineering to the next level. Huge amounts of software engineering data can be systematically collected and organized from tens of thousands of projects inside organizations, or from outside an organization through the Internet. The collected data can be analyzed extensively to extract and correlate multi-project knowledge for improving organization-wide productivity and quality. We call such an approach for software engineering Mega Software Engineering. In this paper, we propose the concept of Mega Software Engineering, and demonstrate some novel data analysis characteristic of Mega Software Engineering. We describe a framework for enabling Mega Software Engineering.KeywordsSoftware EngineeringSoftware EngineerSoftware ProjectCollaborative FilterGlobal Software DevelopmentThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Nowadays, the idea of artificial intelligence for software engineering is an emerging research domain and it has been receiving more and more attention recently. Software Engineering (SE) is a well-established technological paradigm, providing clear guidance and direction on every aspect of software development and maintenance. Artificial Intelligence (AI), contrary to the conventional approach, is an emerging and futuristic concept that reshapes a new era, designing intelligent machines that can accomplish tasks that humans do towards a technological wonderland. In parallel with technological advancements, SE is yet to be considered in adopting the state-of-the-art principle for AI-based methodologies. We realize the importance of facilitating the SE towards AI-based intelligent machines, devising novel techniques and approaches for AI-Oriented Software Engineering (AIOSE). In this study, we thoroughly explore the principle of SE within the AI boundary for ensuring effective development activities throughout the AIOSE development process. We believe that such a compendium study will help with linking AI and SE towards overcoming existing limitations for the betterment of both SE and AI communities.KeywordsSoftware engineeringArtificial IntelligenceAIAIOSEAI-oriented applicationIntelligent system

The goal of a software product line is to create a suitable platform for fast and easy production of software for same market segment. However, a software product line is limited because it needs to meet new stakeholder requirements either through upgrades or the introduction of new technologies. A Multi Product Line aims at deriving new software products from reuse of a set of features provided by several heterogeneous software product lines without modifying or altering the independent operation of the same. This paper presents a study about the application of Multi Product Lines in the software development process. It shows some domains that illustrate applications of multi product lines principle in the process and the product. Also, the main current challenges in applying multi product line in software engineering are described. This paper aims to show the importance and usefulness of applying multi product lines approaches in Software Engineering.

Due to the high complexity and numerous abstract processes in the subject Software Engineering (SWE), both, challenges in teaching and in learning arise. The teaching of Software Engineering is attempted by a new didactic approach to convey a deeper understanding of the complexity and the processes of Software Engineering in the context of the course. The approach complements the classical ex-cathedra lecture with a seminar and a project phase, whereby the direct application of theoretical knowledge is achieved in real-world situations. In addition to the consolidation of factual knowledge, transferable skills, such as presentation, communication and teamwork skills, can be encouraged. The approach focuses on self-studying as well as collaborative learning. The knowledge gained from team working is multiplied by the Wiki and spread over the whole semester.

The Wright brothers' first flight took place in 1903, and for the next 60 years flight was purely a mechanical activity. This all changed in the early 1960s, when computers first began to find their way onto airplanes. The first onboard computers were hybrid electromechanical devices and made use of very specialized and limited instruction sets. There was a substantial lag between the appearance of digital technology in military aircraft and those flown in civilian applications. Although many people view aviation as an extremely high technology field, there is often a lag in technology adoption, particularly in the airborne segment of civil aviation. This lag is the result of conservatism due to safety concerns as well as a need to constrain both the weight and the cost of onboard systems. While slow to embrace the digital age, aviation‐related applications of software engineering are now at the forefront of this new science. Software applications are now found in all phased of aviation and include among the many, aircraft design, flight safety, air traffic control, maintenance, etc. Ever greater levels of automation onboard aircraft and in ATC systems require highly complex designs while demanding the utmost reliability and dependability of the software and the hosting hardware. Time and experience has shown that such reliability is the result of disciplined, well‐planned, thorough development processes. Current regulatory guidance for airborne systems containing software invokes DO‐178B/ED‐12B as the design assurance standard of choice to ensure safe software. Where software blends with hardware to produce firmware in the form of application‐specific integrated circuits and programmable logic devices, a new standard, DO‐254/ED‐80, has been introduced to extend design assurance to this area of software engineering for airborne systems. The software engineering approaches and techniques discussed here are a result of ongoing debate and consensus among the industry, regulators, and researchers. There is much engineering judgment in the techniques described, although there is no empirical basis or measurement of how best these techniques can eliminate safety‐related problems. Models have been developed to predict the latent fault density by correlating the maturity of the development process. Such models have not yet been applied and tested in the aviation industry. It should be noted that as the amount of software has steadily risen in commercial aircraft, the fatal accident rate has steadily fallen over the same time period. While a direct cause–effect relationship has yet to be established between the design assurance approaches discussed in this article and overall system safety, the trends provide significant confidence in our modern aerospace infrastructure.

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The current approaches to the software engineering education fall short to fulfill the industry demand for quality software engineering. A constant need to create and imbibe more effective learning environments is growing in order to manage this demand. This paper discusses the learning disabilities possessed by both the conventional and the non-conventional approaches for teaching software engineering. We propose that case studies can be used as effective teaching mediums and a case study centric learning environment can address these learning disabilities. A case study approach can help the students to gain and retain realistic exposure to concepts of software engineering as they are applied in the real world, and the students of today can be groomed as excellent professionals who have experienced the intricacies and complexities of the real world as well as tried their hands to manage these complexities.

The advent of new technologies and the rapid growth of internet users have given birth to the menace of cyber-crime. Unfortunately, it is increasing at an alarming pace. This situation calls for good cyber hygiene behavior to secure digital lives. Cyber hygiene behaviour holds a significant role in terms of cybersecurity across the globe. There is a dire need to understand better the user variations associated with good or bad cyber hygiene behaviour and an improved view of what users do to encourage good cyber hygiene. Cybersecurity attacks are rising due to recent advancements in ICT and the Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0). Software development organizations are among the crucial sectors suffering from cybersecurity issues. These organizations are more vulnerable to cyber-attacks because they lack proper cybersecurity culture. Although many initiatives have been taken by academia and industry to address this rising issue, the problem still exists for Software development organizations because good cyber hygiene behaviour is not observed, which is a prerequisite to reduce cyber threats. This study performed a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of research papers published during 2010 – 2020. The key factors influencing software engineers’ cyber hygiene behaviour intention are extracted from the published literature. The study examined 35 research papers out of 5,270 found from IEEE Xplore, Emerald Insight, SpringerLink, and ScienceDirect databases. The study reviewed number of factors such as the role of personal, social, socio-cognitive, environmental, & technological factors that may individually or collectively influence software engineers’ cyber hygiene behaviour. The positive and negative factors associated with the cyber hygiene behaviour of software engineers are also categorized. This study enriches the understanding of the potential factors related to software engineers’ cyber hygiene behaviours. It provides valuable insights to researchers, software development organizations, governments, and individuals associated with the field of Software Engineering. This research will assist in changing the software engineers’ behaviour towards cyber hygiene, which will ultimately lead to mitigate the issues of Cybersecurity.

Building a methodology for developing and maintaining CBR applications is an important goal currently addressed by CBR researchers and practitioners. Since CBR application development is a special kind of software development, building a CBR methodology can certainly be viewed as a software engineering research and development activity. This paper presents a perspective of how software process modeling, which is a recent approach in software engineering, can be used for building a case-based reasoning methodology. Further we describe a case study to show the applicability of the proposed concepts.

Service-orientation for the development of complex distributed systems with reusable components (services) has proved to be highly beneficial approach in software engineering. In order to realize its advantages automated techniques and tools for finding services, selecting the ones that match requestor needs, composing them for achieving enhanced functionality and resolving heterogeneity issues are required. Adding semantics to web services has become the key approach for the automation of service-orientation environments. Current paper proposes semantic approach for service selection and integration. It considers the semantic description of web services and involves reasoning on a knowledge base. The proposed approach for web service discovery and integration is based on designing logic based techniques for matching goal description with the semantic annotation of web services. It provides for the automation of web service search which facilitates the design of practical applications in service-oriented environment.

In a wide range of application areas, system behavior is modeled using variations of scenarios and state machines. In telecommunications, ITU standards SDL (Specification and Description Language) and MSC (Message Sequence Charts) are used for formal specifications and descriptions. Also, for behavioral modeling of object-oriented software systems, UML interaction diagrams (sequence or collaboration diagrams) and statechart diagrams are commonly used. Use cases can be conveniently refined using interaction diagrams, which in turn aid in recognizing class operations and associations and in building statechart specifications of object behaviour. The aim of this workshop is to build a shared understanding on the relation between scenarios and state machines and to gain insight on techniques and tools that may leverage from combining these approaches to behaviour modeling. In this workshop, we will discuss the usage of scenario-based approaches in software engineering. An emphasis area is the relation between scenarios and state-machines. Areas of interest of this one-day workshop include, but are not limited to the following three main discussion topics: 1) Models and notations (requirements for different application areas, shortcomings in current notations, new suggestions for models or notations, categorizations); 2) Algorithms (e.g., synthesizing state machines from scenarios, implied scenarios, generating scenarios from state machines, consistency checks); 3) Tools (tool support for the issues above, different application areas). Moreover, we will identify the limitations and shortcomings of current approaches and outline possible directions for future research in the domain. A related workshop (scenario-based roundtrip eng.) was organized at OOPSLA 2000.

Innovative Design Thinking Approaches in Software Engineering

This paper contains a discussion of striking similarities between influential philosophical concepts of the past and the approaches currently employed in selected areas of computer science. In particular, works of the Pythagoreans, Plato, Abelard, Ash’arites, Malebranche and Berkeley are presented and contrasted with such computer science ideas as digital computers, object-oriented programming, the modelling of an object’s actions and causality in virtual environments, and 3D graphics rendering. The intention of this paper is to provoke the computer science community to go off the beaten path in order to find inspiration for the development of new approaches in software engineering.

The C* Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering (C3S2E) was established in 2008. C3S2E 2010 is the third annual meeting in the C3S2E conference series and is held in Montréal, Québec, Canada, during May 19-20, 2010. The conference aims to address the need of the academic community in computer science and software engineering. It brings together academics, government and industry professionals to discuss recent progress and challenges in a broad range of areas in the field of computer science and software engineering such as algorithms and theory, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, computer architecture, computer graphics, computer security, computer vision, data mining, databases, image processing, information retrieval, machine learning, as well as software engineering. C3S2E 2010 also serves as a platform for theoreticians and practitioners to exchange their original research ideas on academic or application aspects of computing and engineering of software systems, present their new findings on theoretical or practical aspects of computer science and software engineering, share their experiences on integrating new technologies into products and applications, discuss their work on applying computing and software engineering to real-life situations, describe their development and operations of challenging computing related systems, and identify unsolved challenges. Although it is the third time C3S2E is held, this comprehensive conference has grown from a Canadian conference into an international conference. For C3S2E 2010, we continue to keep our tradition for inviting international experts in various areas of computer science and software engineering to join our team of international program committee. As a result, our Program Committee consists of professionals from different parts of the world including Australia, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Portugal, South Korea, Turkey, UAE, and UK. This committee has done an excellent job in finishing the single-blind review and on-line double-blind debate processes in record time. On average, about 90% of reviews were submitted by the due date and about 3.67 reviews were received for each paper. In terms of submissions, we have attracted many high-quality papers submitted by authors globally. The paper selection process was thorough and competitive. On average, each paper was refereed by at least three reviewers, and about 18% of submissions were accepted as full research papers. This year, we have an intensive program that spans over two days. In addition to research papers and student posters, we also include position papers, which allow authors to give their opinions and vision on exploring new concepts and research directions.

The chapter provides possible directions for the wider application of the systems approach to information systems development. Potential improvement of software development practices is linked by some leading experts to the application of more systemic ideas. However, the current state of the practice in software engineering and information systems development shows the urgent need for improvement through greater application of systems thinking.