Are forward designed or reverse-engineered UML diagrams more helpful for code maintenance?

Are Forward Designed or Reverse-Engineered UML diagrams more helpful for code maintenance?: A family of experiments

Women and computing

Guest Editorial

The purpose of this case study was to understand the experiences of women in any leadership role with Computer Science or Engineering degrees that have helped them persist and advance in their careers in the context of Silicon Valley. The "leaky pipeline" phenomenon has been described as women leaving the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) track at many stages in the pipeline (K-12, secondary, career). It has resulted in underrepresentation of women at all levels of the career ladder, specifically, for women with Computer Science and Engineering degrees in leadership positions. Using a case study research methodology, this study sought to answer this question: Why do women with Computer Science and Engineering degrees leadership positions in Silicon Valley stay in the field? Ten women in senior leadership roles in high-tech companies in Silicon Valley with at least a Bachelor's in Science degree in Computer Science or Engineering participated in the study. Women in this case study had a job title of Director or above. One-on-one interviews, a review of artifacts, and the researcher's observations of the participants during their participation in the study were analyzed. Four themes emerged from their interviews and artifact review: (a) STEM foundation, (b) grit, (c) Silicon Valley barriers, and (d) career strategies.

Contributors

Unified Modeling Language (UML) provides various diagrams to depict system characteristics and complex environment from different viewpoints and different application layers. It also contains a lot of standard elements with vague and sparse semantics. Researching how to combine Unified Modeling Language (UML) with formal method in order to improve UML semantic accuracy is a hotspot of researches in software engineering because of the half formal characteristic of UML. This paper defines Syntax Domains, Abstract Syntax, Semantic Domains, Semantic Functions of UML sequence diagram using Denotational Semantics, formally depicts sequence diagram on the function of the each syntax object of sequence diagram. It provides the foundation for accuracy and consistency validation of UML sequence diagram.

The unified modeling language (UML) designs come in a variety of different notations. UML designs can be quite large and interactions between various notations and the models they define can be difficult to assess. During the design phase, and between successive releases of systems, designs change. The impact of such changes and the resulting effect on behavior can be non-obvious and difficult to assess. This survey article explores techniques for such re-evaluation that can be classified as regression testing and suggests regression testing criteria for designs. These might vary depending on testing objectives and include both selective and regenerative regression testing approaches. The article provides a concise overview of regression testing approaches related to various UML design notations including use cases, class diagrams, sequence diagrams, activity diagrams, and statecharts, as well as combinations of these models. It discusses UML-related techniques involving cost and prioritization during selective regression testing. Finally, it evaluates these techniques with respect to inclusiveness, precision, efficiency, generality, accountability, and safety. An example is used throughout to illustrate how the techniques work. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This survey article explores techniques for regression testing with UML designs and suggests regression testing criteria for designs. These might vary depending on testing objectives and include both selective and regenerative regression testing approaches. The article provides a concise overview of regression testing approaches related to various UML design notations including use cases, class diagrams, sequence diagrams, activity diagrams, and statecharts, as well as combinations of these models. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In 2004 African Americans (12.2% of the population) received 3.1% of the total bachelor degrees in computer science in the United States. The Technology Leadership Institute (TLI) is designed to identify the social, economic & academic barriers that inhibit these students from pursuing 4-year degrees in computer science. The goal of the TLI is to encourage students to take an interest in the computer and information sciences and to build the knowledge and skills necessary to gain admission into competitive computer science programs

To solve the identification and comprehension problem of crosscutting concerns in existing legacy software system, a framework of aspects-oriented software reverse engineering was proposed. An approach on re-modularizing traversal features of legacy system was presented, which based on various Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams. While modeling crosscutting concerns in UML use case diagrams, the non-functional requirements that affect several use case modules can be enveloped into aspects modules with stereotype mechanism. The recurring message transmission patterns can be re-modularized as aspects in UML sequence diagrams with UML collaborations. Standard UML activity diagram notations were extended and modified by nodes fusion and addition, which support the graphical composition operation between crosscutting behaviors and primary business rules of concurrent system. The case study indicates traversal features of software system can be extracted and re-modularized from various perspectives in aspects-oriented reverse engineering, which improves the comprehensibility and maintainability of legacy system.

This article introduces design and architectural patterns useful in intelligent systems engineering. Patterns are represented using class, collaboration, and sequence diagrams from the unified modeling language (UML) specialized relative to various components and subsystems of an intelligent system (IS). An IS pattern is seen an entity that is vaguely defined relative to structural and functional features of an intelligent system. The basic approach in this research is to design and build robotic devices that embody IS patterns and to reverse engineer existing robotic or living systems using IS patterns either singularly or in networks as classifiers (i.e., where a feature set embodied in an IS pattern matches to a degree features of a subsystem of an existing system such as a Cephalopod (e.g., octopus)). The application of IS patterns is illustrated in the reverse engineering of a life form that has pattern recognition capabilities (e.g., identifying the location of cached food by Nucifraga columbiana (Clark's nutcracker)).

I've already tweeted this a few times, but I'm pleased to announce that, in partnership with PKP (and subject to finding the right candidate) we have a funded place for an MSc in Computer Science at the University of Lincoln to work on open source software for scholarly XML typesetting. The University of Lincoln, in association with the Public Knowledge Project, is pleased to offer a funded place for the MSc by Research in Computer Science.

Reverse engineering is the key idea for reconstruction of any existing system. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to reverse engineer an object-oriented code into Unified Modeling Language (UML) class diagram. Our algorithm is very general in nature and can be applied to any object-oriented code irrespective of the object-oriented programming language. In our paper we consider an object-oriented pseudocode similar to C++ to implement our algorithm. Some of the researchers have dealt in the past the problem of reverse engineering an object-oriented code to UML class diagrams. However, none of these researchers have treated all the constructs available in UML class diagrams. Unlike the previously done work on reverse engineering into UML, our algorithm generates rules for a complete set of constructs available in UML class diagrams. It includes classes, relationships, objects, attributes, operations, inheritance, associations, interfaces & other extensible mechanisms also. This algorithm can be viewed as a solution to reverse engineer any available object-oriented software. An application for the implementation of above said rules using C++ code is also included in the paper. We thoroughly compare our work with the similar type of earlier work in this area and uncover the deficiencies in these previous available works. Moreover our motive in this paper is to prepare rules to reverse engineer C++ code into UML class diagrams and not to generate any tools.

Over a year ago, IEEE Potentials (Feb. 1985) carried an article entitled “EE and MBA: a winning combination?” which discussed the usefulness of combining a B.S. in electrical engineering with a masters degree in business administration. In this article, similar consideration is given to a masters degree in computer science (CS). Our ever-increasing dependency on computers in most aspects of our personal and professional lives make the EE and CS degrees a highly marketable combination.

The two most critical phases of SDLC are the specification and the designing phase as they involve the transformation of the semantics from real world domain to computer software systems. Unified Modelling Language (UML) has been accepted as blue print for design and specification of software critical systems. But, UML structures have the weakness in preciously defining the semantics of a system. Any misinterpretation in safety critical system’s specification may risks loss of lives. Formal methods are mathematical tools and techniques which are proven very adequate, principally, at requirement specification and design level. However, formal methods are not welcomed because of rigorous use of mathematics. Therefore, a bridge is required between UML and formal methods to overcome the above insufficiencies. The endeavour of this paper is to propose a new approach by integrating UML and Z notation, a formal specification language. The main focus of this paper is on transforming the UML diagram: use case diagram, class diagram and sequence diagram to Z Schema for capturing both the syntax and semantics, particularly for safety critical system. The resultant formal model of the approach are analyzed and verified by using Z/Eves tool.

The study aimed at determining the learning styles of students pursuing master's degree programmes in engineering. Index of Learning Style was administered to 175 students. The findings reveal that there exist differences in learning styles of students pursuing master's degree in computer science and engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, electronics and communication engineering and mechanical engineering.Majority of the students of various branches except of mechanical engineering prefer active, sensing, visual and sequential learning styles but very few of them have strong preference for a particular learning style.