bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Describing the Elephant: The Different Faces of IT as Service
Authors: Foster Ian , Tuecke Steven
Published: November 2005

In a well-known fable, a group of blind men are asked to describe an elephant. Each encounters a different part of the animal and, not surprisingly, provides a different description. We see a similar degree of confusion in the IT industry today, as terms such as service-oriented architecture, grid, utility computing, on-demand, adaptive enterprise, data center automation, and virtualization are bandied about. As when listening to the blind men, it can be difficult to know what reality lies behind the words, whether and how the different pieces fit together, and what we should be doing about the animal(s) that are being described. (Of course, in the case of the blind men, we did not also have marketing departments in the mix!)
Enterprise Software as Service
Authors: Jacobs Dean
Published: November 2005

While the practice of outsourcing business functions such as payroll has been around for decades, its realization as online software services has only recently become popular. In the online service model, a provider develops an application and operates the servers that host it. Customers access the application over the Internet using industry-standard browsers or Web services clients. A wide range of online applications, including e-mail, human resources, business analytics, CRM (customer relationship management), and ERP (enterprise resource planning), are available.
Web Services and IT Management
Authors: Kumar Pankaj
Published: November 2005

Platform and programming language independence, coupled with industry momentum, has made Web services the technology of choice for most enterprise integration projects. Their close relationship with SOA (service-oriented architecture) has also helped them gain mindshare. Consider this definition of SOA: "An architectural style whose goal is to achieve loose coupling among interacting software agents. A service is a unit of work done by a service provider to achieve desired end results for a service consumer. Both provider and consumer are roles played by software agents on behalf of their owners." Although SOA doesn’t mandate Web services, its emphasis on loose coupling requires use of something with the characteristics of Web services.
Review of "Gray Hat Hacking: The Ethical Hacker’s Handbook by Shon Harris, Allen Harper, Chris Eagle, Jonathan Ness, and Michael Lester", McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2004, $49.99 ISBN: 0072257091
Authors: State Radu
Published: November 2005

Review of "Gray Hat Hacking: The Ethical Hacker’s Handbook by Shon Harris, Allen Harper, Chris Eagle, Jonathan Ness, and Michael Lester", McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2004, $49.99 ISBN: 0072257091
Review of "Struts Recipes by George Franciscus and Danilo Gurovich", Manning Publications, 2004, $44.95 ISBN: 1932394249
Authors: Khan Sajjad
Published: November 2005

Review of "Struts Recipes by George Franciscus and Danilo Gurovich", Manning Publications, 2004, $44.95 ISBN: 1932394249
Calendar
Authors: Maurer Jim
Published: November 2005

Macworld
Call That Gibberish?
Authors: Kelly-Bootle Stanley
Published: November 2005

The Ninth World Multiconference SCI (Systematics, Cybernetics, and Informatics) 2005 has attracted more attention than its vaporific title usually merits by accepting a spoof paper from three MIT graduate students. The Times (of London, by default, of course) ran the eye-catching headline, “How gibberish put scientists to shame” (April 6, 2005). One of the students, Jeremy Stribling, explains how they had developed a computer program to generate random sequences of technobabble in order to confirm their suspicions that papers of dubious academicity were bypassing serious, or indeed, any scrutiny. In fact, the students claim ulterior, financial motives behind this lack of proper peer review. The SCI organizers, it is suggested, solicit admissions via substantial e-mail shots and usually charge a fee for accepted papers to be presented at their conference.
Nurturing software
Authors: Shah Rajiv C. , Kesan Jay P.
Published: November 2005

How societal institutions shape the development of software.
A question of trust
Authors: Backhouse James , Hsu Carol , Tseng Jimmy C. , Baptista John
Published: November 2005

An economic perspective on quality standards in the certification services market.
Multimedia-based interactive advising technology for online consumer decision support
Authors: Jiang Zhenhui , Wang Weiquan , Benbasat Izak
Published: November 2005

Multimedia technologies (such as Flash and QuickTime) have been widely used in online product presentation and promotion to portray products in a dynamic way. The continuous visual stimuli and associated sound effects provide vivid and interesting product presentations; hence, they engage online customers in examining products. Meanwhile, recent research has indicated that online shoppers want detailed and relevant product information and explanations [2]. A promising approach is to embed rich product information and explanations into multimedia-enhanced product demonstrations. This approach is called Multimedia-based Product Annotation (MPA), a product presentation in which customers can retrieve embedded product information in a multimedia context.
WEBVIEW
Authors: Wood Charles A. , Ow Terence T.
Published: November 2005

Using SQL and database technology to seamlessly retrieve information from any corporate or external Web site.
The importance of affective quality
Authors: Zhang Ping , Li Na
Published: November 2005

Users aren't always rational logical beings---emotion plays an often overlooked role in user acceptance of technology.
Exploring an epidemic in an e-science environment
Authors: Zhuge Hai
Published: November 2005

Rules of bio-epidemic and e-epidemic inspire scientists to create a live, scalable interconnected environment for effectively managing situations in nature, society, and the digital virtual world.
To plan, two plans
Authors: Armour Phillip G.
Published: November 2005

A planning approach to managing risk.
Nanotechnology's shadow
Authors: Shannon Meg McGinity
Published: November 2005

The science of manipulating small particles unleashes big issues.
RFID-based techniques for human-activity detection
Authors: Smith Joshua R. , Fishkin Kenneth P. , Jiang Bing , Mamishev Alexander , Philipose Matthai , Rea Adam D. , Roy Sumit , Sundara-Rajan Kishore
Published: November 2005

The iBracelet and the Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform promise the ability to infer human activity directly from sensor readings.
Spontaneous marriages of mobile devices and interactive spaces
Authors: Pering Trevor , Ballagas Rafael , Want Roy
Published: November 2005

Configuring themselves through Elope middleware, tagged physical objects and rooms let users seamlessly integrate their content and invoke services.
RFID enhances visitors' museum experience at the Exploratorium
Authors: Hsi Sherry , Fait Holly
Published: November 2005

Interactive RFID-enhanced museum exhibits let visitors continue their scientific exploration beyond the museum's walls. But museums must still help them understand the technology and address their data privacy concerns.
RFID privacy issues and technical challenges
Authors: Ohkubo Miyako , Suzuki Koutarou , Kinoshita Shingo
Published: November 2005

Cheap tags and technology simple and secure enough to ensure personal data privacy are required before retailers implement and consumers trust and confidently use them on a mass scale.
RFID and the perception of control
Authors: Günther Oliver , Spiekermann Sarah
Published: November 2005

Consumers need to feel they have control over the RFID infrastructure before they routinely trust its services.
What does RFID do for the consumer?
Authors: Eckfeldt Bruce
Published: November 2005

Want consumers to adopt RFID-based systems? Make the perceived (and real) risk acceptable through convenience, variety, and lower prices.
As simple as possible, but not simpler
Authors: Gorry G. Anthony
Published: November 2005

How the use of technology affects what we know and how we know it.
Asymmetric
k
-center is log
*
n
-hard to approximate
Authors: Chuzhoy Julia , Guha Sudipto , Halperin Eran , Khanna Sanjeev , Kortsarz Guy , Krauthgamer Robert , Naor Joseph (Seffi)
Published: November 2005

In the ASYMMETRIC
k
-CENTER problem, the input is an integer
k
and a complete digraph over
n
points together with a distance function obeying the directed triangle inequality. The goal is to choose a set of
k
points to serve as centers and to assign all the points to the centers, so that the maximum distance of any point from its center is as small as possible.We show that the ASYMMETRIC
k
-CENTER problem is hard to approximate up to a factor of log
*
n
−
O
(1) unless
NP
⊆
DTIME
(
n
log log
n
). Since an
O
(log
*
n
)-approximation algorithm is known for this problem, this resolves the asymptotic approximability of ASYMMETRIC
k
-CENTER. This is the first natural problem whose approximability threshold does not polynomially relate to the known approximation classes. We also resolve the approximability threshold of the metric (symmetric)
k
-Center problem with costs.
Indexing compressed text
Authors: Ferragina Paolo , Manzini Giovanni
Published: November 2005

We design two compressed data structures for the full-text indexing problem that support efficient substring searches using roughly the space required for storing the text in compressed form.Our first compressed data structure retrieves the
occ
occurrences of a pattern
P
[1,
p
] within a text
T
[1,
n
] in
O
(
p
+
occ
log
1+ε
n
) time for any chosen ε, 0<ε<1. This data structure uses at most 5
n
H

k

(
T
) +
o
(
n
) bits of storage, where
H

k

(
T
) is the
k
th order empirical entropy of
T
. The space usage is Θ(
n
) bits in the worst case and
o
(
n
) bits for compressible texts. This data structure exploits the relationship between suffix arrays and the Burrows--Wheeler Transform, and can be regarded as a
compressed suffix array
.Our second compressed data structure achieves
O
(
p
+
occ
) query time using
O
(
n
H

k

(
T
)log
ε
n
) +
o
(
n
) bits of storage for any chosen ε, 0<ε<1. Therefore, it provides optimal
output-sensitive
query time using
o
(
n
log
n
) bits in the worst case. This second data structure builds upon the first one and exploits the interplay between two compressors: the Burrows--Wheeler Transform and the
LZ78
algorithm.
Approximation algorithms for asymmetric TSP by decomposing directed regular multigraphs
Authors: Kaplan Haim , Lewenstein Moshe , Shafrir Nira , Sviridenko Maxim
Published: November 2005

A directed multigraph is said to be
d
-regular if the indegree and outdegree of every vertex is exactly
d
. By Hall's theorem, one can represent such a multigraph as a combination of at most
n
2
cycle covers, each taken with an appropriate multiplicity. We prove that if the
d
-regular multigraph does not contain more than ⌊
d/2
⌋ copies of any 2-cycle then we can find a similar decomposition into
n
2
pairs of cycle covers
where each 2-cycle occurs in at most one component of each pair. Our proof is constructive and gives a polynomial algorithm to find such a decomposition. Since our applications only need one such a pair of cycle covers whose weight is at least the average weight of all pairs, we also give an alternative, simpler algorithm to extract a single such pair.This combinatorial theorem then comes handy in rounding a fractional solution of an LP relaxation of the maximum Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) problem. The first stage of the rounding procedure obtains two cycle covers that do not share a 2-cycle with weight at least twice the weight of the optimal solution. Then we show how to extract a tour from the 2 cycle covers, whose weight is at least 2/3 of the weight of the longest tour. This improves upon the previous 5/8 approximation with a simpler algorithm. Utilizing a reduction from maximum TSP to the shortest superstring problem, we obtain a 2.5-approximation algorithm for the latter problem, which is again much simpler than the previous one.For minimum asymmetric TSP, the same technique gives two cycle covers, not sharing a 2-cycle, with weight at most twice the weight of the optimum. Assuming triangle inequality, we then show how to obtain from this pair of cycle covers a tour whose weight is at most 0.842 log
2
n
larger than optimal. This improves upon a previous approximation algorithm with approximation guarantee of 0.999 log
2
n
. Other applications of the rounding procedure are approximation algorithms for maximum 3-cycle cover (factor 2/3, previously 3/5) and maximum asymmetric TSP with triangle inequality (factor 10/13, previously 3/4).
Remote attribute grammars
Authors: Boyland John Tang
Published: November 2005

Describing the static semantics of programming languages with attribute grammars is eased when the formalism allows direct dependencies to be induced between rules for nodes arbitrarily far away in the tree. Such
direct non-local
dependencies cannot be analyzed using classical methods, which enable efficient evaluation.This article defines an attribute grammar extension (“remote attribute grammars”) to permit references to objects with fields to be passed through the attribute system. Fields may be read and written through these references. The extension has a declarative semantics in the spirit of classical attribute grammars. It is shown that determining circularity of remote attribute grammars is undecidable.The article then describes a family of conservative tests of noncircularity and shows how they can be used to “schedule” a remote attribute grammar using standard techniques. The article discusses practical batch and incremental evaluation of remote attribute grammars.
Rise up, revolt!
Authors: Beale Russell
Published: November 2005

It will take a lot of work to create a usable world full of usable products. In this Connections column, Russell Beale proposes we target a message to the public: Demand more from your products.---Manfred Tscheligi
Aesthetics and interaction design
Authors: Heller David
Published: November 2005

Many of us probably think of aesthetics as what makes something beautiful or pleasing; I know I do. But in looking it up, I find greater complexity than that:
Merriam-Webster's Tenth Collegiate
defines aesthetics as "a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste and with the creation and appreciation of beauty." After reading David Heller's article, I found myself appreciating the depth to which aesthetics can go---it can extend far beneath an interface's presentation layer. Not only does beauty exist in the visual design, but David finds it in task flow, interaction, and behavior as well. In this Whiteboard, he shares his thinking about aesthetics and its role in interaction design, and encourages us to explore and assess the relationship more deeply and to integrate it into our professional approach.---Elizabeth Buie
Michel Waisvisz
Authors: Dykstra-Erickson Elizabeth , Arnowitz Jonathan
Published: November 2005

Michel Waisvisz, electronic music impresario and dedicated inventor and performer, was the closing plenary speaker at CHI 2005. We were pleased to be able to interview him and we hope his life, his work, and his comments inspire you to follow his lead: Have vision, be fearless, experiment, play!
Gossip-based aggregation in large dynamic networks
Authors: Jelasity Márk , Montresor Alberto , Babaoglu Ozalp
Published: November 2005

As computer networks increase in size, become more heterogeneous and span greater geographic distances, applications must be designed to cope with the very large scale, poor reliability, and often, with the extreme dynamism of the underlying network.
Aggregation
is a key functional building block for such applications: it refers to a set of functions that provide components of a distributed system access to global information including network size, average load, average uptime, location and description of hotspots, and so on. Local access to global information is often very useful, if not indispensable for building applications that are robust and adaptive. For example, in an industrial control application, some aggregate value reaching a threshold may trigger the execution of certain actions; a distributed storage system will want to know the total available free space; load-balancing protocols may benefit from knowing the target average load so as to minimize the load they transfer. We propose a gossip-based protocol for computing aggregate values over network components in a fully decentralized fashion. The class of aggregate functions we can compute is very broad and includes many useful special cases such as counting, averages, sums, products, and extremal values. The protocol is suitable for extremely large and highly dynamic systems due to its proactive structure---all nodes receive the aggregate value continuously, thus being able to track any changes in the system. The protocol is also extremely lightweight, making it suitable for many distributed applications including peer-to-peer and grid computing systems. We demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of our gossip-based protocol both theoretically and experimentally under a variety of scenarios including node and communication failures.
Shared memory computing on clusters with symmetric multiprocessors and system area networks
Authors: Kontothanassis Leonidas , Stets Robert , Hunt Galen , Rencuzogullari Umit , Altekar Gautam , Dwarkadas Sandhya , Scott Michael L.
Published: November 2005

Cashmere is a software distributed shared memory (S-DSM) system designed for clusters of server-class machines. It is distinguished from most other S-DSM projects by (1) the effective use of fast user-level messaging, as provided by modern system-area networks, and (2) a “two-level” protocol structure that exploits hardware coherence within multiprocessor nodes. Fast user-level messages change the tradeoffs in coherence protocol design; they allow Cashmere to employ a relatively simple directory-based coherence protocol. Exploiting hardware coherence within SMP nodes improves overall performance when care is taken to avoid interference with inter-node software coherence.We have implemented Cashmere on a Compaq AlphaServer/Memory Channel cluster, an architecture that provides fast user-level messages. Experiments indicate that a one-level, version of the Cashmere protocol provides performance comparable to, or slightly better than, that of TreadMarks' lazy release consistency. Comparisons to Compaq's Shasta protocol also suggest that while fast user-level messages make finer-grain software DSMs competitive, VM-based systems continue to outperform software-based access control for applications without extensive fine-grain sharing.Within the family of Cashmere protocols, we find that leveraging intranode hardware coherence provides a 37% performance advantage over a more straightforward one-level implementation. Moreover, contrary to our original expectations, noncoherent hardware support for remote memory writes, total message ordering, and broadcast, provide comparatively little in the way of additional benefits over just fast messaging for our application suite.
Method engineering and COTS evaluation
Authors: Henderson-Sellers B. , Gonzalez-Perez C. , Serour M. K. , Firesmith D. G.
Published: November 2005

This position paper argues that a successful COTS evaluation process should be based on the principles of method engineering (ME). Following a brief description of an ME approach underpinned by a metamodel, some method fragments related to component-based software engineering are offered as the starting point for the creation of a complete suite of method fragments for future COTS evaluation processes.
Towards a knowledge-based framework for COTS component identification
Authors: Réquilé-Romanczuk Annya , Cechich Alejandra , Dourgnon-Hanoune Anne , Mielnik Jean-Christophe
Published: November 2005

The adoption of COTS-based development brings with it many challenges about the identification and finding of candidate components for reuse. Particularly, the first stage in the identification of COTS candidates is commonly carried out by dealing with unstructured information on the Web, which makes the evaluation process highly costing and not efficient when applying complex evaluation criteria. In this position paper, we identify some key elements to support a standardized framework towards a knowledge-based process for COTS component identification. Further discussion would improve our research before moving into developing the framework.
Towards a reference framework for COTS-based development
Authors: Franch Xavier , Torchiano Marco
Published: November 2005

The literature about COTS-based development suffers from two main problems: there is no common terminology and it is not clear whether different techniques address the same issues and to which extend they overlap. In this paper we describe a reference model that sets the basis for a COTS-based development ontology and terminology. It should allow a systematic organization of published studies and an easier comparison of proposed approaches.
Managing change in an OTS-aware requirements engineering approach
Authors: Cooper Kendra , Chung Lawrence
Published: November 2005

Rapid changes in a component-based application (CBA), or the capabilities available in off-the-shelf (OTS) components, have significant impact on the specification and evolution of requirements in an OTS-aware requirements engineering paradigm. A well-disciplined, systematic methodology that explicitly supports the use of OTS components needs a clearly defined process for effectively managing the inevitable changes and determining the impact of such changes on the system. In this paper, we present a Non-functional Requirement (NFR) Framework based approach that supports representing changes either to an OTS component or a CBA, the associations from components to the requirements using positive and negative contributions, reasoning about the impact of change, and (re-)evaluating the degree of meeting requirements as a result of these change.
Understanding solution architecture concerns
Authors: Gamble M. T. , Gamble R. , Hepner M.
Published: November 2005

Modern software system development includes the use of off-the-shelf components in the form of third-party software (TPS). Vendors of TPS products play an increasingly important role in the systems that incorporate their offerings. Modeling these vendors' motivations, in the form of architectural concerns and viewpoints, provides an additional tool for customers evaluating TPS. Such viewpoint-based analysis of vendor-oriented solution architectures can provide valuable insights to customers at the time of TPS acquisition as well during the overall lifetime of the system incorporating TPS.
Software engineering for large-scale multi-agent systems - SELMAS'05
Authors: Garcia Alessandro , Choren Ricardo , Lucena Carlos , Romanovsky Alexander , Holvoet Tom , Giorgini Paolo
Published: November 2005

Software is becoming present in every aspect of our lives, pushing us inevitably towards a world of distributed, context-aware computing systems. SELMAS'05, "Software Everywhere - Context-Aware Agents", was built on the success of precedent SELMAS workshops, but with a special emphasis on the impact of the agent technology in the development of large context-aware systems. SELMAS has a track record of bringing together researchers and practitioners with a variety of perspectives in order to engage in lively discussion and debate. A particular interest of this workshop was to understand those issues in the agent technology that make it difficult and/or improve the production of context-aware systems.
Agent-oriented methodologies
Authors: Henderson-Sellers Brian
Published: November 2005

With the growing interest in the use of agent-oriented methodologies for software development, there is a need to identify influences and commonalities as a basis for advancing the state-of-the-art in AO methodologies. Here we advocate the use of a method engineering approach, underpinned by metamodelling as a means to achieve flexible support for many different kinds of project and agent systems. Using the OPEN Process Framework as an exemplar, we demonstrate the value of this approach, concluding with recommendations for future collaborative work.
Multiagent systems engineering of organization-based multiagent systems
Authors: DeLoach Scott A.
Published: November 2005

In this paper, we examine the Multiagent Systems Engineering (MaSE) methodology and its applicability to developing organization-based multiagent systems, which are especially relevant to context aware systems. We discuss the inherent shortcomings of MaSE and then present our approach to modeling the concepts required for organizations including goals, roles, agents, capabilities, and the assignment of agents to roles. Finally, we extend MaSE to allow it to overcome its inherent shortcomings and capture the organizational concepts defined in our organizational model.
Opportunistic exploitation of knowledge to increase predictability of agent interactions in MANETs
Authors: Sen Rohan , Hackmann Gregory , Roman Gruia-Catalin , Gill Christopher
Published: November 2005

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are dynamic environments where frequent changes in the network topology due to physical mobility of hosts result in unpredictable, sporadic and transient connectivity. Due to this high level of uncertainty, only limited guarantees can be given for interactions among agents that run on the mobile hosts. This is not desirable as any interaction among agents on different hosts is susceptible to interruption. In this paper, we explore means to alleviate the level of uncertainty in a MANET by having hosts and agents share knowledge of their non-functional attributes such as location, velocity, etc. with each other. This shared knowledge can be used to compute, for example, the points in space and time when two hosts are likely to be within communication range. This information can then be provided to individual agents, making them more aware of the constraints within which they operate and thereby giving them a chance to tailor their behavior so that they are less affected by unpredictable disconnections. The contributions of this paper are a minimalist formalism for knowledge exchange, a software architecture supporting knowledge exchange, and an empirical evaluation of the benefits of exploiting knowledge to increase the predictability of interactions.
Views
Authors: Schelfthout Kurt , Holvoet Tom , Berbers Yolande
Published: November 2005

Programming applications for highly dynamic environments such as mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) is complex, since the working context of applications changes continuously. This paper presents "views" as abstractions for representing and maintaining context information, tailored to applications in MANETs. An application agent can define a view by declaratively describing the context information it is interested in. A supporting middleware platform, called ObjectPlaces, ensures that the information represented by a view continuously reflects the agent's context information, despite the dynamic situation in a MANET. We elaborate on the distributed protocol that ObjectPlaces uses to maintain the information of views, and give a thorough evaluation.
A case for adaptation of the distributed environment layout in multiagent applications
Authors: Mertens Koenraad , Holvoet Tom , Berbers Yolande
Published: November 2005

A multiagent application consists of an environment and a number of agents. The environment contains information that the agents use and manipulate to do their work. When a multiagent system is distributed over a number of different hosts (i.e. more than one execution platform is used), the environment has to be distributed as well. The distributed layout of the environment can influence the performance of agents and of the system.In this paper we discuss when a distributed environment can dynamically change its distribution layout. Our focus is on a distributed environment in which mobile agents move around and are aware of the distributed nature of the system.Changes to the layout of the distribution are not only triggered by the agents (like other, application-specific actions), but they can also be triggered by external events, and the environment itself has the ability to pro-actively change its distribution layout over the different hosts when this improves the behavior and efficiency of the application.Using a specific application (solving distributed constraint satisfaction problems) as an example, we indicate the usefulness of changes to the distribution layout and how they can be incorporated easily into a multiagent application design. It turns out that for some problems, the improvement in efficiency can be more than 30%.
Policy-driven configuration and management of agent based distributed systems
Authors: Tripathi Anand , Kulkarni Devdatta , Ahmed Tanvir
Published: November 2005

In this paper, we demonstrate a policy based approach for building and managing large scale agent based systems. We identify different classes of policies for agent based component integration. We also identify the system services and mechanisms that are required for policy based integration of components and their management. The utility of this approach is presented through case studies involving two applications making use the distributed event monitoring system that we have developed.
Adaptive replication of large-scale multi-agent systems
Authors: Guessoum Zahia , Faci Nora , Briot Jean-Pierre
Published: November 2005

In order to construct and deploy large-scale multi-agent systems, we must address one of the fundamental issues of distributed systems, the possibility of partial failures. This means that fault-tolerance is an inevitable issue for large-scale multi-agent systems. In this paper, we discuss the issues and propose an approach for fault-tolerance of multi-agent systems. The starting idea is the application of replication strategies to agents, the most critical agents being replicated to prevent failures. As criticality of agents may evolve during the course of computation and problem solving, and as resources are bounded, we need to dynamically and automatically adapt the number of replicas of agents, in order to maximize their reliability and availability. We will describe our approach and related mechanisms for evaluating the criticality of a given agent (based on application-level semantic information, e.g. interdependences, and also system-level statistical information, e.g., communication load) and for deciding what strategy to apply (e.g., active replication, passive) how to parameterize it (e.g., number of replicas). We also will report on experiments conducted with our prototype architecture (named DimaX).
A layered architecture for real-time distributed multi-agent systems
Authors: Jamali Nadeem , Ren Shangping
Published: November 2005

Real-time computations in open distributed systems have functional as well as coordination requirements. Specifically, distributed agents may require to be coordinated to satisfy real-time and other quality of service (QoS) constraints. However, this coordination is difficult to achieve because of the unpredictability of computational resource availability in an open system.A three-layered architecture for computations in an open distributed multi-agent system is presented, which keeps functional, coordination and resource concerns of an application separate, allowing each to be studied separately. Functional requirements of the computation are pursued by a system of primitive agents called
actors.
Timing constraints are imposed on these agents through meta-operations carried out by
coordinators.
Resource encapsulations called
cyberorgs
are used for creating execution environments for agents and coordinators with predictable availability of resources.Programming constructs are developed for implementing cyber-orgs and coordinators.
From requirements to multi-agent architecture using organisational concepts
Authors: Bastos Lucia R. D. , Castro Jaelson F. B.
Published: November 2005

There is a clear relationship between requirements and architectures. However, evolving and elaborating system requirements into a software architecture satisfying those requirements is still a difficult task, mainly based on intuition. To narrow these problems, we are investigating techniques for deriving architectural model in concert with Multi-Agent System (MAS) requirement specifications. Our framework advocates that a multi-agent system corresponds to the organisational structure, in which actors are members of a group in order to perform specific roles. An organisation comprises groups, goals, members, roles and interactions.
A product-line requirements approach to safe reuse in multi-agent systems
Authors: Dehlinger Josh , Lutz Robyn R.
Published: November 2005

The dynamic nature of highly autonomous agents within distributed systems is difficult to specify with existing requirements techniques. However, capturing the possibly shifting configurations of agents in the requirements specification is essential for safe reuse of agents. The contribution of this work is an extensible agent-oriented requirements specification template for distributed systems that supports safe reuse. We make two basic claims for this idea. First, by adopting a product-line-like approach, it exploits component reuse during system evolution. Second, the template allows ready integration with an existing tool-supported, safety analysis technique sensitive to dynamic variations within the components (i.e., agents) of a system. To illustrate these claims, we apply the requirements specification template and safety analysis to a real-world context-aware, distributed satellite system.
Software Engineering Education (SEEd)
Authors: Henderson Peter B.
Published: November 2005

To date I have not received any comments regarding Don Reifer's article
"Educating Software Engineers: An Industry Viewpoint"
in the last
SEEd
column. Perhaps there are a few letters to the editor. By the way, I would like to complement Will Tracz SEN editor. He does an excellent job pulling each issue of SEN together, and we are indebted to the time and effort he contributes to making SEN very readable and informative.
Project management
Authors: Saur Joe
Published: November 2005

In the 9 June issue of
Network Computing
, Tim Wilson ("What's a Project Manager to Do?") quotes Standish Group numbers regarding the success rate of IT projects:• 53% "challenged" (past deadline or over budget)• 18% failed (terminated before completion, or completed and never used)• 29% successfully completed (on time and on budget)
Surfing the net for software engineering notes
Authors: Doernhoefer Mark
Published: November 2005

We have periodic brown bag lunches at the office where, in addition to free pizza, colleagues present a short briefing on some technical topic. A recent presentation provided a short primer on Aspect Oriented Programming, or AOP. AOP is also sometimes referred to by the acronym AOSD, for Aspect-Oriented Software Development. I knew a little about AOP before the presentation, how the behavior of AOP programs change depending upon the included programming aspects, but I had no idea of the power and danger of this extension to traditional OO programming. So after the briefing, I went for a little surfing expedition to learn more about AOP.
Risks to the public
Authors: Neumann Peter G.
Published: November 2005

Edited by Peter G. Neumann (Risks Forum Moderator and Chairman of the ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy), plus personal contributions by others, as indicated. Opinions expressed are individual rather than organizational, and all of the usual disclaimers apply. We address problems relating to software, hardware, people, and other circumstances relating to computer systems. To economize on space, we include pointers to items in the online Risks Forum: (R i j) denotes RISKS vol i number j. Cited RISKS items generally identify contributors and sources, together with URLs. Official RISKS archives are available at www.risks.org (which redirects to Newcastle and gets you nice html formatting and a search engine courtesy of Lindsay Marshall; http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/i.j.html gets you (R i j)) and at ftp://www.sri.com/risks.
ICSE 2005 Workshop on Architecting Dependable Systems (WADS 2005)
Authors: de Lemos Rogério , Romanovsky Alexander
Published: November 2005

This summary gives a brief overview of a one-day Workshop on Architecting Dependable Systems (WADS) held in conjunction with the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2005). The main aim of this workshop is to promote cross-fertilization between the software architecture and dependability communities. We believe that both of them will benefit from clarifying approaches that have been previously tested and have succeeded as well as those that have been tried but have not yet been shown to be successful.
Workshop on the Modeling and Analysis of Concerns in Software (MACS 2005)
Authors: Robillard Martin P.
Published: November 2005

This report is a summary of the Workshop on the Modeling and Analysis of Concerns in Software (MACS 2005) held at the 27
th
International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2005). The main goal of the workshop was to bring together researchers and practitioners with interest in techniques for modeling and analyzing the realization of concerns in software systems to support software development and evolution. The workshop consisted of an interactive combination of presentations and discussions. The presentations and discussions were based on a collection of 16 short papers covering a wide range of approaches.
Software engineering for secure systems
Authors: Bruschi Danilo , De Win Bart , Monga Mattia
Published: November 2005

The SESS'05 held in St. Louis, MO on May 15-16 was intended to be a venue to discuss techniques for building and validating secure applications. Workshop attendees (about 40 people) came both from the software engineering and the security community, raising a fruitful discussion and exchange of ideas and problem perspectives.
2nd Intl. ICSE Workshop on Software Engineering for Automotive Systems
Authors: Pretschner Alexander , Salzmann Christian , Stauner Thomas
Published: November 2005

This paper summarizes the second International Workshop on Software Engineering for Automotive Systems, held in conjunction with ICSE'05. We give a brief overview of the presented papers and pinpoint the highlights of the discussions.
Software Engineering for Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems - SELMAS 2005
Authors: Garcia Alessandro , Choren Ricardo , Lucena Carlos , Romanovsky Alexander , Giese Holger , Weyns Danny , Holvoet Tom , Giorgini Paolo
Published: November 2005

This paper is intended to sum up the results of the 4th International Workshop on
Software Engineering for Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems
(SELMAS 2005) held in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, May 15--16, 2005, as part of the

27
th
International Conference on Software Engineering

(ICSE'05). The main purpose of this workshop was to share and pool together the collective experience of people, both academics and practitioners, who are actively working on software engineering for large-scale multi-agent systems. A selected set of expanded workshop papers and invited papers will appear in the 4
th
edition of the book
Software Engineering for Multi-Agent Systems
(LNCS, Springer, 2006). The theme of this workshop edition was "Software Everywhere - Context-Aware Agents". The workshop consisted of an opening presentation, several paper presentations organized into three technical sessions, two keynotes, one panel, and two discussion groups. During the workshop we informally reviewed ongoing and previous work and debated a number of important issues. The SELMAS 2005 Web site, including the electronic version of this report, can be found at . We begin by presenting an overview of our goals and the workshop structure, and then focus on the workshop technical program and results.
ICSE 2005 workshop summary third international workshop on dynamic analysis (WODA 2005)
Authors: Pollock Lori , Andrews James
Published: November 2005

Dynamic analysis techniques collect and examine information about program executions. Particularly combined with static analysis, results from dynamic analysis can have many uses in regard to developing robust and reliable large-scale software systems.
Human and social factors of software engineering
Authors: John Michael , Maurer Frank , Tessem Bjørnar
Published: November 2005

Software is developed for people and by people. Human and social factors have a very strong impact on the success of software development endeavours and the resulting system. Surprisingly, much of software engineering research in the last decade is technical, quantitative and deemphasizes the people aspect. The workshop on Human and Social Factors in Software Engineering has been picking up on the some of the soft aspects in software development that was highlighted in the early days of software engineering. It also follows a recent trend in the software industry, namely the introduction of agile methods, and provides a scientific perspective on these. Including and combining approaches of software engineering with social science, the workshop looked at software engineering from a number of perspectives, including those of agile methods and communication theory, in order to point out solutions and conditions for human-centred software engineering.
Sensitivity analysis of fuzzy and neural network models
Authors: Aggarwal K. K. , Singh Yogesh , Chandra Pravin , Puri Manimala
Published: November 2005

It is well known that soft computing techniques can be very well deployed for software engineering applications. Among these fuzzy and neural models are widely used to estimate lines of codes, effort, software maintainability, software understandability etc. This paper proposes to carry out a sensitivity analysis of the two models and shows which one is better. This is done with the help of a case study where the two models are used to measure software maintainability.
Evaluation of various training algorithms in a neural network model for software engineering applications
Authors: Aggarwal K. K. , Singh Yogesh , Chandra Pravin , Puri Manimala
Published: November 2005

Software Engineering as a discipline emerged in response to the software crisis perceived by the industry. It is a well known fact that at the beginning of any project, the software industry needs to know how much will it cost to develop and what would be the time required. Resource estimation in software engineering is more challenging than resource estimation in any other industry. A number of resource estimation methods are currently available and the neural network model is one of them. This paper proposes to evaluate various training algorithms in a neural network model and shows which is the best suited for software engineering applications.
Why teach reverse engineering?
Authors: Ali Muhammad Raza
Published: November 2005

Software reverse engineering is a fascinating discipline of software engineering. But it has failed to attract attention from students. Largely due to the facts that many universities around the world do not offer relevant courses, developing new software has always been considered superior then to maintain existing systems. But owing to the arrival of the internet, and client-server technology. Many organizations wish to adapt their existing systems. Thus the trend has somewhat shifted towards software evolution and maintenance. And now, more than ever before we need software engineers who can work effectively with legacy systems. In this paper I wish to highlight importance of incorporating Reverse engineering concepts and techniques into software engineering curriculum. I will start with a brief overview of reverse engineering concepts, and then discuss advantages of teaching reverse engineering.
All we really need to know about software engineering is in the film
office space
Authors: Ovans Russell
Published: November 2005

The 1999 Mike Judge film
Office Space
enjoys a cult following, particularly amongst software engineers. Despite its mass appeal and broad comedic base, the film contains many hidden gems of wisdom regarding the craft of software engineering. In this short paper I discuss six rules that are embodied in the film's plot line and characterizations, and what the film has to teach us about each of them. The rules are: design for change; software engineering is a social activity; an untested program does not work; not everyone gets to write video games; Brooks' Law; and, you will be expected to work long hours.
A framework for dynamic software architecture-based self-healing
Authors: Qun Yang , Xian-Chun Yang , Man-Wu Xu
Published: November 2005

Self-healing is an active topic in areas like large complex distributed systems and continuous running systems, such as telephone switching systems, banking systems, mobile embedded systems. The architecture-based self-healing approach uses the architectural model as a basis for system reconfiguration. In architecture-based self-healing systems, the architectures may also be changed. The architectures that changes during system running are dynamic software architectures. In this paper, an approach of self-healing system based on dynamic software architecture is proposed. To make the system architecture observable and controllable, architectural reflection is used. Meanwhile, architectural style is used to ensure the consistency and correctness of the changes.
Deeper questions
Authors: Schaefer Robert
Published: November 2005

One applies process improvement to the software development process to increase efficiency and decrease defects. Process improvement is not a one-shot deal. Theoretically processes can be improved continuously, forever, but... The belief that continuous improvement can continue forever is analogous to the belief that by continuously improving an automobile's efficiency, eventually the day will come when the driver is forced to stop every so often to pour off excess spontaneously created gasoline. Here, the limits are the laws of thermodynamics. For the software development process the limits are the constraints of the software development organization. To improve a software process past a certain point, the organization that hosts the process's context will need to be improved, and then the context that hosts 'that' organization's process, and so on.Aha! A recursive pattern!The recognition of having a recursive problem raises deeper questions about the nature of process and process improvement, which, for this paper, will be addressed in the context of the development of large, complex, information intensive systems. Systems of this type are the ones most prone to failure and thus should benefit most from process improvement.
DEAS 2005
Authors: Garlan David , Litoiu Marin , Müller Hausi A. , Mylopoulos John , Smith Dennis B. , Wong Kenny
Published: November 2005

Understanding software engineering issues for autonomic computing systems is critical for the software and information technology sectors, which are continually challenged to reduce the complexity of their systems. To be autonomic, a system must know itself as well as its boundaries and its environment, configure and reconfigure itself, continually optimize itself, recover or heal from malfunction, protect itself, and function in a heterogeneous world---while keeping its complexity hidden from the user. The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners, who investigate concepts, methodologies, techniques, technologies, and tools to design and evolve autonomic software.