bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Test-Driven Development of Data Warehouses
Authors: Schutte Sam , Ariyachandra Thilini , Frolick Mark
Published: January 2012

Test-driven development is a software development methodology that has recently gained a great deal of traction in the software development community. It focuses on creating software-based test cases that define the business requirements of an application before beginning the coding of the application itself. This paper proposes that test-driven development could be a useful methodology for data warehouse projects, in that it could help team members avoid some of the major pitfalls of data warehousing, and result in a higher-quality end product.
Developing Context Sensitive BIM Based applications
Authors: Hartmann Timo
Published: January 2012

Current Building Information Model (BIM) based applications do not integrate well with the varying and frequently changing work processes of Architectural, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) professionals. One cause for this problem is that traditionally software developers apply software design methods that aim to design software that cater to a broad range of different users without accounting for the possibility of changing work processes. This chapter theoretically introduces a different method to design software - context sensitive software development – and theoretically argues that it is poised to enable application developers to adjust BIM based applications to the varying and frequently changing work processes of AEC professionals. As a first starting point for the practical applicability of the theoretical method, first user categories that BIM based application developers can use as a starting point for the analysis of different user contexts are provided. These categories were derived from the author’s experience supporting more than ten projects with the implementation of BIM based applications and from what they learned on a number of industry BIM workshops. The chapter closes by mapping out future research directions to evaluate the practical value of the method and with a theoretical analysis of how researchers can apply state-of-the-art software development methods, software development technologies, and software dissemination models to support their research.
Deconstructive Design as an Approach for Opening Trading Zones
Authors: Allhutter Doris , Hofmann Roswitha
Published: January 2012

This chapter presents a critical approach to software development that implements reflective competences in software engineering teams. It is grounded within qualitative research on software engineering and critical design practice and presents conceptual work in progress. Software development is a socio-technological process of negotiation that requires mediation of different approaches. Research on the co-construction of society and technology and on the social shaping of technological artefacts and processes has highlighted social dimensions such as gender and diversity discourses that implicitly inform development practices. To help design teams implement reflective competences in this area, the authors introduce ‘deconstructive design’—a critical-design approach that uses deconstruction as a tool to disclose collective processes of meaning construction. For this purpose, the idea of value-sensitive design is linked to approaches of practice-based, situated and context-sensitive learning and to the concepts of ‘trading zones’ and ‘boundary objects’.
Applying a Fuzzy and Neural Approach for Forecasting the Foreign Exchange Rate
Authors: Chen Toly
Published: January 2012

Accurately forecasting the foreign exchange rate is important for export-oriented enterprises. For this purpose, a fuzzy and neural approach is applied in this study. In the fuzzy and neural approach, multiple experts construct fuzzy linear regression (FLR) equations from various viewpoints to forecast the foreign exchange rate. Each FLR equation can be converted into two equivalent nonlinear programming problems to be solved. To aggregate these fuzzy foreign exchange rate forecasts, a two-step aggregation mechanism is applied. At the first step, fuzzy intersection is applied to aggregate the fuzzy forecasts into a polygon-shaped fuzzy number to improve the precision. A back propagation network is then constructed to defuzzify the polygon-shaped fuzzy number and generate a representative/crisp value to enhance accuracy. To evaluate the effectiveness of the fuzzy and neural approach, a practical case of forecasting the foreign exchange rate in Taiwan is used. According to the experimental results, the fuzzy and neural approach improved both the precision and accuracy of the foreign exchange rate forecasting by 79% and 81%, respectively.
Vehicular System Management Architecture and Application Platform
Authors: Chang Teng-Wen , Chen Jiann-Liang
Published: January 2012

Notably, not all telematics services can be used in telematics terminals as a result of the varied platform standards. The main issues are that most telematics technologies depend on vertical, proprietary and closed per-OEM Original Equipment Manufacture (OEM) platforms, forming islands of non-interoperable technology and preventing third-party service providers from creating valuable services. In this study, the Open Gateway Service Initiative Vehicle Expert Group (OSGi/VEG) was integrated into an Android platform to generate a vehicular Android/OSGi platform that has the advantages of both original platforms, such as remote management, rich class sharing, proprietary vehicular applications, security policies, easy management of application programming interface (APIs), and an environment with increased openness. Furthermore, this study integrates the cloud computing mechanism into the Android/OSGi platform, which allows service providers to upload their telematics bundles onto storage clouds via the provisioning server.
Swap Token
Authors: Jiang Song
Published: January 2012

A prototype implementation of the swap token mechanism in the Linux kernel as well as some experiment measurements are presented. The experiment results show that the mechanism can consistently reduce the program execution slowdown in a multiprogramming environment including SPEC2000 programs and other memory-intensive applications by up to 67%. The slowdown reductions mainly come from reductions of up to 95% of total page faults during program interactions. This chapter also shows that the mechanism introduces little overhead to program executions, and its implementations on Linux (and Unix) systems are straightforward.
Assembling of Parallel Programs for Large Scale Numerical Modeling
Authors: Malyshkin V.E.
Published: January 2012

The main ideas of the Assembly Technology (AT) in its application to parallel implementation of large scale realistic numerical models on a rectangular mesh are considered and demonstrated by the parallelization (fragmentation) of the Particle-In-Cell method (PIC) application to solution of the problem of energy exchange in plasma cloud. The implementation of the numerical models with the assembly technology is based on the construction of a fragmented parallel program. Assembling of a numerical simulation program under AT provides automatically different useful dynamic properties of the target program including dynamic load balance on the basis of the fragments migration from overloaded into underloaded processor elements of a multicomputer. Parallel program assembling approach also can be considered as combination and adaptation for parallel programming of the well known modular programming and domain decomposition techniques and supported by the system software for fragmented programs assembling.
Natural Language Processing Techniques in Requirements Engineering
Authors: Yilmaz A. Egemen , Yilmaz I. Berk
Published: January 2012

Requirement analysis is the very first and crucial step in the software development processes. Stating the requirements in a clear manner, not only eases the following steps in the process, but also reduces the number of potential errors. In this chapter, techniques for the improvement of the requirements expressed in the natural language are revisited. These techniques try to check the requirement quality attributes via lexical and syntactic analysis methods sometimes with generic, and sometimes domain and application specific knowledge bases.
DIMMA
Authors: Yaghini Masoud , Kazemzadeh Mohammad Rahim Akhavan
Published: January 2012

Metaheuristic algorithms will gain more and more popularity in the future as optimization problems are increasing in size and complexity. In order to record experiences and allow project to be replicated, a standard process as a methodology for designing and implementing metaheuristic algorithms is necessary. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no methodology has been proposed in literature for this purpose. This paper presents a Design and Implementation Methodology for Metaheuristic Algorithms, named DIMMA. The proposed methodology consists of three main phases and each phase has several steps in which activities that must be carried out are clearly defined in this paper. In addition, design and implementation of tabu search metaheuristic for travelling salesman problem is done as a case study to illustrate applicability of DIMMA.
DSOA
Authors: Buzeto Fabricio Nogueira , Filho Carlos Botelho de Paula , Castanho Carla Denise , Jacobi Ricardo Pezzuol
Published: January 2012

Ubiquitous environments are composed by a wide variety of devices, each one with different characteristics like communication protocol, programming and hardware platforms. These devices range from powerful equipment, like PCs, to limited ones, like cell phones, sensors, and actuators. The services provided by a ubiquitous environment rely on the interaction among devices. In order to support the development of applications in this context, the heterogeneity of communication protocols must be abstracted and the functionalities dynamically provided by devices should be easily available to application developers. This paper proposes a Device Service Oriented Architecture (DSOA) as an abstraction layer to help organize devices and its resources in a ubiquitous environment, while hiding details about communication protocols from developers. Based on DSOA, a lightweight middleware (uOS) and a high level protocol (uP) were developed. A use case is presented to illustrate the application of these concepts.
Semi-E-Preinvex Functions
Authors: Syau Yu-Ru , Lee E. Stanley
Published: January 2012

A class of functions called semi-E-preinvex functions is defined as a generalization of semi-E-convex functions. Similarly, the concept of semi-E-quasiconvex functions is also generalized to semi-E-prequasiinvex functions. Properties of these proposed classes are studied, and sufficient conditions for a nonempty subset of the n-dimensional Euclidean space to be an E-convex or E-invex set are given. The relationship between semi-E-preinvex and E-preinvex functions are discussed along with results for the corresponding nonlinear programming problems.
Congestion Management Using Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization Technique
Authors: Balaraman Sujatha , Kamaraj N.
Published: January 2012

This paper proposes the Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization (HPSO) method for solving congestion management problems in a pool based electricity market. Congestion may occur due to lack of coordination between generation and transmission utilities or as a result of unexpected contingencies. In the proposed method, the control strategies to limit line loading to the security limits are by means of minimum adjustments in generations from the initial market clearing values. Embedding Evolutionary Programming (EP) technique in Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm improves the global searching capability of PSO and also prevents the premature convergence in local minima. A number of functional operating constraints, such as branch flow limits and load bus voltage magnitude limits are included as penalties in the fitness function. Numerical results on three test systems namely modified IEEE 14 Bus, IEEE 30 Bus and IEEE 118 Bus systems are presented and the results are compared with PSO and EP approaches in order to demonstrate its performance.
Finding Minimum Reaction Cuts of Metabolic Networks Under a Boolean Model Using Integer Programming and Feedback Vertex Sets
Authors: Tamura Takeyuki , Takemoto Kazuhiro , Akutsu Tatsuya
Published: January 2012

In this paper, the authors consider the problem of, given a metabolic network, a set of source compounds and a set of target compounds, finding a minimum size reaction cut, where a Boolean model is used as a model of metabolic networks. The problem has potential applications to measurement of structural robustness of metabolic networks and detection of drug targets. They develop an integer programming-based method for this optimization problem. In order to cope with cycles and reversible reactions, they further develop a novel integer programming (IP) formalization method using a feedback vertex set (FVS). When applied to an E. coli metabolic network consisting of Glycolysis/Glyconeogenesis, Citrate cycle and Pentose phosphate pathway obtained from KEGG database, the FVS-based method can find an optimal set of reactions to be inactivated much faster than a naive IP-based method and several times faster than a flux balance-based method. The authors also confirm that our proposed method works even for large networks and discuss the biological meaning of our results.
Case Study - “Can You See Me?”
Authors: DiPardo Anne , DiPardo Mike
Published: January 2012

This chapter presents a case study detailing how geographically dispersed software developers employ writing in the process of creating and troubleshooting products for use in the healthcare industry. It focuses particularly on their efforts to arrive at language that unambiguously reflects functional requirements and optimal design principles. After a brief history of the company and the evolution of its national and international virtual collaboration practices, the authors turn to the role of text across particular task cycles, exploring the uses of writing in generating, designing, and refining plans and products. Focusing on a series of three composing sequences, the authors highlight the incremental process by which the team moves toward a shared sense of understanding and linguistic precision. They argue that in contrast to common conceptions of texts as simple containers for preformed ideas, these episodes provide a more nuanced picture, as writing comes to play a central role in constituting and fine-tuning meaning and in maintaining strong working relationships throughout the processes of developing and refining products. They close with implications for preparing diverse virtual teams for participation in tasks that demand exacting uses of the written word.
Emergent/See
Authors: Sanford Kathy , Merkel Liz
Published: January 2012

In the fall of 2006 the authors’ ethnographic research study began in a response to increasing social concern regarding adolescent (dis)engagement in school literacy practices. The authors began data collection in a grade 9/10 Information Technology (IT) class wherein students were in the process of creating their own videogames as a way to learn programming. Through observations and interviews with students, teachers and parents, they have begun to consider how knowledge developed through creating video games informs the way young people see and engage in the world. They introduce emergence theory to illuminate how their understandings and skills can be used to provide more meaningful learning experiences in formal learning/school experiences. This chapter will demonstrate how these students were engaged in a powerful, emergent learning experience, and one that is very different to the traditional Eurocentric schooling approach, one often not recognized or understood as credible learning.
Programming Interfaces for Realtime and Cloud-Based Computing
Authors: Katsaros Gregory , Cucinotta Tommaso
Published: January 2012

The appearance of different business roles according to this classification, potentially with differing interests, introduces new challenges with regard to the tools and mechanisms put in place in order to enable the efficient provisioning of services. Security, Quality of Service (QoS) assurance, and real-time capabilities are just a few issues that the providers are trying to tackle and integrate within the new products and services that they offer. In this chapter, we make an overview of the approaches that aim to APIs for real-time computing. In the first part of this chapter, several Real-Time Application Interfaces will be presented and compared. After that, we will document the state-of-the-art regarding the Cloud APIs available and analyze the architecture and the technologies that they support.
Bike Transportation System Design
Authors: Gill Avninder
Published: January 2012

The main objective of this chapter is to address the facility design and location issues in a public bike transportation system. The major decisions in introducing a public bike transportation system include determining the number of bike facilities and their locations. The present chapter considers a case study from city of Vancouver bike transportation system to demonstrate the importance of these decisions through a real world application. The city intends to decide the number and location of bike terminals. Addressing these two decisions is the main focus of the present chapter and the chapter employs linear programming and center of gravity approaches to arrive at the solutions. The chapter also provides a basic introduction to bike facilities and discusses the sustainability benefits of bike transportation mode.
Robotics as a Vehicle for Multiliteracies
Authors: Saville Marissa J.
Published: January 2012

This chapter is a catalyst for encouraging educators to use robotics as a vehicle for multiliteracies. This chapter will provide compelling, practical evidence of the multimodal nature of robotics, highlighting the potential of robotics to encompass any or all of the linguistic, spatial, visual, audio and gestural elements of multiliteracies, as described by the New London Group (1996). The social and technological benefits for both genders arising from the integration of robotics into the curriculum, and their importance in a rapidly changing world are discussed, as is the need for educators to learn how to facilitate a learning environment that entices students to take risks and solve problems through the development of higher-order thinking skills. Robotics crosses curriculum boundaries, and engages and motivates students of all ages by making learning directed and real.
Multicultural Software Development
Authors: Aramo-Immonen Heli , Jaakkola Hannu , Keto Harri
Published: January 2012

Productivity management is a challenge for software engineering companies and, in this regard, there is a current trend toward globalization. Via acquisitions and mergers, business has become international and employs different national cultures. Therefore, the focus of this article is on the understanding of cultural differences affecting productivity in globalized software production. The relation between productivity and non coding activities in software development projects has not been proven. Software development is expert work, typically made in closely collaborating local teams and global distribution of expert work increases the degree of difficulty. In this paper, the authors analyze multicultural ICT companies from their productivity perspective through the lens of cultural differences. The purpose of this study is to report findings based on general cultural studies and reported experiences that seem to affect productivity in the software industry. Some company cases are also described and analyzed.
Sharing Usability Information
Authors: Bach Paula M. , Jiang Hao , Carroll John M.
Published: January 2012

In this chapter, we investigate the social and communication challenges surrounding usability information sharing. Our objective is to investigate a communication paradox: software development teams, consisting of usability engineers, software developers, and project managers, chose communication channels to use every day that are not channels they prefer to use. This paradox was discovered in a survey and explored further in interviews with software development teams. Results indicated that challenges with common ground and work coupling affect the extent to which the affordances of different communication channels can be taken advantage of. The value of this study highlights and explains the paradox from a time-space perspective and provides insight to usability information sharing among software engineering teams. Future work includes investigating the effect of social capital on communication channel preference along with understanding how important usability issues can be discussed in complex teams.
Open Source – Collaborative Innovation
Authors: Messica Avi
Published: January 2012

This chapter reviews the current status of Open Source (OS) and provides new insights into the prerequisites of the OS process as well as the profile of OS contributors. Moreover, it extends the scope of possible business models such to augment those that exist or were already discussed in the past. While the term OS was coined in the context of software development and redistribution, this chapter presents and discusses the concept of OS to include any Open Collaborative Innovation in both software and hardware.
Social Tagging and Learning
Authors: Kohlhase A. , Reichel M.
Published: January 2012

Social tagging systems celebrate enormous growth rates on the World Wide Web. This chapter looks at social tagging from an educational perspective, particularly its use for educational environments. The authors identify the processes underlying social tagging from an embodied interaction perspective. The authors will support the thesis that emerging folksonomies are at the base of meaningful interaction processes between user and system and also, at the same time, social processes between groups of people. This chapter argues that the fuzzy line between private and public space plays a crucial role. Moreover, tags represent embodied conceptualizations, whose potential effectiveness for learning will be discussed in this chapter. The authors will provide an example of a learning software for children (Amici, implemented by one of the authors) in which social tagging is used to support sharing in a programming environment to showcase how embodiment of conceptualization as well as constant coupling through moving between private and public space is achieved through tagging in the system.
Hybrid Teaching and Learning of Computer Programming Language
Authors: Wang Fu Lee , Wong Tak-Lam
Published: January 2012

Teaching and learning computer programming has created significant difficulties to both teacher and student. Large class size is one of the major barriers to effective instruction. A well-designed pedagogy can make the instruction most effective. Hybrid teaching and learning combines face-to-face instruction and computer-assisted instruction to maximize students’ learning. This chapter will share the authors’ experiences in City University of Hong Kong (CityU) as they teach computer programming courses with large class size by hybrid learning model. Evaluation has showed that hybrid teaching and learning provide great flexibilities to both teaching and learning of computer programming. The students’ academic results have been significantly improved in computer programming courses.
Orchestrating Ontologies for Courseware Design
Authors: Gavrilova Tatiana
Published: January 2012

This chapter presents an approach aimed at creating teaching strategies for e-learning based on the principles of ontological engineering and cognitive psychology. The proposed framework is important for many reasons. It is targeted at the development of methodologies and related technologies that can scaffold the process of knowledge structuring and orchestrating teaching ontologies for courseware design. The orchestrating procedure is the kernel of ontology development. Ontologies that describe the main concepts of exemplary domains are used both for teaching and assessment techniques. The main stress is put on using visual techniques of mind-mapping and concept mapping as a powerful mind learning tool. Cognitive bias and some results of Gestalt psychology are highlighted as a general guideline. The ideas of balance, clarity, and beauty are applied to the ontology orchestrating procedures. The examples are taken mainly from the course in C-programming, and in the foundations of intelligent systems development.
Shaping Interactive Media with the Sewing Machine
Authors: Reimann Daniela
Published: January 2012

In the context of converging media technologies, the concept of mobile media embedded in wearable material was introduced. Wearable Computing, Fashionable Technology, and Smart Textile are being developed at the intersection of media, art, design, computer science, and engineering. However, in Germany, little research has been undertaken into Smart Textile in education1. Those activities are not realized at school in the context of artistic processes in general MINT2 education in classroom settings. In order to research the interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology, hard and software tools, such as Arduino LilyPad, a programmable board designed for stitching into clothing and flexible applications are scrutinized. In the project, contemporary media art projects in the field of Fashionable Technology are explored to inspire interdisciplinary technology education. The project described in this paper engages girls in technology and engineering by integrating artistic processes as well as a more playcentric approach to technology and engineering education.
Application Management
Authors: Kociemba Marc-Oliver
Published: January 2012

Quality is about meeting the stakeholder’s expectations: the subjective perception is often more important than hard facts. Therefore, a common understanding between all involved parties – especially business owners as well as service providers – concerning the quality of a service is mandatory. Application Management is defined as the concept and all required techniques to monitor, measure and record data for operating services. It has a significant impact on the quality of an IT service. Based on the so-called value chain – a phased approach starting with a business point of view followed by IT development and operation – necessary activities as well as quality indicators are identified and described for each step in the software development livecycle. The aspects of Application Management are illustrated by using a real world example of implementing an output management system within a bank.
Partner Relationship Management
Authors: Jiménez-López Diego , Ruano-Mayoral Marcos , Fernández-González Joaquín , Isla Fernando Cabezas
Published: January 2012

R&D activities normally require consortium formation due to the different areas of expertise involved in such activities. On the one hand, it is not trivial for a R&D entity to decide in which projects it should participate, or which are the adequate partners to form a consortium. On the other hand, acceptation of the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems has become a reality for the industry and researchers in areas, such as marketing, communication, or computer science. These tools contain in their basic packages features to manage key company actives, including partners and clients. However, R&D environments involve special characteristics and traits, which require an extension of functionalities in order to be accurately covered. The increasing strength and usefulness of semantic technologies have led to innovative decision support processes and management of partners and R&D call for proposals. This work introduces an architecture that integrates R&D processes with the CRM philosophy.
Teaching Globally Distributed Software Development (DSD)
Authors: Faulk Stuart , Young Michal
Published: January 2012

This chapter describes an approach to building a collaborative teaching community that seeks to address these problems. It begins by identifying the skills students should acquire in a Distributed Software Development (DSD) course and discusses why firsthand experience with DSD problems is essential to learning them. The chapter identifies the attributes that make DSD project courses difficult to develop or teach, and then it describes a distributed team approach to developing a reusable infrastructure and a teaching community to address those difficulties. Future work focuses on building an international community of educators and industry participants interested in partnering to develop and teach DSD courses.
Fuzzy Electronic Supply Chain System
Authors: Fazlollahtabar Hamed , Hajmohammadi Hamed , Mahdavi Iraj , Mahdavi-Amiri Nezam , Mohajeri Amir
Published: January 2012

A supply chain is a network of suppliers, factories, warehouses, distribution centers and retailers, through which raw materials are acquired, transformed, produced and delivered to the customer. An effective and efficient way of managing this network is called a supply chain management system. The authors’ purpose here is to design a capable electronic supply chain system in an electronic market. The authors consider a supply chain composed of supplier, plant, and customer. The aim is to optimize a real time web-based fuzzy order-delivery system for which customer satisfaction is emphasized. As such, a comprehensive web-based order-delivery system in an electronic market is proposed and optimized applying fuzzy mathematical programming.
Multi-Echelon Supply Chain Modeling With Dynamic Continuous Review Inventory Policy
Authors: Rao K. Narayana , Subbaiah K. Venkata
Published: January 2012

In this chapter, an integrated procurement, production and distribution supply chain model is developed in fuzzy environment and performance vector of the supply chain is determined by solving strategic model and tactical model iteratively. Mixed integer programming model is formulated through fuzzy goal programming approach in strategic level. In the tactical level, dynamic continuous review inventory policy for controlling of raw material inventory at supplier echelon, finished products at plant echelon and distribution center echelons is assumed. The inventory models are solved by considering the interdependency of economic order quantity and reorder point. The supply chain model, which is developed in fuzzy environment, finds compromise solution with multiple, vague and in-compatible objectives. Fuzzy goal programming techniques provide feasible solutions with flexible model formulation in decision-making problems, which involve human judgments in decision-making. Need for supply chin modeling with dynamic continuous review policy in fuzzy environment and the existing literature are outlined in Introduction. Fuzzy supply chain modeling with dynamic continuous review policy for controlling of the raw materials, finished products at plant and distribution center echelons is described in Fuzzy supply chain modeling section. Flow chart of the methodology is explained in Solution Methodology section. The proposed model is illustrated through a numerical example. Supply chain cost, Volume flexibility and unit costs are determined and presented in Results and Discussion section. Importance of the methodology and future scope is made in Conclusion section. This model finds application in the industries involving continuous production like oil and natural gas, steel manufacturing industries etc
Service Quality Evaluation Method for Community-Based Software Outsourcing Process
Authors: Liu Shu , Liu Ying , Jiang Huimin , Wang Zhongjie , Xu Xiaofei
Published: January 2012

Community-based software development is a promising model to help reduce the pressures such as development costs, human resources access, new market development, and building business competencies. But the big concern is how to ensure the quality of the outsourcing service. In this paper, a service quality evaluation method for community-based software outsourcing process has been proposed. A service quality indicator model with three layers and five dimensions is explained and applied to community-based software outsourcing service supported by Call-For-Implementation (CFI) platform. The calculation method for each quality indicator is demonstrated in detail. A prototype is developed to support the evaluation process and exhibit results of quality evaluation for the community-based software outsourcing based on CFI. This prototype not only measures and displays the status of service quality in real-time, but also provides history data to guide software outsourcing process management.
Activity Driven Budgeting of Software Projects
Authors: Baumeister Alexander , Ilg Markus
Published: January 2012

There are numerous forecast models of software development costs, however, various problems become apparent in context to practical application. Standardized methods, such as COCOMO II have to be calibrated at an individual operational level on the basis of the underlying database. This paper presents a new activity based approach that is based on business specific cost data that can be easily integrated into existing management accounting systems. This approach can be applied to software development projects based on the unified process in which activity driven budgeting promises several advantages compared to common tools in use. It supports enterprise specific cost forecasting and control and can be easily linked with risk analysis. In addition to the presentation of a conceptual design model, the authors present a framework for activity driven budgeting and cost management of software development projects combined with concrete implementation examples.
Towards A Wider Application of the Systems Approach in Information Systems and Software Engineering
Authors: Petkov Doncho , Edgar-Nevill Denis , Madachy Raymond , O’Connor Rory
Published: January 2012

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.
Playing as Producing
Authors: Lin Ying-Chia H.
Published: January 2012

The main goal of this chapter is to explore the dynamics and interactions between foreign producers, media technologies, and local consumers in the process of globalization through a discussion of the localization of digital games. As digital games have become global entertainment products, the game industry has encountered various lingual and cultural challenges in the process. The content of digital games can be changed more easily and many game players are able to create objects or modify the game world to express their programming abilities or identities. The game industry takes advantage of digital technologies and player modding practices to overcome language and cultural barriers. Modding and other localization practices, such as translation and local packaging, imply the convergence of the global and the local cultures (i.e. glocalization) as well as the producers and consumers (i.e. prosumers).
Cognitive Complexity Measures
Authors: Misra Sanjay
Published: January 2012

Cognitive informatics (CI), a multidisciplinary area of research tries to solve the common problems in the field of informatics, computer science, software engineering, mathematics, cognitive science, neurobiology, psychology, and physiology. Measurement in software engineering is also a core issue which is still striving for its standardization process. In recent years, several cognitive complexity measures based on CI have been proposed. However, each of them has their own advantages and disadvantages. This chapter presents a critical review on existing cognitive complexity measures. Furthermore, a comparative study based on some selected attributes has been presented.
Bridging the 15 Million Person Mentoring Gap
Authors: Oh Caroline Kim , Stroisch Theresa
Published: January 2012

This chapter introduces the history and evolution of iMentor, a NYC-based youth mentoring organization that pioneered the use of guided e-mail communication to enhance the in-person youth mentoring model, and continues to leverage its model and lessons learned to help other groups improve or start up their own mentoring programs. It illustrates how the organization has effectively used technology to add flexibility and structure in its NYC Mentoring Program, engaging a new “class” of program participants: “busy” professionals as mentors and mentees from some of the most economically and geographically isolated communities. It also describes how the organization transformed itself to meet a national demand for its programming by developing and licensing its own mentoring technology platform, iMentor Interactive. The author hopes that by reviewing the experience of iMentor, more mentoring and youth organizations at- large would embrace a thoughtful infusion of technology to positively impact the lives of people they serve. The author, however, strongly believes that the sector must be diligent about adhering to many of the best practices of a good, in-person mentoring program, including screening and monitoring of program participants, providing structure and ongoing assistance.
Towards a Programming Model for Ubiquitous Computing
Authors: Barbosa Jorge , Dillenburg Fabiane , Garzão Alex , Lermen Gustavo , Costa Cristiano
Published: January 2012

Mobile computing is been driven by the proliferation of portable devices and wireless communication. Potentially, in the mobile computing scenario, the users can move in different environments and the applications can automatically explore their surroundings. This kind of context-aware application is emerging, but is not yet widely disseminated. Based on perceived context, the application can modify its behavior. This process, in which software modifies itself according to sensed data, is named Adaptation. This constitutes the core of Ubiquitous Computing. The ubiquitous computing scenario brings many new problems such as coping with the limited processing power of mobile devices, frequent disconnections, the migration of code and tasks between heterogeneous devices, and others. Current practical approaches to the ubiquitous computing problem usually rely upon traditional computing paradigms conceived back when distributed applications where not a concern. Holoparadigm (in short Holo) was proposed as a model to support the development of distributed systems. Based on Holo concepts, a new programming language called HoloLanguage (in short, HoloL) was created. In this chapter, we propose the use of Holo for developing and executing ubiquitous applications. We explore the HoloL for ubiquitous programming and propose a full platform to develop and execute Holo programs. The language supports mobility, adaptation, and context awareness. The execution environment is based on a virtual machine that implements the concepts proposed by Holo. The environment supports distribution and strong code mobility.
Formalization Studies in Functional Size Measurement
Authors: Özkan Baris , Demirörs Onur
Published: January 2012

Functional size has been favored as a software size attribute that can be measured early in the software development cycles. Its characteristics of being independent of implementation language, technique and technology promoted the use in software cost estimation and other project management practices. It has been about three decades since Albrecht introduced the concept of functional size and a variety of measurement methods have been developed, some of which have been published by International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Although the concept is recognized in the software community, and there is a growing interest in Functional Size Measurement (FSM), the applications in software organizations have not been common as expected. The problems with FSM method structures and practices have been discussed to be the major factors to explain this situation. This chapter reviews the research papers that propose solutions to the problems with FSM via formalizations in FSM practices or related concept definitions. The associations of the formalization ideas to the abstract software models that represent the view of functionality for FSM methods are of particular interest of the chapter.
Improvement of Self-Assessment Effectiveness by Activity Monitoring and Analysis
Authors: Burdescu Dumitru Dan , Mihaescu Marian Cristian
Published: January 2012

Self-assessment is one of the crucial activities within e-learning environments that provide learners with feedback regarding their level of accumulated knowledge. From this point of view, the authors think that guidance of learners in self-assessment activity must be an important goal of e-learning environment developers. The scope of the chapter is to present a recommender software system that runs along the e-learning platform. The recommender software system improves the effectiveness of self-assessment activities. The activities performed by learners represent the input data and the machine learning algorithms are used within the business logic of the recommender software system that runs along the e-learning platform. The output of the recommender software system is represented by advice given to learners in order to improve the effectiveness of self-assessment process. The methodology for obtaining improvement of self-assessment is based on embedding knowledge management into the business logic of the e-learning platform. Naive Bayes Classifier is used as machine learning algorithm for obtaining the resources (e.g., questions, chapters, and concepts) that need to be further accessed by learners. The analysis is accomplished for disciplines that are well structured according to a concept map. The input data set for the recommender software system is represented by student activities that are monitored within Tesys e-learning platform. This platform has been designed and implemented within Multimedia Applications Development Research Center at Software Engineering Department, University of Craiova. Monitoring student activities is accomplished through various techniques like creating log files or adding records into a table from a database. The logging facilities are embedded in the business logic of the e-learning platform. The e-learning platform is based on a software development framework that uses only open source software. The software architecture of the e-learning platform is based on MVC (model-view-controller) model that ensures the independence between the model (represented by MySQL database), the controller (represented by the business logic of the platform implemented in Java) and the view (represented by WebMacro which is a 100% Java open-source template language).
Various Extensions for the Ambient OSGi Framework
Authors: Frénot Stéphane , Le Mouël Frédéric , Ponge Julien , Salagnac Guillaume
Published: January 2012

OSGi is a wrapper above the Java Virtual Machine that embraces two concepts: component approach and service-oriented programming. The component approach enables a Java run-time to host several concurrent applications, while the service-oriented programming paradigm allows the decomposition of applications into independent units that are dynamically bound at runtime. Combining component and service-oriented programming greatly simplifies the implementation of highly adaptive, constantly evolving applications. This, in turn, is an ideal match to the requirements and constraints of ambient intelligence computing, such as adaptation to changes associated with context evolution. OSGi particularly fits ambient requirements and constraints by absorbing and adapting to changes associated with context evolution. However, OSGi needs to be finely tuned in order to integrate ambient specific issues. This paper focuses on Zero-configuration architecture, Multi-provider framework, and Limited resource requirements. The authors studied many OSGi improvements that should be taken into account when building OSGi-based gateways. This paper summarizes the INRIA Amazones teamwork (http://amazones.gforge.inria.fr/) on extending OSGi specifications and implementations to cope with ambient concerns. This paper references three main concerns: management, isolation, and security.
Women in Brazilian CS Research Community
Authors: Moro Mirella M. , Weber Taisy , Freitas Carla M.D.S.
Published: January 2012

Many communities have been concerned with the problem of bringing more girls to technology and science related areas. The authors believe that the first step in order to solve such a problem is to understand the current situation, like to investigate the “state-of-the-art” of the problem. Therefore, in this chapter, they present the first study to identify which areas of Computer Science have more and less feminine participation. In order to do so, they have considered the program committees of the Brazilian conferences in those areas. The authors’ study evaluates the 2008 and previous editions of such conferences. They also discuss some Brazilian initiatives to bring more girls to Computer Science as well present what else can be done.
Women in Computer Science in Afghanistan
Authors: Hoffmann Eva Maria
Published: January 2012

In Afghanistan, the development of information technology (IT) as an industry and an educational field is still quite young, but this provides the country with an opportunity – especially for women - to participate actively in the process of rebuilding, and to strengthen their role in Afghan society. This chapter gives an overview of the situation at Afghan universities and the women who are studying Computer Science there. Afghan female computer science students are young, open minded and very motivated. Nevertheless they are often limited by social boundaries within Afghan society. The situations and circumstances of these female students are largely unknown; hence a survey has been done to discover more about these women’s world. Female students from Kabul and from Herat University have been interviewed and the data from these interviews is presented here as a foundation for designing measures aimed at integrating Afghan women into the world of IT in the near future.
Teaching Project Management with Second Life
Authors: Conrad Marc
Published: January 2012

Project Management is a field of intellectual and pragmatic enquiry that is inherently inter-disciplinary. It typically involves the integration of areas such as: project scoping, time, cost, and human resource management, whilst the management of effective inter-team communication, project risk, and procurement aspects are all central to the discipline. To try to cover all of these areas within a single university assignment presents somewhat of a challenge. This chapter demonstrates that the deployment of a Multi User Virtual Environment can indeed encompass these areas in an effective manner, both from learning objectives, realism, and assessment points of view. The chapter has emerged from the experience of three years deployment of Second Life as an integral part of a unit on Project Management, offered as part of both undergraduate and postgraduate courses within the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Bedfordshire. Examples illustrate the work that has been produced by the students of these courses.