INES – National Institute of Science and Technology for Software Engineering

INES presente no Congresso da SBC (CSBC´2009)

O Prof.  Adriano L. I. Oliveira, coordenador do projeto do INES “Estimativa de esforço em projetos de software com técnicas de inteligência computacional e estatística” participará do XXIX Congresso da SBC, CSBC´2009, http://csbc2009.inf.ufrgs.br/.

O CSBC é o maior evento nacional da área de computação e reúne um conjunto de conferências e workshops. O pesquisador deverá participar dos seguintes eventos:

1. ENIA 2009 – VII Encontro Nacional de Inteligência Artificial
2. SECOMU – XXXIX Seminário sobre Computação na Universidade
3. WCGE – I Workshop de Computação Aplicada em Governo Eletrônico

A participação do pesquisador no ENIA está diretamente relacionada à atividades do projeto acima referido, pois a idéia é interagir com os pesquisadores da área de inteligência computacional do país e assistir às apresentações visando identificar possíveis técnicas a serem adaptadas ao problema da estimativa de esforço de software.

A participação no SECOMU e WCGE está relacionada a uma outra atividade que pretendemos desenvolver no futuro: a organização de um workshop do INES em Recife voltado para órgãos do Governo.

BOLSISTA AT / SUPORTE AO LABORATÓRIO DO INÊS

Project “Concern-Driven Measurement of Software Modularity”

The project aims at developing techniques for assessing software design modularity. Software engineers consider that a high degree of modularity brings a series of benefits to software design, such as comprehensibility, changeability, adaptability, reusability, and so forth. Software modularity is defined as the degree to which a system program is composed of discrete components such that a change to one component has minimal impact on other components. Modularity is also seen as an important principle when comparing design alternatives and analyzing architecture degeneration.

The systematic assessment of modularity plays a pivotal role in the realm of software design. In this context, software metrics are a powerful means to provide modularity indicators of software design. The software metrics community has consistently used notions of module coupling, cohesion and interface size to derive measures of modularity.

Much of the complexity of software design is derived from the inadequate modularization of concerns. The notion of concern has been defined as any property, feature, requirement or part of the problem we want to treat as a conceptual unit when developing a software system. Conceiving of the right design decomposition is not trivial, mainly because several concerns need to be simultaneously modularized.

Although typical modularity problems are related to the inadequate modularization of concerns, most of the current modularity measurement approaches are not sensitive to concerns that drive the design. In this context, we have been working on the development of a novel measurement approach that promotes the concept of concern as a measurement abstraction. Therefore, the central focus of this project is to assess, empirically validate and refine this concern-driven measurement technique and its suite of metrics.

For further information, please contact santanna@dcc.ufba.br.

AT-NS Hiring for the project “Models, Techniques and Tools for Software Evolution”

The INES project “Models, Techniques and Tools for Software Evolution” (abstract here), provides scholarship  to  support project technical activities.

– Specification:  AT-NS

– Quantity: 12 months

– Institution: UFBA

INES at QACOS-OSSPL

Antonio Terceiro presents a paper at QACOS-OSSPL (QACOS-OSSPL: A Joint Workshop of QACOS and OSSPL, Quality and Architectural Concerns in Open Source Software / Open Source Software and Product Lines), with results related to the INES project “Models, Techniques and Tools for Software Evolution”.

• Title: Structural Complexity Evolution in Free Software Projects: A Case Study
• Authors: Antonio Soares de Azevedo Terceiro and Christina von Flach Garcia Chavez
• Event: QACOS-OSSPL: A Joint Workshop of QACOS and OSSPL, 2009, Skovde, Sweden

INES at ICPC 2009

Glauco Carneiro, researcher at the project Models, Techniques and Tools for Software Evolution (in Portuguese, “Modelos, Técnicas e Ferramentas para Evolução de Software“) will present a demo of the SourceMiner tool at the ICPC 2009 – International Conference on Program Comprehension, in Vancouver. This activity is related to the goal “Propose and develop an experimental environmento for the characterization and evaluation of the use of visual interfaces in IDEs”.

• Title: “SourceMiner as an Experimental Platform to Characterize Software Comprehension Activities”
• Authors: Glauco Carneiro, Rodrigo Magnavita, and Manoel Mendonca
• Event: http://icpc.csi.muohio.edu/ICPC2009_Final_Program.pdf

“Models, Techniques and Tools for Software Evolution”

Software evolution encompasses all activities undertaken to gradually modify a software product so that it remains useful, including what used to be called “software maintenance”. Useful software is continually changing, to correct errors, incorporate new features or adapt it to new hardware and software platforms. The changes will inevitably lead to degradation and software aging, compromising their quality and affecting its competitiveness and even threatening its existence.

This research project explores different topics related to the area of Software Evolution, with the goal of improving our understanding of the nature of software, software development processes and its laws. Understanding the phenomenon of software evolution is essential to enable the creation of models, techniques and tools that support the software development process, delaying the effects and minimizing the consequences of their degradation.

The activity of evolution is inherently based on the ability to understand software. In one of the activities of this project, “propose and develop an experimental environment to characterize and assess the use of visual interfaces in integrated development environments,” we will observe and study how software engineers try to “understand software while performing development and maintenance using visual interfaces” In addition, we intend to propose and evaluate new approaches to understanding the software, especially activities based on software visualization.

Also, in relation to “understand the process of evolution,” the software engineer needs instruments and data to monitor, measure and evaluate the quantities related to the evolution phenomenon. In this context, aligned to the goal “To develop techniques and tools to aid the development and evolution of software systems,” are activities for the development of techniques and tools for mining of repositories, assessment of modularity, recovery of software systems architectures, evaluation , traceability and impact analysis of changes techniques.

This project must interact with other INES projects, in particular, “Evidence-based Software Engineering”, Concern-based Assessment of Software Modularity”and ” Definition of a Testbed for Software Development”.

Participants: UFBA, UFCG and CESAR

Projeto “Combinando Técnicas de Métodos Formais e Teste na Construção de Sistemas Embarcados de Tempo Real – UFRN/UFCG/UFPE” recebe visita de Especialista Visitante

Projeto “Combinando Técnicas de Métodos Formais e Teste na Construção de Sistemas Embarcados de Tempo Real – UFRN/UFCG/UFPE” recebe visita de Especialista Visitante” receberá a visita do Dr. Jim Woodcock, professor titular da Universidade de York. A visita de Woodcock tem quatro objetivos principais: continuar uma colaboração já existente;  estabelecer uma nova direção de pesquisa; planejar uma agenda de pesquisa em longo prazo; transferir o conhecimento e as habilidades com um curso de curta duração curto e alguns seminários da pesquisa. A combinação destas quatro atividades assegurará a existência de um benefício real e durável, para UFRN, para o Brasil, e para o visitante, como resultado de sua visita.

O Prof. Dr. Jim Woodcock é professor titular de Engenharia de Software do departamento de informática da Universidade de York, um dos primeiros departamentos de pesquisa na Grã-Bretanha. Ele tem colaborações importantes com pesquisadores brasileiros no Reino Unido (Dra. Ana Cavalcanti e Dr. Leonardo Freitas), na UFPE (Dr. Augusto Sampaio) e na UFRN (Dr. Marcel Oliveira). Woodcock publicou 40 artigos acadêmicos em jornais e conferências internacionais em parceria com estes quatro colaboradores. Professor Woodcock é um membro do comitê gestor do Simpósio Brasileiro de Métodos Formais (SBMF), e este ano é chefe do comitê de programa em parceria com Dr. Marcel Oliveira. Em 2009, Woodcock estará em sabático da Universidade de York, e passará quatro meses (de Junho a Setembro) no Brasil. Durante este período, ele pretende continuar suas colaborações de pesquisa, e participará do SBMF em Gramado.

INES on the Web Based Communities 2009

On 05/12/2009, INES received three great news. Three papers from the “Social Networks as a Knowledge Management Tool on Software Development” were accepted to be presented in the next Web Based Communities conference, which will be held in Algarve, Portugal, from 21 to 23 in June, 2009.

Existing since 2004, the Web Based Communities conference is currently part of IADIS Multi Conference on Computer Science. The mission of  Web Based Communities is is to publish and integrate scientific results and act catalytically to the fast developing culture of web communities. The conference invites original papers, review papers, technical reports and case studies on WWW in particular the emerging role of so-called WWW-Based Communities.

The accepted papers are the following.

Title: A Process to Manage Corporate Knowledge Using Social Networks: A Case Study
Authors: Ricardo Costa, Edeílson Silva, Rafael Ribeiro and Silvio Meira.
Abstract: This case study describes the effects of using a Web Based Social Network (WBSN) approach to Knowledge Management in a Brazilian software development organization. During this work it was proposed a Knowledge Management process, with some metrics related to its phases. These metrics have been monitored since January 2008 and have been analyzed in order to verify the efficiency of this approach. In order to give a better understanding of the concepts related to Social Networks and Knowledge Management, it is presented a brief introduction to each one of them, including an evaluation of existing Knowledge Management approaches.

Title: Using a Social Network to Support Project Management
Authors: Paulyne Jucá, Ricardo Costa and Silvio Meira.
Abstract: With the diffusion of the geographically distributed work and the necessity of managing appropriately the organization knowledge, the organizations start to search for flexible initiatives to maintain the project and organizational memory and formalize the knowledge acquired. An organizational social network called a.m.i.g.o.s has been extended in order to include project management functionalities and better suite the knowledge management process. This paper describes the project extension and the experience of using this corporative social network as project management tool supporting a software development project.

Title: Classifying Knowledge on Social Networks: A Real Challenge
Authors: Ricardo Costa, Paulyne Jucá, Isabel Mendonça, Haidee Lima and Silvio Meira
Abstract:Users usually have difficulties on how to classify knowledge when publishing in a Knowledge Management environment. This work presents a real case study and a proposal to solve the classification problem on a Social Network environment used for Corporate Knowledge Management. During this case study it was analyzed more than 2 years of knowledge produced in an organization in order to define the most commons types of knowledge, and afterwards a usability tests were made to validate the analysis results in order to verify if this new concepts are appropriated to user’s needs.

Project Workshop – July 1 – Recife

No dia 01 de Julho de 2009 será realizado o workshop do projeto “Uma Investigação de Processos, Ferramentas e Métricas para o Desenvolvimento de Linhas de Produto de Software”, que conta com a participação do C.E.S.A.R (coordenação), UFPE e UFBA.

Durante o workshop serão discutidos diversos aspectos relacionados ao desenvolvimento de linhas de produto. Inicialmente, o foco do workshop irá envolver os aspectos relacionados a meta: Definir Processos para o Desenvolvimento de Linhas de Produto, onde serão discutidos aspectos relacionados a definição de escopo e requisitos, arquitetura, implementação, teste e evolução de linhas de produto. Além disso, aspectos relacionados a agilidade, programação generativa e aspectos dinâmicos devem também ser abordados. O workshop irá contar também, com a participação de Frank van der Linden e John McGregor.

O evento será realizado no auditório do C.E.S.A.R. Posteriormente, a programação completa será disponível. Entretanto, coloque logo na sua agenda.