INES – National Institute of Science and Technology for Software Engineering

INES Researcher gets PhD

Antonio Soares de Azevedo Terceiro (DMCC-UFBA) has successfully presented his PhD viva examination, or thesis defence, “Characterizing the Evolution of Structural Complexity in Open Source Software Systems”, last Friday, March 23rd, 2012.

The examiners were Prof. Dalton Guerrero (UFCG), Prof. Guilherme Travassos (UFRJ), and Profs. Claudio Sant’Anna, Eduardo Almeida and Christina Chavez (UFBA).

Antonio’s advisors were Christina Chavez (advisor) and Manoel Mendonça (co-advisor). His work was supported by an one-year Fapesb scholarship, a three-year CNPq scholarship and also by the INES project “Models, Techniques and Tools for Software Evolution” (2009-2011).

New INES project: Quality Assessement for Open Source Software

The goal of this project is to provide, based on the body of knowledge of Software Engineering, an evaluation service for free software projects. This service will comprise product and process evaluation, and may be useful for organizations or corporate environments in the process of adoption of free software as part of their development environment for software or IT infrastructure. Partners: UFBA, UFCG, UFRN, UEFS and PUC-Rio.

Read more: http://amigos.ines.org.br/ines/viewProject.do?projectId=32

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O objetivo deste projeto é o de oferecer, com base no corpo de conhecimento da Engenharia de Software, um serviço de avaliação de projetos de software livre. Este serviço agregará avaliação de produto e de processo, e podendo ser útil para organizações ou ambientes corporativos em processo de adoção de software livre como parte do seu ambiente de desenvolvimento de software ou de sua infraestrutura de TI. Participantes: UFBA, UFCG, UFRN, UEFS and PUC-Rio.

Informações adicionais : http://amigos.ines.org.br/ines/viewProject.do?projectId=32

open source software, quality assessment

INES researchers have project funding approved by FAPESB

INES researchers Christina Chavez, Claudio Sant’Anna and Manoel Mendonça had a new project — “A Service for Assessing the Quality of Open Source Software projects for Adoption in Corporate Environments” — approved by FAPESB (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado da Bahia). The funding includes scholarships, equipment and books.

This project comprises one of the new goals submitted to INES, Edital 02 — Quality Assessment in Open Source Software — in the context of the project “Models, Techniques and Tools for Software Evolution”.

Abstract: In recent years, open source software (OSS) has brought a number of opportunities that can be exploited by different kinds of stakeholders, from companies and government agencies to researchers, developers and users in general. The adoption of a solution based on OSS by companies or government agencies can bring many benefits but also may pose risks to the business. Free software has significant characteristics in terms of product and process — not always explicitly documented or available from repositories — that can be critical to support feasibility studies and decisions about adopting or not the software.
This project’s main goal is therefore to provide a service for evaluating OSS projects for general use, including the use in corporate environments. The service includes the assessment of the products and processes associated with OSS projects to provide information for potential applicants to adopt it.

INES at CBSOFT 2011: FEES 2011 & SBES is 25

FEES 2011

INES researchers will join the FEES 2011 @ CBSoft (São Paulo), to discuss “Free/Libre/Open Source Software Development in Software Engineering Education: Opportunities and Experiences”.

The work involves researchers from UFBA (INES project: Models, Techniques and Tools for Software Evolution) in collaboration with IME-USP. One of the reported experiences took place in a Software Evolution course at UFBA.

“Free/Libre/Open Source Software Development in Software Engineering Education: Opportunities and Experiences”

– Christina Chavez, Antonio Terceiro (UFBA); Paulo Meirelles, Carlos Santos Jr., Fabio Kon (IME-USP)

SBES is 25

Researchers from INES project: Models, Techniques and Tools for Software Evolution also participate in two papers accepted at the SBES is 25 Special Track:

1) “The AOSD Research Community in Brazil and its Crosscutting Impact”
Christina Chavez, Uirá Kulesza, Sérgio Soares, Paulo Borba, Carlos Lucena, Paulo Masiero, Claudio Sant’Anna, Eduardo Piveta, Fabiano Ferrari, Fernando Castor, Roberta Coelho, Vander Alves , Lyrene Silva, Paulo Pires, Nabor Mendonça , Eduardo Figueiredo, Thais Batista, Carla Silva, Valter Camargo, Nélio Cacho, Otávio Lemos, Flávia Delicato , Arndt von Staa, Fabio Silveira , Fernanda Alencar, Julio Leite, Ricardo Ramos, Rodrigo Bonifácio , Marco Tulio Valente, Rosana Braga, Rosangela Penteado, Jaelson Castro (UFBA, UFRN, UFPE, PUC-Rio, USP, UFSM, UFPB, UFMG, UFSCar, Unifesp, UFRJ, Unifor, Univasf, UnB)

2)  “Free and Open Source Software Development and Research: Opportunities for Software Engineering”
Fabio Kon, Paulo Meirelles (IME-USP); Antonio Terceiro, Christina Chavez (UFBA); Nelson Lago (IME-USP); Manoel Mendonça (UFBA)

“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