Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Role Of Software Engineering In Bioinformatics, Brendan Sean Lawlor

Theses

This thesis proposes that by applying state-of-the-art software engineering tools, techniques and frameworks to currently recognised challenges in bioinformatics, improved outcomes can be attained in that field. It begins by decomposing software engineering into two categories, namely process and architecture, and choosing two key challenges in the practice of bioinformatics: reproducibility and scalability. The body of the thesis is an exploration of the intersection between these two software engineering categories and these two bioinformatics challenges. The question is asked: Can best practices in professional software engineering be applied to address key issues in the bioinformatics domain, creating positive outcomes? And …

Amvc: A Loosely-Coupled Architecture For Component-Based Clients, Brendan Lawlor

Theses

There is an architectural deficit in most currently undertaken rich client applications: In n-tier applications the presentation layer is represented as a single layer. This is as true of browser-based rich clients (Rich Internet Applications) as of rich desktop clients since both are designed along component-based, event-driven lines. The result of creating rich clients without sufficient application architecture underpinning is often tightly-coupled code of unnecessary complexity, with the associated high cost of maintenance. No commonly understood pattern is currently evident that would allow rich client components to be combined into a loosely coupled application. This paper describes the theory and …

Model-Based Instrumentation Of Distributed Applications, Jan Schäfer

Theses

Problems such as inconsistent or erroneous instrumentation often plague applications whose source code is manually instrumented during the implementation phase. Integrating performance instrumentation capabilities into the Model Driven Software Development (MDSD) process would greatly assist software engineers who do not have detailed knowledge of source code instrumentation technologies. This thesis presents an approach that offers instrumentation support to software designers and developers. A collection of instrumentation patterns is defined to represent typical instrumentation scenarios for distributed applications. A UML profile derived from these patterns is then used to annotate UML models. Based on suitable code generation templates, the annotated models …

Personal Information Management. A Framework For Development Of Personalisable Web Based Services, Christopher Fuchs

Theses

The thesis research proposed herein will model, analyse and implement strategies for the development of personalised services. The goal of the research work is to design and implement a framework which supports developers by minimising the effort required in implementing personalised services. This includes the ability to react to localisation changes and to present proper information. An overall design goal is the independency of most components from each other which will be attained through the use of standard technologies and protocols and the consistent use of a component model. The result will include the proposed framework and the analyses of …

Speech Enabled E-Learning Technology For Adult Literacy Tutoring, Jason Meade

Theses

This research presents the work involved in developing a speech-enabled e-Learning prototype for use in literacy tutoring. As the main objective was to develop an interface for literacy learning, initial research concentrated on establishing a framework for literacy e-Leaming through the use of speech technology. Requirements for best practice e-Learning and the relevance of learning theories to an e-Learning application were also investigated. The technologies to facilitate this, such as text to speech technologies and mark-up languages, were addressed during the implementation of speech-enabled prototypes. Both server-side and client-side prototypes were implemented to investigate speech technology. Testing found the server-side …

A Toolkit For Xml-Based And Process-Oriented Application Integration, Volker Münch

Theses

Systems integration is hard work; different architectures with different interfaces and an innumerable amount of Legacy applications with non-standard interfaces exist. However the needs to meet changing business requirements and to implement faster and optimised procedures within an enterprise and in cooperation with other external enterprises mean that there is a continuing demand for such integration strategies and products. Integration was often an activity separate from system development and could not be accomplished without re-involving system designers and developers. Such a process is therefore inefficient and costly. This thesis proposes a process-oriented integration strategy that combines the tasks of integration …

Measuring Software Size For Continuous Process Improvement, Claire O'Sullivan

Theses

This thesis looks at how the size of a software product can be measured. It looks at current software sizing methods (LOC and FPA) and shows that they are not sufficient in today’s rapidly changing environment. The COSMIC-FFP method is introduced and an overview of how it works is given. The hypothesis to be tested in this thesis is whether COSMIC-FFP is an accurate, repeatable sizing method that when applied to any type of software project produces a size measure that can be used to predict the effort required to complete the project.

This thesis investigates the use of the …

Design And Code Generation Concepts For Statechart Diagrams Of The Uml V1.1 In Concurrent Environments, Pierre Metz

Theses

This thesis deals with code generation concepts for the statechart diagrams of the UML vl.l. It explores implementation approaches for mapping statechart diagrams to code. It also focuses on modelling rules for consistent design of dynamic object behaviour. Most of the given object-oriented (00) methods have statechart diagrams as their centre. It is proposed to use statechart diagrams to model the internal behaviour of objects and lifecycles, respectively. Generally, statechart diagrams are used in the area of analysis and design of reactive systems such as realtime- and embedded-systems. This thesis introduces different existing implementation patterns and shows how they can …