Software Engineering Commons^™

Exercise Power Grid Display And Web Interface, Alexander (Alex) Chernetz

Computer Engineering

The 2008-2009 expansion of the Recreation Center at Cal Poly includes three new rooms with cardiovascular fitness equipment. As part of its ongoing commitment to sustainable development, the new machines connect to the main power grid and generate power during a workout. This document explains the process of quantifying and expressing the power generated using two interfaces: an autonomous display designed for a television with a text size and amount of detail adaptable to multiple television sizes and viewing distances, and an interactive, more detailed Web interface accessible with any Java-capable computer system or browser.

Coherent Phrase Model For Efficient Image Near-Duplicate Retrieval, Yiqun Hu, Xiangang Cheng, Liang-Tien Chia, Xing Xie, Deepu Rajan, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents an efficient and effective solution for retrieving image near-duplicate (IND) from image database. We introduce the coherent phrase model which incorporates the coherency of local regions to reduce the quantization error of the bag-of-words (BoW) model. In this model, local regions are characterized by visual phrase of multiple descriptors instead of visual word of single descriptor. We propose two types of visual phrase to encode the coherency in feature and spatial domain, respectively. The proposed model reduces the number of false matches by using this coherency and generates sparse representations of images. Compared to other method, the …

Robust Lifetime Measurement In Large-Scale P2p Systems With Non-Stationary Arrivals, Xiaoming Wang, Zhongmei Yao, Yueping Zhang, Dmitri Loguinov

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Characterizing user churn has become an important topic in studying P2P networks, both in theoretical analysis and system design. Recent work has shown that direct sampling of user lifetimes may lead to certain bias (arising from missed peers and round-off inconsistencies) and proposed a technique that estimates lifetimes based on sampled residuals. In this paper, however, we show that under non-stationary arrivals, which are often present in real systems, residual-based sampling does not correctly reconstruct user lifetimes and suffers a varying degree of bias, which in some cases makes estimation completely impossible. We overcome this problem using two contributions: a …

The Lookup Technique To Replace Nested-If Formulas In Spreadsheet Programming, Thomas A. Grossman Jr., O Ozluk, J Gustavson

Business Analytics and Information Systems

Spreadsheet programmers often implement contingent logic using a nested-IF formula even though this technique is difficult to test and audit and is believed to be risky. We interpret the programming of contingent logic in spreadsheets in the context of traditional computer programming. We investigate the “lookup technique” as an alternative to nested-IF formulas, describe its benefits for testing and auditing, and define its limitations. The lookup technique employs four distinct principles: 1) make logical tests visible; 2) make outcomes visible; 3) make logical structure visible; and 4) replace a multi-function nested-IF formula with a single-function lookup formula. It can be …

User Interface Design, Moritz Stefaner, Sebastien Ferre, Saverio Perugini, Jonathan Koren, Yi Zhang

Computer Science Faculty Publications

As detailed in Chap. 1, system implementations for dynamic taxonomies and faceted search allow a wide range of query possibilities on the data. Only when these are made accessible by appropriate user interfaces, the resulting applications can support a variety of search, browsing and analysis tasks. User interface design in this area is confronted with specific challenges. This chapter presents an overview of both established and novel principles and solutions.

A Generic Approach And Framework For Managing Complex Information, Essam Mansour

Doctoral

Several application domains, such as healthcare, incorporate domain knowledge into their day-to-day activities to standardise and enhance their performance. Such incorporation produces complex information, which contains two main clusters (active and passive) of information that have internal connections between them. The active cluster determines the recommended procedure that should be taken as a reaction to specific situations. The passive cluster determines the information that describes these situations and other descriptive information plus the execution history of the complex information. In the healthcare domain, a medical patient plan is an example for complex information produced during the disease management activity from …

Impacts Of Social Network Structure On Knowledge Sharing In Open Source Software Development Teams, Y. Long, Keng Siau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The study examines the relationship between social network structure and knowledge sharing in Open Source Software (OSS) development teams. One hundred and fifty projects were selected from SourceForge.net using stratified sampling. Social network structure was measured by two indices: degree of centralization and core/periphery fitness. Knowledge sharing was measured from two aspects: the quality of knowledge sharing that is indicated by the helpfulness of messages and the quantity of knowledge sharing that is indicated by the number of messages. The results show that social network structure significantly affects the quantity of knowledge sharing. However, social network structure does not influence …

User Guidance Of Resource-Adaptive Systems, João Pedro Sousa, Rajesh Krishna Balan, Vahe Poladian, David Garlan, Mahadev Satyanarayanan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents a framework for engineering resource-adaptive software systems targeted at small mobile devices. The proposed framework empowers users to control tradeoffs among a rich set of ervicespecific aspects of quality of service. After motivating the problem, the paper proposes a model for capturing user preferences with respect to quality of service, and illustrates prototype user interfaces to elicit such models. The paper then describes the extensions and integration work made to accommodate the proposed framework on top of an existing software infrastructure for ubiquitous computing. The research question addressed here is the feasibility of coordinating resource allocation and …

Getting Started With Prpl, Qingfeng Guan

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

pRPL is an open-source1 general-purpose parallel Raster Processing programming Library developed by Qingfeng Guan, in the Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara. pRPL encapsulates complex parallel computing utilities and routines specifically for raster processing (e.g., raster data decomposition, distribution and gathering among multiple processors, inter-processor communication and data exchange), and provides an easy-to-use interface for users to parallelize almost any raster processing algorithm with any arbitrary neighborhood (or moving window) configuration. pRPL enables the implementation of parallel raster-processing algorithms without requiring a deep understanding of parallel computing and programming, thus it greatly reduces the development complexity. Moreover, even …

A Primer On Spreadsheet Analytics, Thomas A. Grossman Jr.

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This paper provides guidance to an analyst who wants to extract insight from a spreadsheet model. It discusses the terminology of spreadsheet analytics, how to prepare a spreadsheet model for analysis, and a hierarchy of analytical techniques. These techniques include sensitivity analysis, tornado charts, and backsolving (or goal-seeking). This paper presents native-Excel approaches for automating these techniques, and discusses add-ins that are even more efficient. Spreadsheet optimization and spreadsheet Monte Carlo simulation are briefly discussed. The paper concludes by calling for empirical research, and describing desired features spreadsheet sensitivity analysis and spreadsheet optimization add-ins.

College Of Extended Learning Online Registration System, Chai-Ching Tsai

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project is to provide staff and future students at College of Extended Learning a web based interface to process course registration online. This system is called College of Extended Learning Online Registration System C♯ (CELORS-C♯). This project is a revision of a previous version of College of Extended Learning Online Registration System. The previous version of CELORS has been used by College of Extended Learning as of March 2007. The difference between the previous CELORS and CELORS-C♯ is that the previous CELORS is coded in JAVA but CELORS-C♯ is coded in C. Also, CELORS-C♯ has a …

Design And Implementation Of A Multi-Player Role Playing Game, Giang Tuan Trang

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project was to solve a multiplayer computer game problem. A team of 15 students were formed to solve a game programming problem in the summer of 2008. The team consisted of students from various programming backgrounds and interests. The team's goal was to finish the first working artifact minus the art work by the end of summer 2008. This first artifact with a concrete, solid architecture will serve as a foundation for future students to learn game programming.

Building Web Applications Using Web Services, Keerthi Nannapaneni

Theses Digitization Project

This project was performed to get hands on experience on the implementation of web services. During this project execution, significant time was spent researching about existing web services and various programming environments that can be used for building the application. The following application - AJAX, JavaScript, Java, Java server pages, HTML, and CSS. Existing data content from the following web service resources were used in this application - Google API, ArcWebServices, Weather XML feed. The purpose of this application is to show the map location along with the weather of the place selected by the user. This application can be …

Important Characteristics Of Software Development Team Members: An Empirical Investigation Using Repertory Grid, Keng Siau, Xin Tan, Hong Sheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

An information system is typically developed by a team of information systems (IS) professionals. Research shows that teams staffed with the right people are more likely to be effective and efficient. There is a paucity of study that examines the important traits of IS professionals in team contexts. The objective of this research is to identify and understand the important characteristics of good team members in software development projects. We applied an established psychological technique (Repertory Grid) to guide our interviews with 21 experienced IS professionals, who have had extensive experience in software development teams. The comprehensive list of important …

Important Characteristics Of Software Development Team Members: An Empirical Investigation Using Repertory Grid, Keng Siau, Xin Tan, Hong Sheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

An information system is typically developed by a team of information systems (IS) professionals. Research shows that teams staffed with the right people are more likely to be effective and efficient. There is a paucity of study that examines the important traits of IS professionals in team contexts. The objective of this research is to identify and understand the important characteristics of good team members in software development projects. We applied an established psychological technique (Repertory Grid) to guide our interviews with 21 experienced IS professionals, who have had extensive experience in software development teams. The comprehensive list of important …

The Future Of Information Systems Engineering, Keng Siau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

No abstract provided.

Measuring Knowledge Sharing In Open Source Software Development Teams, Y. Long, Keng Siau, K. Howell

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The study provides an approach to measure the extent of knowledge sharing in Open Source Software (OSS) development in terms of two aspects: the quality of knowledge sharing which is indicated by the helpfulness of the messages, and the quantity of knowledge sharing which is indicated by the volume of the messages. The study developed a computer-aided content analysis program to assess the helpfulness of the messages based on a set of keywords and the length of the messages. The approach was applied to measure the extent of knowledge sharing of 150 OSS projects. The results further confirmed that the …

Residual-Based Measurement Of Peer And Link Lifetimes In Gnutella Networks, Xiaoming Wang, Zhongmei Yao, Dmitri Loguinov

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Existing methods of measuring lifetimes in P2P systems usually rely on the so-called create-based method (CBM), which divides a given observation window into two halves and samples users "created" in the first half every Delta time units until they die or the observation period ends. Despite its frequent use, this approach has no rigorous accuracy or overhead analysis in the literature. To shed more light on its performance, we flrst derive a model for CBM and show that small window size or large Delta may lead to highly inaccurate lifetime distributions. We then show that create-based sampling exhibits an inherent …

Cognitive Evaluation Of Information Modeling Methods, Keng Siau, Yuan Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In the field of information system engineering, information modeling method is a technique to capture user requirements and to understand system complexity. The importance of information modeling has been recognized by practitioners and researchers, but little has been explored to analyze the available information modeling methods or to evaluate them in terms of their strengths, weaknesses, and effectiveness. This research analyzes six information-modeling methods: use case diagram, rich picture diagram, entity-relationship diagram, Trochim’s concept mapping, repertory grid, and causal mapping. These information-modeling methods are analyzed from a cognitive perspective in order to better understand their nature, the assumptions, and the …

Source Code Protection For Applications Written In Microsoft Excel And Google Spreadsheet, Thomas A. Grossman Jr.

Business Analytics and Information Systems

Spreadsheets are used to develop application software that is distributed to users. Unfortunately, the users often have the ability to change the programming statements (“source code”) of the spreadsheet application. This causes a host of problems. By critically examining the suitability of spreadsheet computer programming languages for application development, six “application development features” are identified, with source code protection being the most important. We investigate the status of these features and discuss how they might be implemented in the dominant Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and in the new Google Spreadsheet. Although Google Spreadsheet currently provides no source code control, its web-centric …

Best Practices For Implementing Agile Methods: A Guide For Department Of Defense Software Developers, Ann L. Fruhling, Alvin E. Tarrell

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Publications

Traditional plan-driven software development has been widely used in the government because it's considered to be less risky, more consistent, and structured. But there has been a shift from this approach to Agile methods which are more flexible, resulting in fast releases by working in an incremental fashion to adapt to the reality of the changing or unclear requirements.

This report describes the Agile software development philosophy, methods, and best practices in launching software design projects using the Agile approach. It is targeted to Defense Department software developers because they face broad challenges in creating enterprise-wide information systems, where Agile …

Identifying Difficulties In Learning Uml, Keng Siau, Poi-Peng Loo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Despite its recognition as a standard object-oriented modeling language, Unified Modeling Language (UML) has been criticized for such deficiencies as semantic inconsistencies, vagueness, and conflicting notations. the relationship between these deficiencies and the difficulties in the learning process is the focus of this study. A concept mapping technique is used to unveil the learning difficulties and suggestions for alleviating them are provided.

Modeling Heterogeneous User Churn And Local Resilience Of Unstructured P2p Networks, Zhongmei Yao, Derek Leonard, Dmitri Loguinov, Xiaoming Wang

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Previous analytical results on the resilience of unstructured P2P systems have not explicitly modeled heterogeneity of user churn (i.e., difference in online behavior) or the impact of in-degree on system resilience. To overcome these limitations, we introduce a generic model of heterogeneous user churn, derive the distribution of the various metrics observed in prior experimental studies (e.g., lifetime distribution of joining users, joint distribution of session time of alive peers, and residual lifetime of a randomly selected user), derive several closed-form results on the transient behavior of in-degree, and eventually obtain the joint in/out degree isolation probability as a simple …

Social Network Dynamics For Open Source Software Projects, Y. Long, Keng Siau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Drawing on social network theories and previous studies, this research is an initial effort to explore the dynamics of the social network structure in Open Source Software (OSS) teams. Three projects were selected from SourceForge.net in term of their similarities as well as their differences. Monthly data were extracted from the bug tracking system in order to achieve a longitudinal view of the interaction pattern of each project. Social network analysis was used to generate the indices of network structure. The finding suggests that the interaction pattern of OSS projects evolves from a single hub at the beginning to a …

Student Interactive Campus Map At Marshall University, Edward Aractingi, Jamie Wolfe

IT Research

Marshall University is a state-funded university in Huntington, West Virginia. Like many universities, it is a large organization with multiple and diverse units (colleges, departments, centers, etc.) and depends on data to run efficiently. Much of this data is used by multiple entities. To better manage the needed data collected by the university, the Marshall University Geographic Information System (MUGIS) has been developed. MUGIS will address several needs of Marshall University’s principal stakeholders. Stakeholders include the university administration, faculty, and students. One of the first applications developed for MUGIS was an interactive campus map. This Web-based application is intended to …

Ontological Implications Of The Levels Of Conceptual Interoperability Model, Andreas Tolk, Charles D. Turnitsa, Saikou Y. Diallo

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Faculty Publications

The Levels of Conceptual Interoperability Model (LCIM) was developed to cope with the different layers of interoperation of modeling & simulation applications. It introduced technical, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, dynamic, and conceptual layers of interoperation and showed how they are related to the ideas of integratability, interoperability, and composability. This paper will be presented in the invited session "Ontology Driven Interoperability for Agile Applications using Information Systems: Requirements and Applications for Agent Mediated Decision Support" at WMSCI 2006.

Testcase Tool, John Louis Van Hemert

Honors Program Theses

The title of my project is "TestCASE Tool." TestCASE Tool is the name, or label, I assigned to the software application that I created for this project. The application is a Tool for storing and reporting data in software testing projects. A Test Case consists of a planned action within a system, the expected result of that action and an assessment of whether the expected result occurred. The acronym, CASE, stands for Computer Aided Software Engineering, which is the software tool genre to which my application belongs.

Enhancement Of Software Engineering By Shifting From Software Product To Software Service, Muhammad Saeed, Muhammad Jaffar-Ur- Rehman

International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies

Software development has always been a supply side affair, in which domain experts were the main requirement providers. Software engineers have been creating new technologies, frameworks and methodologies but this has made the software engineering job more complex. Recently all this has been looked at from demand-side prospective. So a new concept of Service Based Software Engineering is shaping up which look at the software as a service rather then a product. This paper is going to analysis the fundamental requirements of such a paradigm shift, by first gathering the concept and then translating this to a workable solution. Different …

An Investigation Into The Skills Gap In The Software Industry Of Pakistan, Zareen Sharf, Dr. Wasim A. Khan

International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies

Software Industry workers require an adequate skill set to gain maximum output from the effective use of technology. The purpose of this study is to explore the nature of actual and desired software developer, jobs skill set. Survey methodology will be used to obtain reports of actual skill level and those desired to define common dimensions of the software developer skill set. Anticipated results will add to the existing body of IT job skills knowledge and may provide practice with job development and career planning guidance. We also intend to propose a skill standard for the software industry of Pakistan …

Implementation And Analysis Of Cmmi's Configuration Management Process Area; Applicable To "Defined" Level - 3, Ahmad Luqman

International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies

Enterprise Resource Planner (ERP) is a strategically important tool as integrated business application for long-term success in an increasingly competitive global market. This system requires the integration of data and business processes across the whole enterprise. In order to develop a good quality product there is a need of applying proper model. It becomes more costly in terms of training, appraisals, and improvement activities while applying multiple models that are not integrated within and across an organization. Where as Capability Maturity Model Integration is a set of integrated models that successfully addresses multiple disciplines and has integrated training support. Objective …