Software Engineering Commons^™

Network And Energy-Aware Resource Selection Model For Opportunistic Grids, Izaias Faria, Mario Dantas, Miriam A M Capretz, Wilson Higashino

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Due to increasing hardware capacity, computing grids have been handling and processing more data. This has led to higher amount of energy being consumed by grids; hence the necessity for strategies to reduce their energy consumption. Scheduling is a process carried out to define in which node tasks will be executed in the grid. This process can significantly impact the global system performance, including energy consumption. This paper focuses on a scheduling model for opportunistic grids that considers network traffic, distance between input files and execution node as well as the execution node status. The model was tested in a …

Query Analyzer And Manager For Complex Event Processing As A Service, Wilson Higashino, Cedric Eichler, Miriam A M Capretz, Thierry Monteil, M. Beatriz F. Toledo, Patricia Stolf

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Complex Event Processing (CEP) is a set of tools and techniques that can be used to obtain insights from high-volume, high-velocity continuous streams of events. CEP-based systems have been adopted in many situations that require prompt establishment of system diagnostics and execution of reaction plans, such as in monitoring of complex systems. This article describes the Query Analyzer and Manager (QAM) module, a first effort toward the development of a CEP as a Service (CEPaaS) system. This module is responsible for analyzing user-defined CEP queries and for managing their execution in distributed cloud-based environments. Using a language-agnostic internal query representation, …

Evaluation Of Particle Swarm Optimization Applied To Grid Scheduling, Wilson Higashino, Miriam A M Capretz, M. Beatriz F. Toledo

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

The problem of scheduling independent users’ jobs to resources in Grid Computing systems is of paramount importance. This problem is known to be NP-hard, and many techniques have been proposed to solve it, such as heuristics, genetic algorithms (GA), and, more recently, particle swarm optimization (PSO). This article aims to use PSO to solve grid scheduling problems, and compare it with other techniques. It is shown that many often-overlooked implementation details can have a huge impact on the performance of the method. In addition, experiments also show that the PSO has a tendency to stagnate around local minima in high-dimensional …

Service Evolution Patterns, Shuying Wang, Wilson Higashino, Michael Hayes, Miriam A M Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Service evolution is the process of maintaining and evolving existing Web services to cater for new requirements and technological changes. In this paper, a service evolution model is proposed to analyze service dependencies, identify changes on services and estimate impact on consumers that will use new versions of these services. Based on the proposed service evolution model, four service evolution patterns are described: compatibility, transition, split-map, and merge-map. These proposed patterns provide reusable templates to encourage well-defined service evolution while minimizing issues that arise otherwise. They can be applied in the service evolution scenario where a single service is used …

Contextual Anomaly Detection In Big Sensor Data, Michael Hayes, Miriam A M Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Performing predictive modelling, such as anomaly detection, in Big Data is a difficult task. This problem is compounded as more and more sources of Big Data are generated from environmental sensors, logging applications, and the Internet of Things. Further, most current techniques for anomaly detection only consider the content of the data source, i.e. the data itself, without concern for the context of the data. As data becomes more complex it is increasingly important to bias anomaly detection techniques for the context, whether it is spatial, temporal, or semantic. The work proposed in this paper outlines a contextual anomaly detection …

Semantic Privacy Policies For Service Description And Discovery In Service-Oriented Architecture, Diego Z. Garcia, Miriam A M Capretz, M. Beatriz F. Toledo

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Privacy preservation in Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an open problem. This paper focuses on the areas of service description and discovery. The problems in these areas are that currently it is not possible to describe how a service provider deals with information received from a service consumer as well as discover a service that satisfies the privacy preferences of a consumer. There is currently no framework which offers a solution that supports a rich description of privacy policies and their integration in the process of service discovery. Thus, the main goal of this paper is to propose a privacy preservation …

Addressing User Requirements In Open Source Software: The Role Of Online Forums, Arif Raza, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

User satisfaction has always been important in the success of software, regardless of whether it is closed and proprietary or open source software (OSS). OSS users are geographically distributed and include technical as well as novice users. However, it is generally believed that if OSS was more usable, its popularity would increase tremendously. Hence, users and their requirements need to be addressed in the priorities of an OSS environment. Online public forums are a major medium of communication for the OSS community. The research model of this work studies the relationship between user requirements in open source software and online …

Challenges For Mapreduce In Big Data, Katarina Grolinger, Michael Hayes, Wilson A. Higashino, Alexandra L'Heureux, David S. Allison, Miriam A.M. Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

In the Big Data community, MapReduce has been seen as one of the key enabling approaches for meeting continuously increasing demands on computing resources imposed by massive data sets. The reason for this is the high scalability of the MapReduce paradigm which allows for massively parallel and distributed execution over a large number of computing nodes. This paper identifies MapReduce issues and challenges in handling Big Data with the objective of providing an overview of the field, facilitating better planning and management of Big Data projects, and identifying opportunities for future research in this field. The identified challenges are grouped …

Uos : A Resource Rerouting Middleware For Ubiquitous Games, Fabricio N. Buzeto, Miriam A M Capretz, Carla D. Castanho, Ricardo P. Jacobi

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) relies on the computation distributed over the environment to simplify the tasks performed by its users. A smart space is an instance of a ubiquitous environment, composed of a dynamic and heterogeneous set of devices that interact to support the execution of distributed smart applications. In this context, mobile devices provide new resources when they join the environment, which disappear when they leave it. This introduces the challenge of self-adaptation, in which smart applications may either include new resources as they become available or replace them when they become unavailable. Ubiquitous games combine ubicomp and computer game …

Mapping The Invisible: A Framework For Tracking Covid-19 Spread Among College Students With Google Location Data, Prajindra Sankar Krishnan, Chai Phing Chen, Gamal Alkawsi, Sieh Kiong Tiong, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic and the implementation of social distancing policies have rapidly changed people's visiting patterns, as reflected in mobility data that tracks mobility traffic using location trackers on cell phones. However, the frequency and duration of concurrent occupancy at specific locations govern the transmission rather than the number of customers visiting. Therefore, understanding how people interact in different locations is crucial to target policies, inform contact tracing, and prevention strategies. This study proposes an efficient way to reduce the spread of the virus among on-campus university students by developing a self-developed Google History Location Extractor and Indicator software based …

Using Meta-Ethnography To Synthesize Research: A Worked Example Of The Relations Between Personality On Software Team Processes, Fabio Q. B. Silva Dr., Shirley S. J. O. Cruz, Tatiana B. Gouveia, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Context: The increase in the number of qualitative and mixed-methods research published in software engineering has created an opportunity for further knowledge generation through the synthesis of studies with similar aims. This is particularly true in the research on human aspects because the phenomena of interest are often better understood using qualitative research. However, the use of qualitative synthesis methods is not widespread and worked examples of their consistent application in software engineering are needed. Objective: To explore the use of meta-ethnography in the synthesis of empirical studies in software engineering through an example using studies about the relations between …

Software Project Risk Assessment And Effort Contingency Model Based On Cocomo Cost Factors, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

In the early stages of a software development life cycle, effort estimation plays a critical role in helping project managers predict the demands with respect to the budgeting, scheduling, and the allocation of resources. In this situation, the ideal estimation calculation should provide an approximate value figure, which will consist of a base estimation value plus a contingency allowance value, which will cover the risks and assumptions necessary for particular estimation calculations.

However, most software effort estimation methodologies, which include the COCOMO model, provide a fixed effort estimate value instead of an approximate value, and consequently the existing effort estimation …

Towards An Early Software Estimation Using Log-Linear Regression And A Multilayer Perceptron Model, Ali Bou Nassif, Nfa-Estimation, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Software estimation is a tedious and daunting task in project management and software development. Software estimators are notorious in predicting software effort and they have been struggling in the past decades to provide new models to enhance software estimation. The most critical and crucial part of software estimation is when estimation is required in the early stages of the software life cycle where the problem to be solved has not yet been completely revealed. This paper presents a novel log-linear regression model based on the use case point model (UCP) to calculate the software effort based on use case diagrams. …

Eef-Cas: An Effort Estimation Framework With Customizable Attribute Selection, Katarina Grolinger, Besa Muslimi, Miriam A.M. Capretz, Mark Benko

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Existing estimation frameworks generally provide one-size-fits-all solutions that fail to produce accurate estimates in most environments. Research has shown that the accomplishment of accurate effort estimates is a long-term process that, above all, requires the extensive collection of effort estimation data by each organization. Collected data is generally characterized by a set of attributes that are believed to affect the development effort. The attributes that most affect development effort vary widely depending on the type of product being developed and the environment in which it is being developed. Thus, any new estimation framework must offer the flexibility of customizable attribute …

Knowledge As A Service Framework For Disaster Data Management, Katarina Grolinger, Emna Mezghani, Miriam Am Capretz, Ernesto Exposito

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Each year, a number of natural disasters strike across the globe, killing hundreds and causing billions of dollars in property and infrastructure damage. Minimizing the impact of disasters is imperative in today’s society. As the capabilities of software and hardware evolve, so does the role of information and communication technology in disaster mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery. A large quantity of disaster-related data is available, including response plans, records of previous incidents, simulation data, social media data, and Web sites. However, current data management solutions offer few or no integration capabilities. Moreover, recent advances in cloud computing, big data, and …

Extension Of Object-Oriented Metrics Suite For, John Michura, Miriam A M Capretz, Shuying Wang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Software developers require information to understand the characteristics of systems, such as complexity and maintainability. In order to further understand and determine characteristics of object-oriented (OO) systems, this paper describes research that identifies attributes that are valuable in determining the difficulty in implementing changes during maintenance, as well as the possible effects that such changes may produce. A set of metrics are proposed to quantify and measure these attributes. The proposed complexity metrics are used to determine the difficulty in implementing changes through the measurement of method complexity, method diversity, and complexity density. The paper establishes impact metrics to determine …

A Hybrid Intelligent Model For Software Cost Estimation, Wei Lin Du, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Ali Bou Nassif, Danny Ho

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Accurate software development effort estimation is critical to the success of software projects. Although many techniques and algorithmic models have been developed and implemented by practitioners, accurate software development effort prediction is still a challenging endeavor in the field of software engineering, especially in handling uncertain and imprecise inputs and collinear characteristics. In this paper, a hybrid intelligent model combining a neural network model integrated with fuzzy model (neuro-fuzzy model) has been used to improve the accuracy of estimating software cost. The performance of the proposed model is assessed by designing and conducting evaluation with published project and industrial data. …

Fuzzy-Excom Software Project Risk Assessment, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Ekananta Manalif, Ali Bou Nassif, Danny Ho

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

A software development project can be considered to be risky project due to the uncertainty of the information (customer requirements), the complexity of the process, and the intangible nature of the product. Under these conditions, risk management in software development projects is mandatory, but often it is difficult and expensive to implement.

Expert COCOMO is an efficient approach to software project risk management, which leverages existing knowledge and expertise from previous effort estimation activities to assess the risk in a new software project. However, the original method has a limitation because it cannot effectively deal with imprecise and uncertain inputs …

A Treeboost Model For Software Effort Estimation Based On Use Case Points, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Ali Bou Nassif

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Software effort prediction is an important task in the software development life cycle. Many models including regression models, machine learning models, algorithmic models, expert judgment and estimation by analogy have been widely used to estimate software effort and cost. In this work, a Treeboost (Stochastic Gradient Boosting) model is put forward to predict software effort based on the Use Case Point method. The inputs of the model include software size in use case points, productivity and complexity. A multiple linear regression model was created and the Treeboost model was evaluated against the multiple linear regression model, as well as the …

Estimating Software Effort Using An Ann Model Based On Use Case Points, Ali Bou Nassif, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Danny Ho

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

In this paper, we propose a novel Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to predict software effort from use case diagrams based on the Use Case Point (UCP) model. The inputs of this model are software size, productivity and complexity, while the output is the predicted software effort. A multiple linear regression model with three independent variables (same inputs of the ANN) and one dependent variable (effort) is also introduced. Our data repository contains 240 data points in which, 214 are industrial and 26 are educational projects. Both the regression and ANN models were trained using 168 data points and tested using …

A Conceptual Framework For Measuring The Quality Aspect Of Mobile Learning, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Abdalha Ali, Abdelkader Ouda

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

With the continuing growth of mobile phones outpacing that of desktops and laptops, mobile phones are the new personal computer. These devices started becoming increasingly sophisticated and extremely powerful. In addition to making phone calls it have the capabilities to perform variety functions, one of the most important functions using it as a classroom tool. However, mobile phone applications must be designed and developed with respect to different technologies skills, learning capabilities and language proficiency in order to be accepted by wide audiences (e.g., students, instructors). However, there is much work that has been done to measure the quality of …

Usability Bugs In Open Source Software And Online Forums, Arif Raza, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Faheem Ahmed

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

No abstract provided.

An Open Source Usability Maturity Model (Os-Umm), Luiz Fernando Capretz, Arif Raza, Faheem Ahmed

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

User satisfaction has always been a major factor in the success of software, regardless of whether it is closed proprietary or open source software (OSS). In open source projects, usability aspects cannot be improved unless there are ways to test and measure them. Hence, the increasing popularity of open source projects among novice and non-technical users necessitates a usability evaluation methodology. Consequently, this paper presents a usability maturity model specifically aimed at usability-related issues for open source projects. In particular, the model examines the degree of coordination between open source projects and their usability aspects. The measuring instrument of the …

Users’ Perception Of Open Source Usability: An Empirical Study, Arif Raza, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Faheem Ahmed

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

The number of open source software (OSS) users has increased in recent years. No longer are they limited to technically adept software developers. Many believe that the OSS market share could increase tremendously provided OSS had systems that were easier to use. Although examples of good usable open source software exist, it is agreed that OSS can be made more usable. This study presents an empirical investigation to study the impact of some key factors on OSS usability from the end users’ point of view. The research model studies and establishes the relationship between the key usability factors from the …

Autonomic Database Management: State Of The Art And Future Trends, Katarina Grolinger, Miriam Am Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

In recent years, Database Management Systems (DBMS) have increased significantly in size and complexity, increasing the extent to which database administration is a time-consuming and expensive task. Database Administrator (DBA) expenses have become a significant part of the total cost of ownership. This results in the need to develop Autonomous Database Management systems (ADBMS) that would manage themselves without human intervention. Accordingly, this paper evaluates the current state of autonomous database systems and identifies gaps and challenges in the achievement of fully autonomic databases. In addition to highlighting technical challenges and gaps, we identify one human factor, gaining the trust …

Ontology–Based Representation Of Simulation Models, Katarina Grolinger, Miriam A.M. Capretz, José R. Marti, Krishan D. Srivastava

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Ontologies have been used in a variety of domains for multiple purposes such as establishing common terminology, organizing domain knowledge and describing domain in a machine-readable form. Moreover, ontologies are the foundation of the Semantic Web and often semantic integration is achieved using ontology. Even though simulation demonstrates a number of similar characteristics to Semantic Web or semantic integration, including heterogeneity in the simulation domain, representation and semantics, the application of ontology in the simulation domain is still in its infancy. This paper proposes an ontology-based representation of simulation models. The goal of this research is to facilitate comparison among …

An Iterative Association Rule Mining Framework To K-Anonymize A Dataset, Michael Hayes, Miriam A M Capretz, Jefferey Reed, Cheryl Forchuk

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Preserving and maintaining client privacy and anonymity is of utmost importance in any domain and specially so in healthcare, as loss of either of these can result in legal and ethical implications. Further, it is sometimes important to extract meaningful and useful information from existing data for research or management purposes. In this case it is necessary for the organization who manages the dataset to be certain that no attributes can identify individuals or group of individuals. This paper proposes an extendable and generalized framework to anonymize a dataset using an iterative association rule mining approach. The proposed framework also …

Evolution Of Software Engineers’ Personality Profile, Daniel Varona, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Arif Raza

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) has been applied to several studies that explore various dimensions of human factors in software engineering. Accordingly, this work reviews the results of these studies to explore existing trends. In order to attain a greater understanding of human resources in the software industry, we have reviewed sixteen studies that had been performed between 1985 and 2011. This review concludes that the changes in the complexity of software processes and products have created new roles and demanded new skills for software engineers.

Soft Skills Requirements In Software Development Jobs: A Cross-Cultural Empirical Study, Faheem Amed, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Salah Bouktif, Piers Campbell

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Purpose: Most of the studies carried out on human factor in software development concentrate primarily on personality traits. However, soft skills which largely help in determining personality traits have been given comparatively little attention by researchers. The purpose of this paper is to find out whether employers’ soft skills requirements, as advertised in job postings, within different roles of software development, are similar across different cultures.

Design/methodology/approach: The authors review the literature relating to soft skills before describing a study based on 500 job advertisements posted on well-known recruitment sites from a range of geographical locations, including North America, Europe, …

Evaluating The Demand For Soft Skills In Software Development, Faheem Ahmed, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Piers Campbell

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

An analysis of 500 advertisements for IT positions focuses on the soft skills mentioned in the ads, revealing which soft skills are in high demand for software development and which ones are neglected despite their importance.