Software Engineering Commons^™

An Assessment Of Software Safety As Applied To The Department Of Defense Software Development Process, Peter W. Colan, Robert W. Prouhet

Theses and Dissertations

This research analyzed the relationships between the DOD software development process, system safety requirements, and current structured software safety analysis techniques. The current state of software safety was assessed within the aerospace industry and DOD, and a training program for DOD System Safety Managers was developed. A telephone survey was conducted to gather information on current software safety analysis techniques and methodologies. Personal interviews were conducted with Aeronautical System Center System Safety Managers to gather data on job perception and perceived training needs. The results of the study indicate that the DOD guidance and policy documents needed to implement and …

Software Support Measurement And Estimating For Oracle Database Applications Using Mark Ii Function Points, Steven D. Radnov

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the results of measuring software support of Oracle database applications and estimating the effort and schedule required to provide support. Software measurement was accomplished with a variant of the function points metric, called Mark II function points, which is comprised of three weighted parameters, inputs, entities, and outputs. A technique for mapping Mark II function points to Oracle DBMS components was developed, and the size of the software support for each project, per team, was measured by tabulating and weighting the number of inputs, entities, and outputs that are added, changed, and/or deleted. Software support effort was …

A Model For Determining Task Set Schedulability In The Presence Of System Effects, Rusty O. Baldwin

Theses and Dissertations

This research developed a parameterized model that accounts for system overhead and determines when an Ada runtime environment can no longer successfully execute a given Ada task set and still meet all deadlines. The Ada Compiler Evaluation Capability benchmark was used to characterize an actual runtime environment. Using that data, a generic model of a preemptive, rate monotonic priority based runtime system was developed which accounts for overhead due to clock updates, context switching, task suspension, and synchronization. Validation was based on the Hartstone benchmark. First, the benchmark was executed using, the actual runtime environment. Then, those results were compared …

Object-Oriented Analysis, Design, And Implementation Of The Saber Wargame, David S. Douglass

Theses and Dissertations

Saber is a two-sided, air and land war game that simulates decisions made of commanders at the theater-level. It is being developed by the Air Force Institute of Technology for the Air Force Wargaming center at Maxwell AFB, Alabama. Saber models conventional, chemical, and nuclear warfare between aggregated air and land forces. It also portrays the effects of logistics, satellites, weather, terrain, and intelligence which add to the realism of the Saber war game. The Saber war game has three main components, the preprocessor. which is responsible for scenario development and pregame activities, the simulation. the guts of the war …

Solution To A Multicriteria Aircraft Routing Problem Utilizing Parallel Search Techniques, James J. Grimm Iii

Theses and Dissertations

Pilots select routes based on factors such as threats, fuel, time on target, distance, and refueling points. This is a time consuming task. This thesis presents the software engineering synthesis of a software tool, based on a parallelized A* search algorithm, to select routes. For simplicity only threats and distance are used. A centralized open list is used with one processor managing the list while the other processors perform the node expansions. This decomposition result in a dynamically load balanced system. A number of parameters are changed to study their impact on the execution time. The use of a branch …

Examining A Layered Approach To Function And Design Representation For Reusable Software Components, Paul D. Siebels

Theses and Dissertations

This effort examined ways to improve the effectiveness of reusable software libraries. The main area of investigation was in improving the user interface by finding better ways to present the software components to potential re-users. The first aspect which was considered was finding an effective representation for reusable software components. A set of criteria was developed for evaluating the effectiveness of software representations. The criteria consisted of generality, expressiveness, understandability, consistency, and resolution. The second aspect which was considered was how to present the software component information to the user to facilitate finding the appropriate component for reuse. A representation …

Creating And Manipulating Formalized Software Architectures To Support A Domain-Oriented Application Composition System, Cynthia G. Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

This research investigated technology which enables sophisticated users to specify, generate, and maintain application software in domain-oriented terms. To realize this new technology, a development environment, called Architect, was designed and implemented. Using canonical formal specifications of domain objects, Architect rapidly composes these specifications into a software application and executes a prototype of that application as a means to demonstrate its correctness before any programming language specific code is generated. Architect depends upon the existence of a formal object base (or domain model) which was investigated by another student in related research. The research described in this thesis relied on …

A Unified Model Of Program Behavior, Douglas T. Michel

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an attempt to account for and unify the three types of locality: temporal, spatial, and structural. A diverse sample of traces are used in measuring program behavior with respect to these localities and a model is presented which represents the memory references a program generates as it goes through execution. The model is validated by estimating, the entropy of a synthetically generated trace and comparing it with actual traces. The results indicate that there is more predictability contained in the original trace than what the model was able to capture. Different variations of the model were tried …

Design Recovery For Software Library Population, Chester A. Wright Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis research investigated design recovery as a means of populating a reuse library. The targeted library was part of the Automatic Programming Technologies for Avionics Systems (APTAS). APTAS uses a knowledge base of forms, to present questions to a user, and rules, to select the forms to present and choose existing library modules to use in composing a new system. The approach applied the reengineering model developed by Eric Byrne to accomplish planning for the project, expanded the renovation phase of this model to cover the actual design recovery, and applied the expanded model to populating the library. Using …

Formalizing, Validating, And Verifying Real-Time System Requirements With Reacto And Vhdl, Frank C. Young

Theses and Dissertations

We develop a methodology for formalizing, verifying, and validating the requirements specification of real-time systems based on a graphical and formal hierarchical Finite State Machine (FSM) language Reacto. We define a means to quantify time and express real-time constraints in Reacto and a transformation from Reacto to the Very High Speed Integrated Circuit (VHSIC) hardware Description Language (VHDL). Reacto's high level abstractions, graphical nature, and theorem prover produce efficient, accurate, and easily understood specifications. We use VHDL's event driven simulation capability, concurrency, and temporal operators to thoroughly examine temporal dependencies between the state machine transitions, and to increase simulation power …

The Adaptation Of The Sei's Capability Maturity Model To The Air Force Software Acquisition Management Process, William G. Dickerhoff Jr., William J. Sommers

Theses and Dissertations

This study develops an Air Force Software Acquisition Maturity Framework (SAMF) by adapting the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) capability Maturity Model (CMM) to the Air Force software acquisition process. The SAMFs purpose is to provide the Air Force Materiel Command's product centers and program off ices with criterion to assess their software acquisition maturity in a similar fashion as the SEI's CMM provides companies a benchmark to measure their organization's software production maturity. The research was accomplished through a combination of information gathering techniques and data analysis. A literature search of documentation, both within and external to the Department of …

A Case Tool For Conceptual Database Design, Keng Siau, Kok Phuang Tan, Hock Chuan Chan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The paper describes a Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tool to support conceptual database modelling. One popular approach for conceptual database modelling is use of the Entity-Relationship (ER) model. The paper proposes the use of an Enhanced Entity-Relationship (EER) model for conceptual database modelling. This Enhanced Entity-Relationship model extends the Entity-Relationship model by incorporating the generalization/specialization, aggregation and categorization abstractions. The CASE tool, which is based on the Enhanced Entity-Relationship model, is known as the Enhanced Entity-Relationship Diagrammer (EERD). In addition, the CASE tool supports direct visual query and update based on the EERM.

Development Of An Environment For Software Reliability Model Selection, Salah A. Elewa

Theses and Dissertations

An environment was developed for solving the problem of selecting a proper software reliability model for a given set of software failures. The idea behind the environment developed in this dissertation was to liken a collected set of software failure data to a previous one that proved to fit well with a specified software reliability model. Software failures were assumed to have a two-Parameter exponential distribution with unequal type II censoring. A test criterion was derived for testing Ratio Criterion. The exact distribution of the test criterion was derived. An asymptotic approximation was also obtained and was found to be …

Award Fee In Software Acquisition, Mark T. Hunter

Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this research effort was to determine, in general terms, what contractual tools are available to influence contractor performance during the software development process and, specifically, whether or not award fee contracts are appropriate tools. First, a qualitative, in depth literature review was done. Next, personal interviews were conducted with Program Directors and Deputy Program Directors at Aeronautical Systems Center, Electronic Systems Center, and Space and Missiles Systems Center. Then, after the results were summarized, the data was analyzed and findings were made. Findings include: award fee was found to be the most flexible provision in the FAR …

The Application Of Function Points To Predict Source Lines Of Code For Software Development, Garland S. Henderson

Theses and Dissertations

This research investigated the results of using function point analysis-based estimates to predict source lines of code (SLOC) for software development projects. The majority of software cost and effort estimating parametric tools are categorized as SLOC-based, meaning SLOC is the primary input. Early in a program, an accurate estimate of SLOC is difficult to project. Function points, another parametric software estimating tool, bases software cost and effort estimates on the functionality of a system. This functionality is described by documents available early in a program. Using a modeling methodology, the research focuses on function point's ability to accurately estimate SLOC …

Single Object Detection Using Multiple Sensors With Unknown Noise Distributions, Shaofen Chen

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

We consider the design of an object classification system that identifies single objects using a system of sensors; each sensor outputs a random vector, according to an unknown (noise) probability distribution, in response to a sensed object. We consider a special class of systems, called the linearly separable systems, where the error-free sensor outputs corresponding to distinct objects can be mapped into disjoint intervals on real line. Given a set of sensor outputs corresponding to known objects, we show that a detection rule α_emp that approaches the correct rule with a high probability can be computed. We show …

Satool Ii: An IdefO Case Workbench Using Ada And The X Window System, Betty Topp

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this research effort is to perform an object oriented analysis, design and implementation of the graphical user interface (GUI) for the SATool II system. SATool II is a computer Assisted Software Engineering (CASE) workbench developed using Ada and the X Window system. It is designed to serve as an IDEFo graphical project editor and data dictionary editor. IDEF₀ is the ICAM Definition Method Zero graphical notation language adopted by the Air Force to produce a function model of a manufacturing system or environment. The Air Force Institute of Technology is conducting on-going research in the use …

Applying Metrics To Rule-Based Systems, Paul Doyle, Renaat Verbruggen

Other

Since the introduction of software measurement theory in the early seventies it has been accepted that in order to control software it must first be measured. Unambiguous and reproducible measurements are considered to be the most useful in controlling software productivity, costs and quality, and diverse sets of measurements are required to cover all aspects of software. This paper focuses on measures for rule-based language systems and also describes a process for developing measures for other non-standard 3GL development tools. This paper uses KEL as an example and the method allows the re-use of existing measures and indicates if and …

The A.D.E. Taxonomy Of Spreadsheet Application Development, Maria Jean Hall

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Spreadsheets are a major application in end-user computing, one of the fastest growing areas of computing. Studies have shown that 30% of spreadsheet applications contain errors. As major decisions are often made with the assistance of spreadsheets, the control of spreadsheet applications is a matter of concern to enduser developers, managers, EDP auditors and computer professionals.

The application of appropriate controls to the spreadsheet development process requires prior categorisation of the spreadsheet application. The special-purpose A.D.E. (Application, Development, Environment) taxonomy of spreadsheet application development was evolved by mathematical taxonomic methods to categorise spreadsheet development projects to facilitate their management and …

A Study Of The Methodologies Currently Available For The Maintenance Of The Knowledge-Base In An Expert System, Kai Teh

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This research studies currently available maintenance methodologies for expert system knowledge bases and taxonomically classifies them according to the functions they perform. The classification falls into two broad categories. These are: (1) Methodologies for building a more maintainable expert system knowledge base. This section covers techniques applicable to the development phases. Software engineering approaches as well as other approaches are discussed. (2) Methodologies for maintaining an existing knowledge base. This section is concerned with the continued maintenance of an existing knowledge base. It is divided into three subsections. The first subsection discusses tools and techniques which aid the understanding of …

Application Of Expert System Techniques For Award Implementation, Seng-Choon Yeoh

Theses : Honours

This paper describes a pilot expert system project, PESWEA, developed in conjunction with The Western Australian Government Railways Commission (Westrail), to locate and implement an expert system pilot solution to the problems and complexities of the awards. The paper will outline the process used to develop and implement a solution to a business requirement. In particular, the methodologies for the project, shell selection, and knowledge acquisition will be presented and discussed. The fundamentals of expert systems will be discussed to provide the reader an insight into the technology. In addition, this paper reviews the literature relevant to the research questions. …