| 1. |
- Abbaspour Asadollah, Sara, et al.
(författare)
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10 Years of research on debugging concurrent and multicore software : a systematic mapping study
- 2017
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Ingår i: Software quality journal. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0963-9314 .- 1573-1367. ; 25:1, s. 49-82
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Debugging – the process of identifying, localizing and fixing bugs – is a key activity in software development. Due to issues such as non-determinism and difficulties of reproducing failures, debugging concurrent software is significantly more challenging than debugging sequential software. A number of methods, models and tools for debugging concurrent and multicore software have been proposed, but the body of work partially lacks a common terminology and a more recent view of the problems to solve. This suggests the need for a classification, and an up-to-date comprehensive overview of the area. This paper presents the results of a systematic mapping study in the field of debugging of concurrent and multicore software in the last decade (2005– 2014). The study is guided by two objectives: (1) to summarize the recent publication trends and (2) to clarify current research gaps in the field.Through a multi-stage selection process, we identified 145 relevant papers. Based on these, we summarize the publication trend in the field by showing distribution of publications with respect to year , publication venues , representation of academia and industry , and active research institutes . We also identify research gaps in the field based on attributes such as types of concurrency bugs, types of debugging processes , types of research and research contributions.The main observations from the study are that during the years 2005–2014: (1) there is no focal conference or venue to publish papers in this area, hence a large variety of conferences and journal venues (90) are used to publish relevant papers in this area; (2) in terms of publication contribution, academia was more active in this area than industry; (3) most publications in the field address the data race bug; (4) bug identification is the most common stage of debugging addressed by articles in the period; (5) there are six types of research approaches found, with solution proposals being the most common one; and (6) the published papers essentially focus on four different types of contributions, with ”methods” being the type most common one.We can further conclude that there is still quite a number of aspects that are not sufficiently covered in the field, most notably including (1) exploring correction and fixing bugs in terms of debugging process; (2) order violation, suspension and starvation in terms of concurrency bugs; (3) validation and evaluation research in the matter of research type; (4) metric in terms of research contribution. It is clear that the concurrent, parallel and multicore software community needs broader studies in debugging.This systematic mapping study can help direct such efforts.
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| 2. |
- Alégroth, Emil, 1984-, et al.
(författare)
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Characteristics that affect Preference of Decision Models for Asset Selection : An Industrial Questionnaire Survey
- 2020
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Ingår i: Software quality journal. - : Springer. - 0963-9314 .- 1573-1367. ; 28:4, s. 1675-1707
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Modern software development relies on a combination of development and re-use of technical asset, e.g. software components, libraries and APIs.In the past, re-use was mostly conducted with internal assets but today external; open source, customer off-the-shelf (COTS) and assets developed through outsourcing are also common.This access to more asset alternatives presents new challenges regarding what assets to optimally chose and how to make this decision.To support decision-makers, decision-theory has been used to develop decision models for asset selection.However, very little industrial data has been presented in literature about the usefulness, or even perceived usefulness, of these models.Additionally, only limited information has been presented about what model characteristics that determine practitioner preference towards one model over another.Objective: The objective of this work is to evaluate what characteristics of decision models for asset selection that determine industrial practitioner preference of a model when given the choice of a decision-model of high precision or a model with high speed.Method: An industrial questionnaire survey is performed where a total of 33 practitioners, of varying roles, from 18 companies are tasked to compare two decision models for asset selection.Textual analysis and formal and descriptive statistics are then applied on the survey responses to answer the study's research questions.Results: The study shows that the practitioners had clear preference towards the decision model that emphasised speed over the one that emphasised decision precision.This conclusion was determined to be because one of the models was perceived faster, had lower complexity, had, was more flexible in use for different decisions, was more agile how it could be used in operation, its emphasis on people, its emphasis on ``good enough'' precision and ability to fail fast if a decision was a failure.Hence, seven characteristics that the practitioners considered important for their acceptance of the model.Conclusion: Industrial practitioner preference, which relates to acceptance, of decision models for asset selection is dependent on multiple characteristics that must be considered when developing a model for different types of decisions such as operational day-to-day decisions as well as more critical tactical or strategic decisions.The main contribution of this work are seven identified characteristics that can serve as industrial requirements for future research on decision models for asset selection.
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| 3. |
- Alferez, Mauricio, et al.
(författare)
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Modeling variability in the video domain : language and experience report
- 2019
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Ingår i: Software quality journal. - : Springer. - 0963-9314 .- 1573-1367. ; 27:1, s. 307-347
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In an industrial project, we addressed the challenge of developing a software-based video generator such that consumers and providers of video processing algorithms can benchmark them on a wide range of video variants. This article aims to report on our positive experience in modeling, controlling, and implementing software variability in the video domain. We describe how we have designed and developed a variability modeling language, called VM, resulting from the close collaboration with industrial partners during 2 years. We expose the specific requirements and advanced variability constructs; we developed and used to characterize and derive variations of video sequences. The results of our experiments and industrial experience show that our solution is effective to model complex variability information and supports the synthesis of hundreds of realistic video variants. From the software language perspective, we learned that basic variability mechanisms are useful but not enough; attributes and multi-features are of prior importance; meta-information and specific constructs are relevant for scalable and purposeful reasoning over variability models. From the video domain and software perspective, we report on the practical benefits of a variability approach. With more automation and control, practitioners can now envision benchmarking video algorithms over large, diverse, controlled, yet realistic datasets (videos that mimic real recorded videos)-something impossible at the beginning of the project.
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| 4. |
- Andrews, A, et al.
(författare)
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A framework for design tradeoffs
- 2005
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Ingår i: Software Quality Journal. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0963-9314 .- 1573-1367. ; 13:4, s. 377-405
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Designs almost always require tradeoffs between competing design choices to meet system requirements. We present a framework for evaluating design choices with respect to meeting competing requirements. Specifically, we develop a model to estimate the performance of a UML design subject to changing levels of security and fault-tolerance. This analysis gives us a way to identify design solutions that are infeasible. Multi-criteria decision making techniques are applied to evaluate the remaining feasible alternatives. The method is illustrated with two examples: a small sensor network and a system for controlling traffic lights.
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| 5. |
- Borg, Markus, et al.
(författare)
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Ergo, SMIRK is safe : a safety case for a machine learning component in a pedestrian automatic emergency brake system
- 2023
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Ingår i: Software quality journal. - : Springer. - 0963-9314 .- 1573-1367. ; 31:2, s. 335-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Integration of machine learning (ML) components in critical applications introduces novel challenges for software certification and verification. New safety standards and technical guidelines are under development to support the safety of ML-based systems, e.g., ISO 21448 SOTIF for the automotive domain and the Assurance of Machine Learning for use in Autonomous Systems (AMLAS) framework. SOTIF and AMLAS provide high-level guidance but the details must be chiseled out for each specific case. We initiated a research project with the goal to demonstrate a complete safety case for an ML component in an open automotive system. This paper reports results from an industry-academia collaboration on safety assurance of SMIRK, an ML-based pedestrian automatic emergency braking demonstrator running in an industry-grade simulator. We demonstrate an application of AMLAS on SMIRK for a minimalistic operational design domain, i.e., we share a complete safety case for its integrated ML-based component. Finally, we report lessons learned and provide both SMIRK and the safety case under an open-source license for the research community to reuse. © 2023, The Author(s).
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Butler, Simon, et al.
(författare)
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On business adoption and use of reproducible builds for open and closed source software
- 2023
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Ingår i: Software quality journal. - : Springer Nature Switzerland AG. - 0963-9314 .- 1573-1367. ; 31:3, s. 687-719
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Reproducible builds (R-Bs) are software engineering practices that reliably create bit-for-bit identical binary executable files from specified source code. R-Bs are applied in someopen source software (OSS) projects and distributions to allow verification that the distrib-uted binary has been built from the released source code. The use of R-Bs has been advo-cated in software maintenance and R-Bs are applied in the development of some OSS secu-rity applications. Nonetheless, industry application of R-Bs appears limited, and we seekto understand whether awareness is low or if significant technical and business reasonsprevent wider adoption. Through interviews with software practitioners and business man-agers, this study explores the utility of applying R-Bs in businesses in the primary and sec-ondary software sectors and the business and technical reasons supporting their adoption.We find businesses use R-Bs in the safety-critical and security domains, and R-Bs are valu-able for traceability and support collaborative software development. We also found thatR-Bs are valued as engineering processes and are seen as a badge of software quality, butwithout a tangible value proposition. There are good engineering reasons to use R-Bs inindustrial software development, and the principle of establishing correspondence betweensource code and binary offers opportunities for the development of further applications.
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| 8. |
- Börstler, Jürgen, et al.
(författare)
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Beauty and the Beast: on the readability of object-oriented example programs
- 2016
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Ingår i: Software quality journal. - : Springer. - 0963-9314 .- 1573-1367. ; 24:2, s. 231-246
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Some solutions to a programming problem are more elegant or more simple than others and thus more understandable for students. We review desirable properties of example programs from a cognitive and a measurement point of view. Certain cognitive aspects of example programs are captured by common software measures, but they are not sufficient to capture a key aspect of understandability: readability. We propose and discuss a simple readability measure for software, SRES, and apply it to object-oriented textbook examples. Our results show that readability measures correlate well with human perceptions of quality. Compared with other readability measures, SRES is less sensitive to commenting and white-space. These results also have implications for software maintainability measures.
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| 9. |
- Chatzipetrou, Panagiota, Assistant Professor, 1984-, et al.
(författare)
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An experience-based framework for evaluating alignment of software quality goals
- 2015
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Ingår i: Software quality journal. - : Springer. - 0963-9314 .- 1573-1367. ; 23:4, s. 567-594
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Efficient quality management of software projects requires knowledge of how various groups of stakeholders involved in software development prioritize the product and project goals. Agreements or disagreements among members of a team may originate from inherent groupings, depending on various professional or other characteristics. These agreements are not easily detected by conventional practices (discussions, meetings, etc.) since the natural language expressions are often obscuring, subjective, and prone to misunderstandings. It is therefore essential to have objective tools that can measure the alignment among the members of a team; especially critical for the software development is the degree of alignment with respect to the prioritization goals of the software product. The paper proposes an experience-based framework of statistical and graphical techniques for the systematic study of prioritization alignment, such as hierarchical cluster analysis, analysis of cluster composition, correlation analysis, and closest agreement-directed graph. This framework can provide a thorough and global picture of a team's prioritization perspective and can potentially aid managerial decisions regarding team composition and leadership. The framework is applied and illustrated in a study related to global software development where 65 individuals in different roles, geographic locations and professional relationships with a company, prioritize 24 goals from individual perception of the actual situation and for an ideal situation.
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| 10. |
- Chatzipetrou, Panagiota, Assistant Professor, 1984-, et al.
(författare)
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Component attributes and their importance in decisions and component selection
- 2020
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Ingår i: Software quality journal. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0963-9314 .- 1573-1367. ; 28, s. 567-593
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Component-based software engineering is a common approach in the development and evolution of contemporary software systems. Different component sourcing options are available, such as: (1) Software developed internally (in-house), (2) Software developed outsourced, (3) Commercial off-the-shelf software, and (4) Open-Source Software. However, there is little available research on what attributes of a component are the most important ones when selecting new components. The objective of this study is to investigate what matters the most to industry practitioners when they decide to select a component. We conducted a cross-domain anonymous survey with industry practitioners involved in component selection. First, the practitioners selected the most important attributes from a list. Next, they prioritized their selection using the Hundred-Dollar ($100) test. We analyzed the results using compositional data analysis. The results of this exploratory analysis showed that cost was clearly considered to be the most important attribute for component selection. Other important attributes for the practitioners were: support of the component, longevity prediction, and level of off-the-shelf fit to product. Moreover, several practitioners still consider in-house software development to be the sole option when adding or replacing a component. On the other hand, there is a trend to complement it with other component sourcing options and, apart from cost, different attributes factor into their decision. Furthermore, in our analysis, nonparametric tests and biplots were used to further investigate the practitioners’ inherent characteristics. It seems that smaller and larger organizations have different views on what attributes are the most important, and the most surprising finding is their contrasting views on the cost attribute: larger organizations with mature products are considerably more cost aware.
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