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Using OTS (Off-The-Shelf) components in software projects has become increasing popular in the IT industry. After project managers opt for OTS components, they can decide to use COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) components or OSS (Open Source Software) components. We have done a series of interviews and surveys to document and understand industrial practice with OTS-based development in Norwegian, German, and Italian IT industry. The perspective is that of a software architect or system integrator, not a developer or maintainer of such components. The study object is a completed development project using one or several OTS components. This paper reports on the versioning aspects of OTS components in such projects. We found that one third of the COTS components actually provided source code, in addition to all OSS components. However, OTS components were seldom modified (i.e. re-used "as-is"), even if source code was available. Although backward compatibility of new releases did not cause noticeable problems for a single OTS component, using several different OTS components in a project caused difficulties in maintenance planning of asynchronous releases and system integration of new releases. Several new research questions have been formulated based on the results of this study.

This report provides abstracts for technical publications produced during 1995 by personnel of the Information Technology Division (ITD), one of the largest research and development collectives at the Naval Research Laboratory. The abstracts are organized into sections that represent the six branches with ITD: the Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence, Communications Systems, the Center for High Assurance Computer Systems, Transmission Technology, Advanced Information Technology, and the Center for Computational Science. Within each section, a list of branch papers published in 1993 and 1994 has also been included; abstracts for these papers may be found in prior-year editions of this report. Information on obtaining a copy of one or more of the abstracted orlisted publications is provided as well.

General ontology is a prominent theoretical foundation for information technology analysis, design, and development. Ontology is a branch of philosophy which studies what exists in reality. A widely used ontology in information systems, especially for conceptual modeling, is the BWW (Bunge–Wand–Weber), which is based on ideas of the philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge, as synthesized by Wand and Weber. The ontology was founded on an early subset of Bunge’s philosophy; however, many of Bunge’s ideas have evolved since then. An important question, therefore, is: do the more recent ideas expressed by Bunge call for a new ontology? In this paper, we conduct an analysis of Bunge’s earlier and more recent works to address this question. We present a new ontology based on Bunge’s later and broader works, which we refer to as Bunge’s Systemist Ontology (BSO). We then compare BSO to the constructs of BWW. The comparison reveals both considerable overlap between BSO and BWW, as well as substantial differences. From this comparison and the initial exposition of BSO, we provide suggestions for further ontology studies and identify research questions that could provide a fruitful agenda for future scholarship in conceptual modeling and other areas of information technology.

Background Serious games have been used as supportive therapy for traditional rehabilitation. However, most are designed without a systematic process to guide their development from the phases of requirement identification, planning, design, construction, and evaluation, which reflect the lack of adaptation of rehabilitation requirements and thus the patient’s needs. Objective The aim of this study was to propose a conceptual framework with standardized elements for the development of information systems by using a flexible and an adaptable process centered on the patient’s needs and focused on the creation of serious games for physical rehabilitation. Methods The conceptual framework is based on 3 fundamental concepts: (1) user-centered design, which is an iterative design process focused on users and their needs at each phase of the process, (2) generic structural activities of software engineering, which guides the independent development process regardless of the complexity or size of the problem, and (3) gamification elements, which allow the transformation of obstacles into positive and fun reinforcements, thereby encouraging patients in their rehabilitation process. Results We propose a conceptual framework to guide the development of serious games through a systematic process by using an iterative and incremental process applying the phases of context identification, user requirements, planning, design, construction of the interaction devices and video game, and evaluation. Conclusions This proposed framework will provide developers of serious games a systematic process with standardized elements for the development of flexible and adaptable software with a high level of patient commitment, which will effectively contribute to their rehabilitation process.

This study links business requirements and adaptability of existing software systems. Organizations expect flexibility of IT with regard to business requirements. We hypothesize that the flexibility of business requirements is difficult in IT systems, because of software dependencies in the way domain knowledge is implemented. In this paper, we, therefore, explore how Business requirements have been implemented in the source code of three open source healthcare systems. Outcomes suggest that a tight interdependency of business terminology and functionality in source code hides business requirements from view and thereby hinders IT flexibility on higher levels. Diagram of Modeling levels of OMG Diagram of Modeling levels of OMG … Figures - uploaded by Rogier van de WeteringAuthor content All figure content in this area was uploaded by Rogier van de Wetering Content may be subject to copyright.

PurposeThe engineering education accreditation (EEA) is a principal quality assurance mechanism. However, at many education institutions, the most labor-intensive work of EEA process is accomplished manually. Without the support of computer and information technology, the EEA process leads to high labor intensity, low work efficiency and poor management level. The purpose of this paper is to build a complex network model and realize an information management system of talent training program for supporting the EEA process.Design/methodology/approachBased on polychromatic graph (PG), this paper builds a network model of talent training program for engineering specialty. The related information and data are organized and processed in this network model. From the bidirections of top-down and bottom-up, the user requirements are retrieved automatically in logic layer. Together with the specialty of mechanical engineering, the proposed PG-based network modeling method is applied and the corresponding information management system is realized.FindingsThe study results show that the PG-based network modeling method takes full advantages of the strong simulation ability of PG to model the complex network system and has some unique merits in formal expression of problem, efficient processing of information and lightweight realization of system. Further, the information management system of talent training program can reduce the tedious human labor and improve the management level of EEA process dramatically.Originality/valueThis paper proposes a PG-based network modeling method, in which the nodes and the edges can be painted by some unified colors to describe the different kinds of activities and the various types of interactions. Theoretically, this modeling method does not distinguish the activities, the interactions and their properties in graphic symbol and the problem size is diminished about a half. Furthermore, this paper provides an effective experience and idea to the education institutions for implementing the engineering education accreditation, increasing the education management efficiency and promoting the talent training quality.

The use of information technology in educational institutions be necessary for work to be efficient and flexible. The process of reporting student data and assessment results at SMA Negeri 1 Dharmasraya is still manual using paper (paper-based), and there is no specific storage for the database. To make reports on student learning outcomes and share resources easier then an information system was built on a client-server network using object-oriented programming with a centralized database so that the stored data can be organized. The build systems using the System Development Life Cycle waterfall model, which starts from the analysis, design, coding, testing, and maintenance. The results of this study are the establishment of a multiuser system that implements the use of client-server computer networks to process student grades.Key Words: Client-Server, Information Systems, OOP

The paper presents the results of research on improving the security of medical information systems. It begins with a presentation of the specific features of such systems in terms of functionality and potential risks. It was assumed that the features distinguishing medical systems from other information systems are: patient orientation, confidentiality of the information processed, state interference in the functioning of medical entities and the need to ensure maximum availability of system resources. The last requirement results from treating medical IT systems as elements of critical infrastructure, for which business continuity is one of the key features. The work focused on limiting the systems’ sensitivity to cyber-attacks limiting their availability. A software and hardware platform dedicated for attack detection is presented. The system uses parallel processing and artificial intelligence and is distinguished by several alternative detection methods, the use of expert system to make decisions about protection measures and the ability to independently identify unknown attacks. Paper ends with an evaluation of prototype testing results and directing further work in this area. The work is address to people involved in the operation of medical information systems.

With the rapid development of the new generation of information technology, the foundation and core role of software are becoming more and more prominent, with more and more applications and complex functions, larger and larger code scale, more and more software quality problems, and more and more software quality data are generated in the software life cycle. In today's big data era, through the effective collection, management and application of these software quality data, the utilization of software quality data can be effectively improved, so as to improve software quality. Based on this, this paper studies the whole life cycle quality data of software, including fault data for software quality improvement, process data for software quality risk prevention and evaluation data for software quality evaluation, for the concept, development, testing, use and maintenance, decommissioning stages of software life cycle. At the same time, this paper studies the requirements definition, collection, transmission, processing, storage, application and sharing of software quality data lifecycle management methods. This can support the construction of software quality data resources, provide decision-making basis for software quality management activities, and help to improve software quality.

The last few decades have seen tremendous growth in the IT industry where offshoring software has become a general phenomenon. Due to this offshoring, development and maintenance teams are generally located in different time zones along with at distinct locations. This separation of teams at different locations leads to the problem of sharing information in a consistent manner. In this respect, the Semantic Web plays an essential role as it helps in sharing and reusing already available information. Due to the emergence of the Semantic Web, it has been applied in various Software Engineering tasks and issues. Among those various issues, one is to provide a model or system, which can produce automatic documentation for every version of a software system for their better understanding and maintenance. Therefore, this research paper proposes an ontology driven software development approach for better understanding and maintenance of software system. The research approach consists of a multi-phased framework in a cyclic manner that generates the various versions of software and their associated documentation. To implement and demonstrate the research approach, we picked a case study. The results of the implementation demonstrate that the paper successfully generated all versions of the software along with its automatic documentation. Moreover, the documentation is accessible in machine-understandable together with human-understandable form, which leads to the generation of consistent information without any ambiguity. Thus, the research work helps in better understanding and maintenance of software systems.

Low-code is an emerging concept that transforms visual representations into functional software, allowing anyone to be a developer. However, building a low-code platform from scratch can be challenging concerning the scarce available literature about the topic. In this sense, this paper proposes an Open Low-Code Platform (OLP), a low-code solution that enables regular users to create applications. Furthermore, it presents low-code’s functional and nonfunctional requirements, as well as its similarities and its differences with the no-code concept. The experience obtained while developing OLP was translated into a pipeline that details how code was transformed from the visual representations into a fully fledged application. The paper demonstrates the solution’s viability and is especially useful for building a low-code platform from scratch or improving an existing one.

As a disruptive technology, the blockchain is continuously finding novel application contexts, bringing new opportunities and radical changes. In this paper, we use blockchain as a communication infrastructure to support multi-party business processes. In particular, through smart contracts specifically generated by the mentioned business process, it is possible to derive a trustable infrastructure enabling the interaction among parties. Moreover, the emergence of different blockchain technologies, satisfying different characteristics, gives the possibility to support the same business process dealing with different non-functional needs. In this paper, we propose a novel engineering methodology supported by a practical framework called Multi-Chain. It permits to derive, using a model-driven strategy, a blockchain-based infrastructure, that can be deployed over a specific blockchain technology (e.g., Ethereum or Hyperledger Fabric). The objective is to permit the single definition and multiple deployments of the business process, to deliver the same functionalities, but satisfying different non-functional needs. In such a way, organisations willing to cooperate can select the multi-party business process and the blockchain technology they would like to use to satisfy their needs. Using Multi-Chain, they will be able to automatically derive from a Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) choreography diagram a blockchain infrastructure ready to be used. This overcomes the need to get acquainted with many details of the specific technology.

In the contemporary world, software product line use has become so rampant and of great significance. This is because for every software developed, there is a new product line that emerges with it. Whereas a few literature pieces have already covered the generic development of Software Product Line (SPL) and its instantiation, there is very little focus directed towards its implementation in a business context by using the .NET framework, thus forming the basis of this research study. The present article will give insight into the performance of a software product line .NET. Concerning this statement, the paper will attempt to address some .NET basic concepts, distinguishing features, factors to consider in implementing the .NET framework, the benefits of implementing .NET frameworks .NET. The paper will also understand some of the approaches used to implement .NET in a software product line. The report will conclude by giving a recommendation for further research.

Achieving interoperability between disparate digital systems is a major challenge for Industry 4.0 and a necessary step to build the digital representation of a factory. Despite all available technologies, there is still a gap between information technologies and manufacturing systems in terms of interoperability. In this paper, we address such a gap from the perspectives of learning factories and propose a plug and play and reconfigurable transport network layer, which makes it possible to exchange information at all levels of the factory floor. For the validation of the developed concept, an experimental setup of an assembly line is set up in the Smart Mini Factory learning factory laboratory and a didactic teaching concept is proposed. The paper aims to encourage other learning factories to install such plug and play reconfigurable transport network architectures and to use it for demonstration and teaching purposes of connectivity and interoperability in cyber-physical production systems.

Nowadays, the topicality and applicability of model-driven development in the object-oriented development approach has increased, so it is important that created models and diagrams display not only the content, but also visually reflect information. Transparent diagram placement that influences work productivity is important for displaying information. Manual layout of diagrams is a time-consuming activity, which can also be ineffective, so in this paper the application of UML use case automatic layout is reviewed. The paper also examines the requirements of use case diagrams and placement criteria, which will serve as a basis for the creation of an automatic use case diagram layout algorithm.

The new Industry 4.0 envisions a future for agile and effective integration of the physical operational technologies (OT) and the cyber information technologies (IT) as well as autonomous cooperation among them. However, the wide variety and heterogeneity of industrial systems and field devices -especially on the factory floor - increase integration complexity. To address these challenges, new technologies and concepts such as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Service-oriented Architecture (SoA), Semantic Technologies, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are being introduced to the industrial environment. In this paper, we focus on how industrial automation systems and field devices can be integrated into the IIoT framework and coordinated to adapt to dynamic operating environment. Specifically, this paper proposed an interoperability solution that makes use of SoA and Semantic Technologies to achieve supervised coordination of IIoT application systems. To illustrate the potential of this approach, the Service-oriented Architecture-based Arrowhead Framework is used as the fundamental framework for the implementation of the approach.

With the continuous development of Internet of Things technology, more and more enterprises need to construct the Internet of Things (IoT) platform to integrate and analyze various types of device data to improve economic benefits. This paper adopts microservice architecture, uses spring framework to implement microservice, uses docker container technology as the carrier of microservice, designs and implements the IoT platform. This paper analyzes and designs the requirements of the IoT platform, explains the main functions and architecture design of the IoT platform, and demonstrates the usability of the IoT platform, such as for the partial discharge detection of power equipment.

The availability of certain software namely Open-Source Software (OSS), to freely use, modify brings with it a set of challenges and opportunities, which needs to be addressed with caution. This paper looks into these challenges and opportunities from the perspective of application of these softwares in general and specific to Data Management and Analytics Domains. The paper looks at the various myths and definitions surrounding Open-Source Software and how these can be addressed before beginning the journey of adopting Open-Source Software within Enterprise Information Technology landscape and development of Software Products. This paper dwells into an opportunity, of building a platform, named Decision Fabric™ (DF), and built using Open-Source Software, providing abilities to build industry-specific analytical applications. Decision Fabric™ is a solution, which can stitch together various open-source components to build a very compelling analytical solution based on various industry requirements. Decision Fabric™ provides analytical solution for both Human Centric Analysis and Machine Centric Analysis using a combination of deterministic and probabilistic methods.

The problem of designing controllers for achieving composite goals is well studied in the literature and is considered an open problem. In this paper we propose a controller architecture that builds on approaches for designing reactive decision making systems developed in the field of computer science. Specifically, we propose an extension of the Behavioural Programming (BP) approach that is tailored to allow controller design. As the name of the paper suggests, we identify the issue of "patience" as a key feature of the new approach - in many composite control problems it is not possible to advance all goals at all time, i.e., some goals need to "patiently" wait while others are being advanced. We demonstrate how the proposed approach is capable of handling elaborated multi-objective situations that include patience in an intuitive and effective way.

In order to scale for speed, technology often builds upon the earliest proven systems and architectures. As the context changes, from a civilian application domain to a military application domain, the priority of functional requirements can and often do change. The hardware, software, and language development environment set the foundation for the constraints and potential of a system. This along with the fact the information technology revolution, since early 2000, has primarily been driven by the commercial sector, requires engineers to consider whether nontraditional, less well-known architectures may have a role in the Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) application space. This paper will highlight features inherent to traditional architectures, the challenges associated with these architectural features, and how the Erlang VM represents an opportunity to develop an architectural foundation suitable to the MDO application domain. Finally, this paper will highlight a future technology concept integrating demonstrated neural interface technology with an Erlang VM supported architecture. This foundation will help enable human-machine teaming by empowering a human agent to interact with sensors and AI-enabled autonomous systems with a dynamic user interface allowing the human agent to accomplish MDO applications. The great potential for the concept depends on a fault-tolerant, distributed system permitted by the Erlang VM to exibly integrate the capabilities required to address the diverse challenges of a complex operating environment.

Background: Static verification is a sound programming methodology that permits automated reasoning about the correctness of an implementation with respect to its formal specification before its execution. Unified Modelling Language is most commonly used modelling language which describes the client’s requirement. Object Constraint Language is a formal language which allows users to express textual constraints regarding the UML model. Therefore, UML/OCL express formal specification and helps the developers to implement the code according to the client’s requirement through software design. Objective: This paper aims to compare the existing approaches generating Java, C++, C# code or JML, Spec# specifications from UML/OCL. Methods: Nowadays, software system is developed via automatic code generation from software design to implementation when using formal specification and static analysis. In this paper, the study considers transformation from design to implementation and vice versa using model transformation, code generation or other techniques. Results: The related tools, which generate codes, do not support verification at the implementation phase. On the other hand, the specification generation tools do not generate all the required properties which are needed for verification at the implementation phase. Conclusion: If the generated system supports the verification with all required properties, code developer needs less efforts to produce correct software system. Therefore, this study recommends introducing a new framework which can act as an interface between design and implementation to generate verified software systems.

The challenges of the Industry 4.0 era require the effective combination of emerging automation and information technologies. Two important representatives of these core technologies are service oriented architectures that provide the technical basis for middleware as well as semantic web technologies that provide unique vocabulary. In this paper, we illustrate the combination of these two technologies with regard to a concrete scenario within the complex semiconductor supply chain environment. Providing the scenario, problem description and solution at utmost concreteness, this approach aims at overcoming the complexity within this domain. This paper illustrates the challenges and solutions during ontology development, and on a conceptual level the application scenario, decision-making support for human planners as well as the IT infrastructure based on the Arrowhead Framework.

System of systems (SoS) is an arrangement of systems that results when independent systems are integrated into a larger system that delivers unique capabilities that cannot be provided by the constituent systems. Product line engineering (PLE) is a large scale comprehensive reuse approach to reduce the cost of development, reduce the time-to-market, and increase the quality of the system. In this paper, we report on our experiences in developing a PLE approach for a SoS context, that is SoS-PLE. The results are derived from an action research within the context of Aselsan, a large scale systems engineering company. One of the challenges for SoS-PLE is the selection and customization of the required ontology for commonality and variability modeling for the SoS context. Various different feature modeling approaches have been provided in the literature, but these have largely focused on single PLE. We show the analysis and selection of a feature ontology for SoS-PLE. Subsequently, the selected feature ontology is enhanced and integrated within the product line engineering process. The results of the paper provide novel insight for the state-of-the-practice in PLE for systems engineering, and elaborates on and complement the existing literature on feature ontologies and SoSs.

In this paper, a prototype is proposed of integrating various features and functionalities of different open source GIS software to improve decision-making in small and medium companies. The paper shows possibilities of integrating various open source GIS software to support decision making. Open source software features is combined with the functionalities of GIS such as processing using Quantum GIS, storing and analyzing of spatial data to produce results using PostgreSQL, Providing and sharing Geo-data over the network locally or over the globe using Geoserver, The prototype is based on the three basics features low /free cost of using GIS open source software, simplicity and usability, multiplatform supporting. The integration of open source software is appropriate and successful for the use of companies in the field of GIS, this initiative represents a suitable business solutions that do not consume a lot of money and training to develop the skills of the technicians in this field, therefore, this will open the door for other companies to follow this trend. This prototype provides an opportunity for open source software components to process and store data in databases or shares the results over different networks.

The research is devoted to the analysis of professional standards in the course “information technologies”, its interaction and correlation with federal state educational standards of higher education. The complexities are considered, arising at application of professional standards in the higher education, appeared mainly at the assessment of professional graduate level. The present system of the higher education uses the concept “professional competence”. A unit of measure of results of educational activity in professional standards is mastering the generalized labor function of a certain qualification. Thus, it is complex enough to compare evaluations of educational and professional standards. Nevertheless, these different approaches must be combined. Search of solutions of this problem remains relevant. In the paper, special attention is given to training in the field of software engineering. This training direction emerged in Russia from recommendations of the standard of Computing Curricula: Software Engineering. It is supposed that graduates of this direction will be engaged in the future in development and support of difficult program systems, and therefore during educational process they have to receive broad basis of knowledge and skills to be able to develop software, create projects of development of a software product, as well as program documentation; manage the processes of programs’ life cycle, work in groups and manage team of performers in the process of production of software products. In accordance with recommendations of National Agency of Development of Qualification «Programmer», «The specialist in testing in the field of IT», «Software architect» are the professions to which one can train in time of a bachelor degree of «Software engineering». In this paper, the generalized labor and labor functions of these professional standards are analyzed and their general requirements are selected. In the article, the possibility of training in some generalized skills of these professional standards of students of the Program Engineering direction, since the first course is shown. In particular, relevant form of education in the form of project work is considered. The majority of the methodologies described at present was devoted to training of project work to their application at senior courses. The idea of a possibility to organize the project work in the form of the group team at the first year to study programming is put forward in this research (discipline “programming in high-level languages”). The main requirements at the organization of this process: the created software product must be complex enough because it must be separated into separate parts for participants of the project. Further, participants must try (in some or other volume) different roles in this project: development of architecture, creation of a code and testing of the project. Finally, everyone should develop a text document in its own part. Involvement of students in project work (especially, IT) is extremely relevant skill because in modern life few of the programmers work alone. Certainly, at the first year, it will be only the beginning of the movement in this direction, but it is extremely important and useful for the future deeper understanding of the software development process.

The goal of the paper is to provide a vague summary of currently existing blockchain use cases in the information technology industry. Respective use cases have been examined in already existing scientific papers, Master Theses, industry white papers and blogs of industry experts. The paper also contains a description of blockchain main technological aspects and working principles, which allows making the assessment of the presented use cases. For each use case respective companies or organisations are added that are applying or testing the given solution. Due to research limitations the paper should not be considered an exhaustive blockchain use case description. The paper also provides short introduction into a feasibility analysis of specific blockchain use case. The authors describe the basic steps of potential idea evaluation with regards to blockchain main aspects. It helps understand the necessity for development of a detailed blockchain feasibility model.

A query optimizer attempts to predict a performance metric based on the amount of time elapsed. Theoretically, this would necessitate the creation of a significant overhead on the core engine to provide the necessary query optimizing statistics. Machine learning is increasingly being used to improve query performance by incorporating regression models. To predict the response time for a query, most query performance approaches rely on DBMS optimizing statistics and the cost estimation of each operator in the query execution plan, which also focuses on resource utilization (CPU, I/O). Modeling query features is thus a critical step in developing a robust query performance prediction model. In this paper, we propose a new framework based on query feature modeling and ensemble learning to predict query performance and use this framework as a query performance predictor simulator to optimize the query features that influence query performance. In query feature modeling, we propose five dimensions used to model query features. The query features dimensions are syntax, hardware, software, data architecture, and historical performance logs. These features will be based on developing training datasets for the performance prediction model that employs the ensemble learning model. As a result, ensemble learning leverages the query performance prediction problem to deal with missing values. Handling overfitting via regularization. The section on experimental work will go over how to use the proposed framework in experimental work. The training dataset in this paper is made up of performance data logs from various real-world environments. The outcomes were compared to show the difference between the actual and expected performance of the proposed prediction model. Empirical work shows the effectiveness of the proposed approach compared to related work.