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Aim: To compare Spanish nursing students' and registered nurses' perception of professional values from the perspective of gender and professional experience. Background: Nursing has traditionally been a female profession; however, the analysis of professional nursing values from a gender perspective has received little attention. The integration of professional values typically begins during academic life and is, thereafter, reinforced during professional activities. Methods: A descriptive cross‐sectional study was conducted with 159 students (97.4% females) and 386 registered nurses (86.8% females) from primary healthcare centres, hospitals and management positions within the public health system. The validated Spanish adaptation of the Nurses Professional Values Scale was used. This instrument measures three dimensions: ethics, commitment and professional mastery. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data, together with bivariate analysis using the chi‐squared test. Results: Females granted more importance to professional values. Important gender differences among students were detected. Ethical values were considered to be the most important for both students and nurses, followed by professional mastery and commitment. The importance given to values progressively decreased in the groups under study: students, less‐experienced nurses and expert nurses (in decreasing order). Conclusions: Significant gender differences exist with regard to professional nursing values. The values related to professional commitment and mastery should be integrated and promoted during academic education and specifically focus on male students' perceptions. As professional experience increases, the importance attributed to professional values decreases. Implications for Nursing Policy: Professional nursing values should be promoted among universities, health services and professional organizations, encouraging their dissemination, implementation and evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owing to the increasing importance of model-driven engineering (MDE) and the changes experienced by software systems over their life cycle, the calculation, representation and visualisation of matches and differences between two different versions of the same model are becoming more necessary and useful. This study shows the need for improvement in the algorithms for calculating the relationships between models and presents a tool to test different implementations, thus reducing the effort required to measure, compare or create new algorithms. To demonstrate the need for improvement and the framework developed, the authors have created different models that conform to the metamodel of a domain-specific language. Subsequently, the authors compared these models using the algorithms of the eclipse modelling framework (EMF) Compare tool, part of the eclipse modeling project, which is the framework of reference for MDE. Thus, in the case study, the authors tool is used to measure the quality of the comparisons performed by EMF Compare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the software development meta-process (SD-MP) as a proposal to set up software projects. Within this proposal we offer conceptual elements that help solve the war of methodologies and processes in favor of an integrating viewpoint, where the main flaws associated with conventional and agile approaches are removed. Our newly developed software platform to support the meta-process is also presented together with three case studies involving projects currently in progress, where the framework proposed in SD-MP has been applied.

This article presents an ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) prototype called Valery as alternative approach to migration process which includes a compiler for dynamic generation of SQL queries. Its main features involve: SQL dynamic generation, set of configuration commands and environment for file uploading. The tests use the Northwind academic database and an individual environment. The model implementation uses flat files and SQL as query language. Finally, there is an analysis of the results obtained.

With the proliferation of mobile and distributed systems capable of providing its geoposition and even the geoposition of any other element, commonly called point of interest, developers have created a multitude of new software applications. For this purpose, different technologies such as the GPS or mobile networks are used. There are different languages or formats used to define these points of interest and some applications that facilitate such work. However, there is no globally accepted standard language, which complicates the intercommunication, portability and re-usability of the definitions of points of interest currently in use. In this paper, we take the first steps towards a language and a development environment independent of the underlying technologies, allowing developers to define the points of interest in a simple and fast way, and automatically generate other different formats from the same definition that can be considered a bridge among current technologies. We use the Model-Driven Engineering approach, focusing on the creation of models to abstract the definition of systems from the underlying technologies.

The software system needs to be analyzed and designed before the program code is written. A Computation Independent Model (CIM) and a Platform Independent Model/ Platform Specific Model (PIM/PSM) from Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) will be partially considered in this paper. A Topological Functioning Model (TFM) will be considered as a formal CIM, and UML sequence diagrams - as a behavioral PIM/PSM of the software system. The paper presents a short overview of the TFM and sequence diagrams with their constructs, as well as the example of transformation from the sequence diagrams to the TFM.

A system architect has software requirements and some unspecified knowledge about a problem domain (e.g., an enterprise) as source information for assessment and evaluation of possible solutions and getting the target point, a preliminary software design. The solving factor is architect’s experience and expertise in the problem domain (“AS-IS”). A proposed approach is dedicated to assist a system architect in making an appropriate decision on the solution (“TO-BE”). It is based on a formal mathematical model, Topological Functioning Model (TFM). Compliant TFMs can be transformed into software architectural views. The paper demonstrates and discusses tracing dependency links from the requirements to and between the architectural views.