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The demand for energy is increasing rapidly, and after a few years, it may surpass the available energy, which may lead the energy providers to increase the cost of energy consumption to compensate the cost for the production. This paper provides design and implementation details of a prototype big data application developed to help large buildings to automatically manage their energy consumption by setting energy consumption targets, collecting periodic energy consumption data, storing the data streams, displaying the energy consumption graphically in real-time, analyzing the consumption patterns, and generating energy consumption graphs and reports. The application is connected to Mongo NoSQL backend database to handle the large and continuously changing data. This big data energy consumption management system is expected to help the users in managing energy consumption by analyzing the patterns to see if it is within or above the desired consumption targets and displaying the data graphically.

Blockchain is a revolutionary technology that is making a great impact on modern society due to its transparency, decentralization, and security properties. Blockchain gained considerable attention due to its very first application of Cryptocurrencies e.g., Bitcoin. In the near future, Blockchain technology is determined to transform the way we live, interact, and perform businesses. Recently, academics, industrialists, and researchers are aggressively investigating different aspects of Blockchain as an emerging technology. Unlike other Blockchain surveys focusing on either its applications, challenges, characteristics, or security, we present a comprehensive survey of Blockchain technology’s evolution, architecture, development frameworks, and security issues. We also present a comparative analysis of frameworks, classification of consensus algorithms, and analysis of security risks & cryptographic primitives that have been used in the Blockchain so far. Finally, this paper elaborates on key future directions, novel use cases and open research challenges, which could be explored by researchers to make further advances in this field.

Today, big data is considered an important area in IT and business fields. Big data is the driving force behind the effective running and competitiveness of several companies and organizations. Based on a research literature survey, there is a lack of standard definition and agreed upon characteristics for big data from scientific and business perspectives. This paper provides a review of big data definitions by various researchers and attempts to standardize a definition. In doing so, the paper identifies some issues related to big data definition and characteristics as well as raise some research questions. The paper categorizes these characteristics in terms of those relevant to big data versus those that related to processing and tools of big data. It is expected that the work presented in this paper will contribute to better alignment of big data terminology with its characteristics by various researchers, and it will provide a standard set of characteristics for the big data.

Accreditation is a mechanism for an educational institution to achieve and to maintain certain quality level of teaching and learning. The quality of an educational program is typically evaluated by defining and assessing program level outcomes. The College of Computer Sciences and Information Technology (CCSIT) at King Faisal University is currently accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). However, the program outcome assessment process that is suggested by ABET to evaluate the level of students is manual, time consuming, and complicated. An attempt is made within CCSIT to automate the program outcome assessment process using a Web-based approach. This Web-based tool maps various course assessment results to program outcome rubrics. The program outcome assessment results are provided in the form of color-coded tables and bar charts. The tool is expected to be used by faculty, quality committee, and other stakeholders to understand the current state of teaching and learning quality and to determine which courses are contributing to poor quality of specific program outcome rubrics.

Big data explosion has already happened and the situation is only going to exacerbate with such a high number of data sources and high-end technology prevalent everywhere, generating data at a frantic pace. One of the most important aspects of big data is being able to capture, process, and analyze data as it is happening in real-time to allow real-time business decisions. Alternate approaches must be investigated especially consisting of highly parallel and real-time computations for big data processing. The chapter presents RealSpec real-time specification language that may be used for the modeling of big data analytics due to the inherent language features needed for real-time big data processing such as concurrent processes, multi-threading, resource modeling, timing constraints, and exception handling. The chapter provides an overview of RealSpec and applies the language to a detailed big data event recognition case study to demonstrate language applicability to big data framework and analytics modeling.

Specification formalisms may be classified through some common properties. Specification formalism classification may be used as a basis for the evaluation of the adequacy of formal specification languages within specific application domains. System modelers may use this classification to determine if the system modeling requirements can be met by a particular class of specification formalism. This paper evaluates existing specification formalism classification approaches by various researchers and highlights certain observations regarding the suggested classification schemes. The paper then proposes a specification formalism classification method using specification language properties. The proposed classification approach, loosely following the prototype theory for classification, maps specification language properties to specification formalisms and determines which language properties can best be achieved by different formalisms.

Real-time and embedded software systems are becoming increasingly prevalent in everyday life. Well-defined and robust methods and methodologies are needed to support development and maintenance of such large and complex systems. Specification of a system is a critical phase of the development life cycle and has a major impact on the quality of a system. Formal specification languages and techniques are needed to be able to comprehensively and correctly define and prototype large and complex systems. The quality of a specification directly depends upon the capability of the language or technique used to express the specification. There is a need to determine language appropriateness for real-time systems. This paper establishes a real-time specification technique evaluation framework based on the features of real-time systems. The features are presented and the paper summarizes the result in terms of major features and their sub-features in a tabular form. This detailed list of features should serve not only to compare the techniques using a common framework, but also to determine the extent of real-time support that these techniques provide for specification. Application of the framework is demonstrated by testing a set of specification techniques for the specification of a real-time embedded cell phone software system.

Several evaluation criteria exist in the literature for both specification and specification techniques. These evaluation criteria identify a list of desired properties in specifications and specification techniques for judging their goodness. This paper presents a detailed analysis of several specification and specification technique evaluation criteria. Detailed analysis of these criteria identified that there is a lack of consistency in the property definition among criteria. The implication of this lack of differentiation between the two concepts is that the criteria for both specification and specification techniques are intermingled. Since the concept of specification is different from specification technique, the criteria used for one might not be applicable for the other. For example, "completeness" and "consistency" are specification criteria. A specification can be complete and consistent regardless of the medium used to represent the specification, the process used in its construction, the degree/extent of tools and automation used, or whether it is formal or informal. However, there is meaning to denote that a technique can be used to produce "consistent" or "complete" specifications. Hence, for proper applicability of these criteria, this paper separates specification criteria from that of the specification technique criteria. This paper also presents a unified criteria terminology and uses a table to list each criterion property from various researchers mapped to the unified terminology. The paper also identifies and presents a mapping from technique criteria to the specification criteria that shows which technique criteria satisfies specification criteria. The applicability of the mapping is then demonstrated by applying the mapping to a specification language and its support environment.

The front end of the software life cycle has been identified as critical in the development of software systems. The development of precise, concise, and unambiguous software specifications is the important link in the front end of the software life cycle. Executable software specification languages have been developed for prototyping as a means of demonstrating functionality. The executable specifications can serve to validate end-user needs. In addition, the executable specifications can also serve as the standard for activities downstream in the software life cycle, e.g., design validation, test data generation, and software enhancements. The iterative development process puts stringent requirements on the usability of the tools and techniques in the front end of the software life cycle. The DESCARTES specification language and support software were developed to address these issues. The DESCARTES language is a simple yet powerful approach to the specification of software systems. A language processor with an abstract execution facility allows for execution of partial through complete DESCARTES specifications. This article discusses the usability of DESCARTES in the context of evaluation criteria proposed by several specification language developers. Presented here are approaches to enhance usability in terms of providing multiple views and editing of DESCARTES specifications and using these views in an integrated fashion. Textual, graphical, and Nassi-Shneiderman representations are described for DESCARTES specifications. The DESCARTES Visual Support Environment is presented as the means for providing the multiple views.

RealSpec is a declarative and executable specification language for specifying real-time and concurrent software systems based on the dataflow computation model.

Descartes is an executable specification language that supports the rapid prototyping of partial through complete software specifications. A technique developed to represent Descartes executable specifications visually by adapting the charts of I. Nassi and B. Shneiderman (1973), is described. Symbols are identified for the data structuring methods and the rationale for selecting these symbols is discussed. The benefits gained in moving a graphical technique up to the front end of the software life cycle are discussed. Sample specifications are included to illustrate the effectiveness of the technique. >

Design rule checking systems are an integral part of electronic design automation tools. Rapid advances and continuous change in semiconductor technology requires that these DRC systems also change accordingly. The paper presents the architecture and mechanism of the DRC module of an IC package design tool. Design goals were identified for the module to allow easy addition, removal, and modification of rules and to minimize the effect of changes among others. The object oriented modeling technique facilitates the accomplishment of these goals by supporting concepts such as abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and dynamic binding. The paper puts these concepts in perspective within the context of the architecture and mechanism of the DRC module.

Embedded microcontrollers are used in a multitude of commercial applications such as modems, motor-control systems, air conditioner control systems, automotive engine and antilock braking systems among others. The high processing speed and enhanced peripheral set of these microcontrollers make them suitable for such high-speed event based applications. However, these critical application domains also require that these microcontrollers are highly reliable. The high reliability and low market risks can be ensured by a robust testing process and a proper tools environment for the validation of these microcontrollers both at the component and at the system level. Intel(R)'s Chandler Platform Engineering department developed an object oriented multi-threaded test environment for the validation of its 8XC196EA automotive microcontrollers. The goals of this environment was not only to provide a robust testing environment for the 8XC196EA automotive microcontrollers, but to develop an environment which can be easily extended and reused for the validation of several other future embedded microcontrollers. The environment was developed in conjunction with Microsoft(R) Foundation Classes (MFC). The paper describes the design and mechanism of this test environment, its interactions with various hardware/software environmental components, and the pros and cons of using MFC.