18365285
An automated approach to specification animation for validation
Formal specification has been increasingly adopted for the development of software systems of the highest integrity. However, the readability of specifications for large-scale and complex systems can be so poor that even the developers may not easily understand whether their specifications define the ''intended behaviors''. In this paper, we describe a software tool that supports the animation of specifications by simulating their functional scenarios using the Message Sequence Chart (MSC). The tool extracts automatically functional scenarios from a specification and generates a message sequence chart for each of them for a syntactic level analysis. The tool can also execute a functional scenario with test cases for a semantic level analysis if all the processes involved in the scenario are defined using explicit specifications. With the tool support the animation of a specification can be carried out incrementally to assist its user to review the adequacy of the specification. We present a case study applying the tool to animate a formal specification for a library system and evaluate its result.
5812455
Knowledge Enhanced IT Service Management
To manage the increasing complexity of IT systems and align IT services with business is the main theme of IT Service Management (ITSM). Current ITSM architecture adopts ITU as the framework to integrate silos of operational management tools and configuration information to build an end-to-end solution based on best practices. However, it lacks of a systematic means to address an important aspect of IT operation, i.e., managing the knowledge separated in various tools and experts' minds. In this paper, a novel knowledge-enhanced architecture is proposed to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of ITSM. The essential contribution of this novel architecture is to involve a Knowledge Management Database (KMDB) which provides assistance for knowledge capture, mining, storage and sharing. The paper will discuss an approach of how to construct such a KMDB with motivating scenarios and detailed description of key components. To validate the approach, a prototype system is developed and evaluated by being applied for problem analysis on a Cisco Voice over IP (VoIP) system. The experiment results show a remarkable improvement in the effectiveness and efficiency for practical IT service management operations.
10702245
A wireless LAN-based indoor positioning technology
Context-aware computing is an emerging computing paradigm that can provide new or improved services by exploiting user context information. In this paper, we present a wireless-local-area-network-based (WLAN-based) indoor positioning technology. The wireless device deploys a position-determination model to gather location information from collected WLAN signals. A model-based signal distribution training scheme is proposed to trade off the accuracy of signal distribution and training workload. A tracking-assistant positioning algorithm is presented to employ knowledge of the area topology to assist the procedure of position determination. We have set up a positioning system at the IBM China Research Laboratory. Our experimental results indicate an accuracy of 2 m with a 90% probability for static devices and, for moving (walking) devices, an accuracy of 5 m with a 90% probability. Moreover, the complexity of the training procedure is greatly reduced compared with other positioning algorithms.
14513982
An Online Model Checking Tool for Safety and Liveness Bugs
Modern software model checkers are usually used to find safety violations. However, checking liveness properties can offer a more natural and effective way to detect errors, particularly in complex concurrent and distributed e-business systems. Specifying global liveness properties which should always eventually be true proves to be more desirable, but it is hard for existing software model checkers to verify liveness in real codes because doing so requires finding an infinite execution. For solving such a challenge, this paper proposes an online checking tool to verify the safety and liveness properties of complex systems. We adopt the linear temporal logic to describe the semantics of the finite model checking, use binary instrumentation to obtain the distribute states and apply a checking engine to dynamically verify the finite trace linear temporal logic properties. At last, we demonstrate the method in a distributed system using distributed protocol Paxos and achieve good results by experiments.
12111515
Algorithm of integrating QFD and TRIZ for the innovative design process
TRIZ, the Russian acronym of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, is a useful tool that can solve the problem of "how to do" effectively in the innovative design process, while QFD (Quality Function Deployment) is able to settle the problem of "what to do". Although the potential of using both QFD and TRIZ in the product design process is huge, there are little tools to integrate these two methods effectively. In this research, we describe an algorithm that can integrate QFD and TRIZ effectively for the purpose of the innovative design process. The core of the algorithm is to identify the contradictions in TRIZ by defining rules based on HOQ (House of Quality) in QFD. A software tool called TRIZmatrix is developed based on this algorithm. Application of the algorithm to the case of the airbag problem is studied in detail. The software application and the case study show the advantage of this algorithm for CAI (computer aided innovation) software development.
15004157
A Semantic QoS-Aware Discovery Framework for Web Services
Augmenting web services with explicit semantics forms the foundation of Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) automation. As more and more Semantic Web Services (SWSs) are deployed, similar SWSs could have quite different quality-of-service (QoS) levels. The QoS-aware discovery becomes an important challenge. While some efforts try to solve it via Constraint Programming (CP), they suffer from the purely syntactic matchmaking method. Furthermore, the construction of constraints and the selection of services are completely dependent on the literal translation from QoS descriptions, which increase obstacles to actually apply CP. In this paper, we propose a semantic QoS-aware framework for SWSs discovery by combining the semantic matchmaking and CP. Initially, a QoS ontology is presented to define QoS data into service descriptions. Then the ontology reasoning is adopted to change previous syntactic matchmaking into a semantic way. Through confirming the compatibility of concepts, complex QoS conditions are solved as constraints and a selection algorithm is proposed to obtain the optimal offer. Finally, the prototype implementation of our framework is discussed and a SWSs discovery case is used to illustrate the comprehensive discovery process.
804068
Evaluation of RSVP and Mobility-Aware RSVP Using Performance Evaluation Process Algebra
As a resource reservation mechanism, the Resource ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP) faces a lot of challenges when applying it to the wireless and mobile networks. The interworking problems of RSVP and mobility management protocols have been extensively discussed over the last decade. As the solutions of this problem, mobility-aware RSVP schemes that integrate RSVP and micro-mobility management are becoming more and more popular. Therefore, the investigation on how much they improve the performance of the basic RSVP is necessary and useful. Instead of the traditional simulation based approaches, in this paper we introduce a formal performance evaluation formalism, named Performance Evaluation Process Algebra (PEPA), and employ it to investigate the performance of the basic RSVP and mobility-aware RSVP. Important performance metrics such as handover blocking probability and signalling cost are presented.
16658032
Software Project Level Estimation Model Framework based on Bayesian Belief Networks
Software estimation models should support managerial decision making in software projects. We experience that most of current models do not achieve this goal to the extend managers are looking for. This paper presents a software project level estimation model framework based on Bayesian belief networks. The framework is constructed by using four basic BBN sub-models, component estimation, test effectiveness estimation, residual defect estimation and test estimation sub-models. The integration of these submodels achieves an estimation model suitable for project levels. With this project level estimation model, the estimation and analysis of quality, effort, schedule and scope can be carried out at both project level and specific project phase level. We show how this approach is used in a sample project, allowing project manager to implement an initial estimation, trade-off quality, effort, schedule and scope, and refine the estimation in the later phase of the project
16691131
Software Productivity Analysis with CSBSG Data Set
The aim is to report on an initial exploratory statistical analysis of the relationship between software productivity and its influencing factors in China. We analyzed of a data set containing project measurement data which were collected from lots of IT companies in China by China Software Benchmarking Standards Group (CSBSG), established by China Software Process Improvement Network (CSPIN), China.Productivity with its influencing factors was investigated using a exploratory statistical analysis. Only 133 closed projects with high ratings could be used in this investigation. Furthermore, confidentiality and data quality, data filling ratio and sizing method were considered as major issues during our current work and also for future investigation. Overall, we observed that influencing factors - project size, project type and business area - do affect productivity with different level statistical significance. However, no clear evidence can be observed that factors, like maximum team size and programming languages affect productivity. Ongoing analysis of productivity and its influencing factors. Based on current productivity analysis results, comparative analysis between counties and estimation modeling will be investigated in future.
21956342
Architectural design and implementation of highly available and scalable medical system with IBM Websphere middleware
Medical systems require the end-to-end high availability and scalability. There are many components in a medical system, and each individual component contributes to the overall system availability and scalability. We present the formulas to assess the overall system availability and capacity planning, and we architect approaches and technologies to make all components highly available in all tiers by clustering, workload management, and replication. We discuss how to unify all medical systems and design the uniform framework for different kinds of medical systems to hook up with this framework so that we can maintain a highly available and highly scalable system with ease. We use the n-tier distributed component based architecture and J2EE technologies as well as Web services to interact with .NET and others. We discuss how to program in the framework for high availability and scalability and how to upgrade application software without service interruption to achieve continuous availability. We show how to add or reduce hardware capacity in each tier and how to maintain hardware and software without service interruption as well as how to balance the capacity and availability among tiers.
8394517
Predicting the Usage of P2P Sharing Software: The Role of Trust and Perceived Risk
Peer-to-Peer, or P2P sharing has gone through fast growth in recent years and drawn the interests of Information Systems (IS) researchers. However, there is a lack of empirical study on the individual's behavior of using P2P sharing software. Given the current existence of various uncertainties in P2P sharing, it is crucial to understand the factors that affect individual's usage of P2P sharing software. In this paper, we develop and empirically test a usage intention model which includes trust in the vendor of P2P sharing software and perceived risk as two major antecedent beliefs to the usage intention. Several trust antecedents are also identified in the model. Our preliminary results show the support for the model, and offer some important implications for software vendors in P2P sharing industry and regulatory bodies.