The 6th ACIS International Conference on Software Engineering, Research, Management and Applications (SERA 2008) was held in Prague in the Czech Republic on August 20 - 22. SERA '08 featured excellent theoretical and practical contributions in the areas of formal methods and tools, requirements engineering, software process models, communication systems and networks, software quality and evaluation, software engineering, networks and mobile computing, parallel/distributed computing, software testing, reuse and metrics, database retrieval, computer security, software architectures and modeling. Our conference officers selected the best 17 papers from those papers accepted for presentation at the conference in order to publish them in this volume. The papers were chosen based on review scores submitted by members or the program committee, and underwent further rounds of rigorous review.

You might think more than enough design books exist in the programming world already. In fact, there are so many that it makes sense to ask why you would read yet another. Is there really a need for yet another design book? In fact, there is a greater need than ever before, and Practical API Design: Confessions of a Java Framework Architect fills that need! Teaches you how to write an API that will stand the test of Time Written by the designer of the NetBeans API at Sun Based on best practices, scalability, and API design patterns What you'll learn What an API is and what the theories are behind good API design When and why to build an API API design patterns applicable to all programming languages, especially modern, object-oriented languages How to optimize and test APIs Who this book is for

This book is recommended to every API architect who prefers a bit more engineering design over a purely artistic one.

Refinement is one of the cornerstones of the formal approach to software engineering, and its use in various domains has led to research on new applications and generalisation. This book brings together this important research in one volume, with the addition of examples drawn from different application areas. It covers four main themes: Data refinement and its application to Z Generalisations of refinement that change the interface and atomicity of operations Refinement in Object-Z Modelling state and behaviour by combining Object-Z with CSP Refinement in Z and Object-Z: Foundations and Advanced Applications provides an invaluable overview of recent research for academic and industrial researchers, lecturers teaching formal specification and development, industrial practitioners using formal methods in their work, and postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students. This second edition is a comprehensive update to the first and includes the following new material: Early chapters have been extended to also include trace refinement, based directly on partial relations rather than through totalisation Provides an updated discussion on divergence, non-atomic refinements and approximate refinement Includes a discussion of the differing semantics of operations and outputs and how they affect the abstraction of models written using Object-Z and CSP Presents a fuller account of the relationship between relational refinement and various models of refinement in CSP Bibliographic notes at the end of each chapter have been extended with the most up to date citations and research

Conceptual modeling is about describing the semantics of software applications at a high level of abstraction in terms of structure, behavior, and user interaction.

Embley and Thalheim start with a manifesto stating that the dream of developing information systems strictly by conceptual modeling as expressed in the phrase the model is the code is becoming reality. The subsequent contributions written by leading researchers in the field support the manifesto's assertions, showing not only how to abstractly model complex information systems but also how to formalize abstract specifications in ways that let developers complete programming tasks within the conceptual model itself. They are grouped into sections on programming with conceptual models, structure modeling, process modeling, user interface modeling, and special challenge areas such as conceptual geometric modeling, information integration, and biological conceptual modeling.

The Handbook of Conceptual Modeling collects in a single volume many of the best conceptual-modeling ideas, techniques, and practices as well as the challenges that drive research in the field. Thus it is much more than a traditional handbook for advanced professionals, as it also provides both a firm foundation for the field of conceptual modeling, and points researchers and graduate students towards interesting challenges and paths for how to contribute to this fundamental field of computer science.

Applied Time Series Analysis and Innovative Computing contains the applied time series analysis and innovative computing paradigms, with frontier application studies for the time series problems based on the recent works at the Oxford University Computing Laboratory, University of Oxford, the University of Hong Kong, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The monograph was drafted when the author was a post-doctoral fellow in Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University. It provides a systematic introduction to the use of innovative computing paradigms as an investigative tool for applications in time series analysis. Applied Time Series Analysis and Innovative Computing offers the state of art of tremendous advances in applied time series analysis and innovative computing paradigms and also serves as an excellent reference work for researchers and graduate students working on applied time series analysis and innovative computing paradigms.

The series Studies in Computational Intelligence (SCI) publishes new developments and advances in the various areas of computational intelligence-quickly and with a high quality. The intent is to cover the theory, applications, and design methods of computational intelligence, as embedded in the fields of engineering, computer science, physics and life science, as well as the methodologies behind them. The series contains monographs, lecture notes and edited volumes in computational intelligence spanning the areas of neural networks, connectionist systems, genetic algorithms, evolutionary computation, artificial intelligence, cellular automata, self-organizing systems, soft computing, fuzzy systems and hybrid intelligent systems. Critical to both contributors and readers are the short publication time and world-wide distribution-this permits a rapid and broad dissemination of research results.

The purpose of the 10th International Conference on Software Engineering Research, Management and Applications(SERA 2012) held on May 3- June 1, 2012 in Shanghai, China was to bring together scientists, engineers, computer users, and students to share their experiences and exchange new ideas and research results about all aspects (theory, applications and tools) of Software Engineering Research, Management and Applications, and to discuss the practical challenges encountered along the way and the solutions adopted to solve them.

The conference organizers selected 12 outstanding papers from those papers accepted for presentation at the conference in order to publish them in this volume. The papers were chosen based on review scores submitted by members of the program committee, and further rigorous rounds of review."

Contains revised, edited, cross-referenced, and thematically organized selected DumpAnalysis.org blog posts about memory dump and software trace analysis, software troubleshooting and debugging written in November 2010 - October 2011 for software engineers developing and maintaining products on Windows platforms, quality assurance engineers testing software on Windows platforms, technical support and escalation engineers dealing with complex software issues, and security researchers, malware analysts and reverse engineers. The sixth volume features: - 56 new crash dump analysis patterns including 14 new .NET memory dump analysis patterns - 4 new pattern interaction case studies - 11 new trace analysis patterns - New Debugware pattern - Introduction to UI problem analysis patterns - Introduction to intelligence analysis patterns - Introduction to unified debugging pattern language - Introduction to generative debugging, metadefect template library and DNA of software behavior - The new school of debugging - .NET memory dump analysis checklist - Software trace analysis checklist - Introduction to close and deconstructive readings of a software trace - Memory dump analysis compass - Computical and Stack Trace Art - The abductive reasoning of Philip Marlowe - Orbifold memory space and cloud computing - Memory worldview - Interpretation of cyberspace - Relationship of memory dumps to religion - Fully cross-referenced with Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4, and Volume 5

Current multimedia and telecom applications require complex, heterogeneous multiprocessor system on chip (MPSoC) architectures with specific communication infrastructure in order to achieve the required performance. Heterogeneous MPSoC includes different types of processing units (DSP, microcontroller, ASIP) and different communication schemes (fast links, non standard memory organization and access).

Programming an MPSoC requires the generation of efficient software running on MPSoC from a high level environment, by using the characteristics of the architecture. This task is known to be tedious and error prone, because it requires a combination of high level programming environments with low level software design.

This book gives an overview of concepts related to embedded software design for MPSoC. It details a full software design approach, allowing systematic, high-level mapping of software applications on heterogeneous MPSoC. This approach is based on gradual refinement of hardware/software interfaces and simulation models allowing to validate the software at different abstraction levels.

This book combines Simulink for high level programming and SystemC for the low level software development. This approach is illustrated with multiple examples of application software and MPSoC architectures that can be used for deep understanding of software design for MPSoC.

This book contains extended and revised versions of the best papers that were p- sented during the 16th edition of the IFIP/IEEE WG10.5 International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration, a global System-on-a-Chip Design & CAD conference. The 16th conference was held at the Grand Hotel of Rhodes Island, Greece (October 13-15, 2008). Previous conferences have taken place in Edinburgh, Trondheim, V- couver, Munich, Grenoble, Tokyo, Gramado, Lisbon, Montpellier, Darmstadt, Perth, Nice and Atlanta. VLSI-SoC 2008 was the 16th in a series of international conferences sponsored by IFIP TC 10 Working Group 10.5 and IEEE CEDA that explores the state of the art and the new developments in the field of VLSI systems and their designs. The purpose of the conference was to provide a forum to exchange ideas and to present industrial and research results in the fields of VLSI/ULSI systems, embedded systems and - croelectronic design and test.

This book emphasizes methods, techniques and tools that can be used by typical software engineers in everyday projects. As the very popular UML language contains an assertion language (OCL), this language is presented and discussed with relation to other currently available assertion techniques. Currently these techniques are more widely used in late design and implementation phases. Here their role in analysis is emphasized. Assertion and scenario techniques are then combined into a single methodological framework. Finally a prototyping oriented model based on this framework is developed which helps to make sure that software fulfills user requirements.

Recent growth in knowledge management concepts has played a vital role in the improvement of organizational performance. These knowledge management approaches have been influential in achieving the goal of efficient production of software development processes. Knowledge-Based Processes in Software Development focuses on the inherent issues to help practitioners in gaining understanding of software development processes. The best practices highlighted in this publication will be essential to software professionals working in the industry as well as students and researchers in the domain of software engineering in order to successfully employ knowledge management procedures.

The first book to provide an integrative presentation of the issues, challenges and success of designing, building and using agent applications. The chapters presented are written by internationally leading authorities in the field, with a general audience in mind. The result is a unique overview of agent technology applications, ranging from an introduction to the technical foundations to reports on dealing with specific agent systems in practice.

The Handbook of Research on Non-Functional Properties for Service-Oriented Systems: Future Directions unites different approaches and methods used to describe, map, and use non-functional properties and service level agreements. This handbook, which will be useful for both industry and academia, provides an overview of existing research and also sets clear directions for future work.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 11th IFIP WG 6.11 Conference on e-Business, e-Services and e-Society, I3E 2011, held in Kaunas, Lithuania, in October 2011. The 25 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. They are organized in the following topical sections: e-government and e-governance, e-services, digital goods and products, e-business process modeling and re-engineering, innovative e-business models and implementation, e-health and e-education, and innovative e-business models.

One of the most important reasons for the current intensity of interest in agent technology is that the concept of an agent, as an autonomous system capable of interacting with other agents in order to satisfy its design objectives, is a natural one for software designers. Just as we can understand many systems as being composed of essentially passive objects, which have a state and upon which we can perform operations, so we can understand many others as being made up of interacting semi-autonomous agents. This book brings together revised versions of papers presented at the First International Workshop on Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, AOSE 2000, held in Limerick, Ireland, in conjunction with ICSE 2000, and several invited papers. As a comprehensive and competent overview of agent-oriented software engineering, the book addresses software engineers interested in the new paradigm and technology as well as research and development professionals active in agent technology.

Volume 55 covers some particularly hot topics. Linda Harasim writes about education and the Web in "The Virtual University: A State of the Art." She discusses the issues that will need to be addressed if online education is to live up to expectations. Neville Holmes covers a related subject in his chapter "The Net, the Web, and the Children." He argues that the Web is an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, development and highlights the division between the rich and the poor within and across nations. Continuing the WWW theme, George Mihaila, Louqa Raschid, and Maria-Esther Vidal look at the problems of using the Web and finding the information you want.
Naren Ramakrishnan and Anath Grama discuss another aspect of finding relevant information in large databases in their contribution. They discuss the algorithms, techniques, and methodologies for effective application of scientific data mining.
Returning to the Web theme, Ross Anderson, Frank Stajano, and Jong-Hyeon Lee address the issue of security policies. Their survey of the most significant security policy models in the literature shows how security may mean different things in different contexts.
John Savage, Alan Selman, and Carl Smith take a step back from the applications and address how theoretical computer science has had an impact on practical computing concepts. Finally, Yuan Taur takes a step even further back and discusses the development of the computer chip.
Thus, Volume 55 takes us from the very fundamentals of computer science-the chip-right to the applications and user interface with the Web.

Object-oriented design methods are commonplace in computing systems development, but are often dismissed as 'boxes & arrows'. If systems developers are to gain full advantage from such methods, they should be able to achieve designs that are not merely the subject of heated argument, but can be improved by careful, rigorous & machine-supported analysis.

This book describes an object-oriented design approach that combines the benefits of abstract modelling with the analytic power of formal methods, to give designs that can be rigorously validated & assured with automated support.

Aimed at software architects, designers & developers as well as computer scientists, no prior knowledge of formal methods is assumed. The elements of functional modelling are introduced using numerous examples & exercises, industrial case studies & experience reports. Industry-strength tools support the text. Go to www.vdmbook.com to download free-of-charge VDMTools Lite, which gives the possibility to try out examples from the book

For over a decade, software process improvement (SPI) has been promoted as an approach to improve systematically the way software is developed and managed. Mostly this research and the relevant experience reports have been focussed on large software companies.

Conradi and his co-authors have collected the main results from four Norwegian industrial research and development projects on SPI carried out between 1996 and 2005, which, in contrast to other treatments, concentrated on small- and medium-sized companies, typically characterized by fast-changing environments and processes. The presentation is organized in five sections: general principles and methods of SPI, knowledge management for SPI, process modelling and electronic process guides, estimation methods, and object-oriented and component-based systems. A spectrum of empirical methods has been used, e.g. case studies, large-scale experiments, surveys and interviews, and action research.

The book mainly targets researchers and graduate students in (empirical) software engineering, and software professionals working in development or quality assurance.

Research on real-time Java technology has been prolific over the past decade, leading to a large number of corresponding hardware and software solutions, and frameworks for distributed and embedded real-time Java systems. This book is aimed primarily at researchers in real-time embedded systems, particularly those who wish to understand the current state of the art in using Java in this domain. Much of the work in real-time distributed, embedded and real-time Java has focused on the Real-time Specification for Java (RTSJ) as the underlying base technology, and consequently many of the Chapters in this book address issues with, or solve problems using, this framework.Describes innovative techniques in: scheduling, memory management, quality of service and communication systems supporting real-time Java applications;Includes coverage of multiprocessor embedded systems and parallel programming;Discusses state-of-the-art resource management for embedded systems, including Java's real-time garbage collection and parallel collectors;Considers hardware support for the execution of Java programs including how programs can interact with functional accelerators;Includes coverage of Safety Critical Java for development of safety critical embedded systems."

Addressing various aspects of object-oriented software techniques with respect to their impact on testing, this text argues that the testing of object-oriented software is not restricted to a single phase of software development. The book concentrates heavily on the testing of classes and of components or sub-systems, and a major part is devoted to this subject. C++ is used throughout this book that is intended for software practitioners, managers, researchers, students, or anyone interested in object-oriented technology and its impacts throughout the software engineering life-cycle.

This text helps the reader generate clear, effective documentation that is tailored to the information requirements of the end-user. Written for technical writers and their managers, quality assurance experts, and software engineers, the book describes a user-centered information design method (UCID) that should help ensure documentation conveys significant information for the user. The UCID shows how to: integrate the four major information components of a software system - user interface labels, messages, online and printed documentation; make sure these elements work together to improve usability; deploy iterative design and prototyping procedures that minimize flaws and save time and money; and guide technical writers effectively.

Process calculi are among the most successful models of concurrent systems. Various behavior equivalences between processes are central notions in CCS (calculus of communicating systems) and other process calculi. In the real applications, specification and implementation are described as two processes, and correctness of programs is treated as a certain behavior equivalence between them. The purpose of this book is to establish a theory of approximate correctness and infinite evolution of concurrent programs by employing some notions and tools from point-set topology. This book is restricted to CCS for simplicity, but the main idea also applies to some other process calculi. The concept of bisimulation limits, useful for the understanding and analysis of infinite evolution of processes, is introduced. In addition, the notions of near bisimulations and bisimulation indexes, suitable in describing approximate correctness of concurrent programs, are proposed. The book will be of particular interest to researchers in the fields of theoretical computer science, especially theory of concurrency and hybrid systems, and graduate students in related disciplines. It will also be valuable to practical system designers developing concurrent and/or real-time systems.

Over the past two decades, software engineering has come a long way from object-based to object-oriented to component-based design and development. Invasive software composition is a new technique that unifies and extends recent software engineering concepts like generic programming, aspect-oriented development, architecture systems, or subject-oriented development. To improve reuse, this new method regards software components as grayboxes and integrates them during composition. Building on a minimal set of program transformations, composition operator libraries can be developed that parameterize, extend, connect, mediate, and aspect-weave components. The book is centered around the JAVA language and the freely available demonstrator library COMPOST. It provides a wealth of materials for researchers, students, and professional software architects alike.

Templates are used to generate all kinds of text, including computer code. The last decade, the use of templates gained a lot of popularity due to the increase of dynamic web applications. Templates are a tool for programmers, and implementations of template engines are most times based on practical experience rather than based on a theoretical background.

This book reveals the mathematical background of templates and shows interesting findings for improving the practical use of templates.

First, a framework to determine the necessary computational power for the template metalanguage is presented. The template metalanguage does not need to be Turing-complete to be useful. A non-Turing-complete metalanguage enforces separation of concerns between the view and model.

Second, syntactical correctness of all languages of the templates and generated code is ensured. This includes the syntactical correctness of the template metalanguage and the output language. Third, case studies show that the achieved goals are applicable in practice. It is even shown that syntactical correctness helps to prevent cross-site scripting attacks in web applications.

The target audience of this book is twofold. The first group exists of researcher interested in the mathematical background of templates. The second group exists of users of templates. This includes designers of template engines on one side and programmers and web designers using templates on the other side"

This book presents the latest research findings and state-of-the-art solutions on optimization techniques and provides new research direction and developments. Both the theoretical and practical aspects of the book will be much beneficial to experts and students in optimization and operation research community. It selects high quality papers from The International Conference on Optimization: Techniques and Applications (ICOTA2013). The conference is an official conference series of POP (The Pacific Optimization Research Activity Group; there are over 500 active members). These state-of-the-art works in this book authored by recognized experts will make contributions to the development of optimization with its applications.