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.

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.

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."

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.

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

Since its first volume in 1960, Advances in Computers has presented detailed coverage of innovations in hardware and software and in computer theory, design, and applications. It has also provided contributors with a medium in which they can examine their subjects in greater depth and breadth than that allowed by standard journal articles. As a result, many articles have become standard references that continue to be of significant, lasting value despite the rapid growth taking place in the field.
This volume is organized around engineering large scale software systems. It discusses which technologies are useful for building these systems, which are useful to incorporate in these systems, and which are useful to evaluate these 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.

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.

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.

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.

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"

The book provides a platform for dealing with the flaws and failings of the soft computing paradigm through different manifestations. The different chapters highlight the necessity of the hybrid soft computing methodology in general with emphasis on several application perspectives in particular. Typical examples include (a) Study of Economic Load Dispatch by Various Hybrid Optimization Techniques, (b) An Application of Color Magnetic Resonance Brain Image Segmentation by Para Optimus LG Activation Function, (c) Hybrid Rough-PSO Approach in Remote Sensing Imagery Analysis, (d) A Study and Analysis of Hybrid Intelligent Techniques for Breast Cancer Detection using Breast Thermograms, and (e) Hybridization of 2D-3D Images for Human Face Recognition. The elaborate findings of the chapters enhance the exhibition of the hybrid soft computing paradigm in the field of intelligent computing.

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.

The growing demand for high quality, safety, and security of software systems can only be met by rigorous application of formal methods during software design. Tools for formal methods in general, however, do not provide a sufficient level of automatic processing. This book methodically investigates the potential of first-order logic automated theorem provers for applications in software engineering.Illustrated by complete case studies on verification of communication and security protocols and logic-based component reuse, the book characterizes proof tasks to allow an assessment of the provers capabilities. Necessary techniques and extensions, e.g., for handling inductive and modal proof tasks, or for controlling the prover, are covered in detail. The book demonstrates that state-of-the-art automated theorem provers are capable of automatically handling important tasks during the development of high-quality software and it provides many helpful techniques for increasing practical usability of the automated theorem prover for successful applications.

Basics of Software Engineering Experimentation is a practical guide to experimentation in a field which has long been underpinned by suppositions, assumptions, speculations and beliefs. It demonstrates to software engineers how Experimental Design and Analysis can be used to validate their beliefs and ideas. The book does not assume its readers have an in-depth knowledge of mathematics, specifying the conceptual essence of the techniques to use in the design and analysis of experiments and keeping the mathematical calculations clear and simple. Basics of Software Engineering Experimentation is practically oriented and is specially written for software engineers, all the examples being based on real and fictitious software engineering experiments.

This book focuses on the development and implementation of cloud-based, complex software that allows parallelism, fast processing, and real-time connectivity. Software engineering (SE) is the design, development, testing, and implementation of software applications, and this discipline is as well developed as the practice is well established whereas the Cloud Software Engineering (CSE) is the design, development, testing, and continuous delivery of service-oriented software systems and applications (Software as a Service Paradigm). However, with the emergence of the highly attractive cloud computing (CC) paradigm, the tools and techniques for SE are changing. CC provides the latest software development environments and the necessary platforms relatively easily and inexpensively. It also allows the provision of software applications equally easily and on a pay-as-you-go basis. Business requirements for the use of software are also changing and there is a need for applications in big data analytics, parallel computing, AI, natural language processing, and biometrics, etc. These require huge amounts of computing power and sophisticated data management mechanisms, as well as device connectivity for Internet of Things (IoT) environments. In terms of hardware, software, communication, and storage, CC is highly attractive for developing complex software that is rapidly becoming essential for all sectors of life, including commerce, health, education, and transportation. The book fills a gap in the SE literature by providing scientific contributions from researchers and practitioners, focusing on frameworks, methodologies, applications, benefits and inherent challenges/barriers to engineering software using the CC paradigm.

Problem solving is an essential part of every scientific discipline. It has two components: (1) problem identification and formulation, and (2) solution of the formulated problem. One can solve a problem on its own using ad hoc techniques or follow those techniques that have produced efficient solutions to similar problems. This requires the understanding of various algorithm design techniques, how and when to use them to formulate solutions and the context appropriate for each of them. This book advocates the study of algorithm design techniques by presenting most of the useful algorithm design techniques and illustrating them through numerous examples.

Advice involves recommendations on what to think; through thought, on what to choose; and via choices, on how to act. Advice is information that moves by communication, from advisors to the recipient of advice. Ivan Jureta offers a general way to analyze advice. The analysis applies regardless of what the advice is about and from whom it comes or to whom it needs to be given, and it concentrates on the production and consumption of advice independent of the field of application. It is made up of two intertwined parts, a conceptual analysis and an analysis of the rationale of advice. He premises that giving advice is a design problem and he treats advice as an artifact designed and used to influence decisions. What is unusual is the theoretical backdrop against which the author's discussions are set: ontology engineering, conceptual analysis, and artificial intelligence. While classical decision theory would be expected to play a key role, this is not the case here for one principal reason: the difficulty of having relevant numerical, quantitative estimates of probability and utility in most practical situations. Instead conceptual models and mathematical logic are the author's tools of choice. The book is primarily intended for graduate students and researchers of management science. They are offered a general method of analysis that applies to giving and receiving advice when the decision problems are not well structured, and when there is imprecise, unclear, incomplete, or conflicting qualitative information.

Providing a wide variety of technologies for ensuring the safety and dependability of cyber-physical systems (CPS), this book offers a comprehensive introduction to the architecture-centric modeling, analysis, and verification of CPS. In particular, it focuses on model driven engineering methods including architecture description languages, virtual prototyping, and formal analysis methods. CPS are based on a new design paradigm intended to enable emerging software-intensive systems. Embedded computers and networks monitor and control the physical processes, usually with the help of feedback loops where physical processes affect computations and vice versa. The principal challenges in system design lie in this constant interaction of software, hardware and physics. Developing reliable CPS has become a critical issue for the industry and society, because many applications such as transportation, power distribution, medical equipment and tele-medicine are dependent on CPS. Safety and security requirements must be ensured by means of powerful validation tools. Satisfying such requirements, including quality of service, implies having formally proven the required properties of the system before it is deployed. The book is concerned with internationally standardized modeling languages such as AADL, SysML, and MARTE. As the effectiveness of the technologies is demonstrated with industrial sample cases from the automotive and aerospace sectors, links between the methods presented and industrial problems are clearly understandable. Each chapter is self-contained, addressing specific scientific or engineering problems, and identifying further issues. In closing, it includes perspectives on future directions in CPS design from an architecture analysis viewpoint.

For years, companies have rewarded their most effective engineers by suggesting they move to a management position. But treating management as the default (or only) path for an engineer with leadership ability doesn't serve the industry well. The staff engineer path allows you to contribute at a high level, with more free time to drive big projects, determine tech strategy, and raise everyone's skills. With this in-depth book, author Tanya Reilly shows you ways to master strategic thinking, manage difficult projects, and set the standard for technical work. You'll learn how to be a leader without direct authority, how to plan ahead so that you're making the right technical decisions, and how to make everyone around you better, all while still leaving you time to grow as an expert in your domain. In three parts, you'll explore the three pillars of an engineer's job: Big picture thinking: learn how to take a broad, strategic view when thinking about your work Project execution: dive into tactics and explore the practicalities of making projects succeed Being a positive influence: determine the standards for what "good engineering" means in your organization

Aligning an organization's goals and strategies requires specifying their rationales and connections so that the links are explicit and allow for analytic reasoning about what is successful and where improvement is necessary. This book provides guidance on how to achieve this alignment, how to monitor the success of goals and strategies and use measurement to recognize potential failures, and how to close alignment gaps. It uses the GQM+Strategies approach, which provides concepts and actionable steps for creating the link between goals and strategies across an organization and allows for measurement-based decision-making. After outlining the general motivation for organizational alignment through measurement, the GQM+Strategies approach is described concisely, with a focus on the basic model that is created and the process for creating and using this model. The recommended steps of all six phases of the process are then described in detail with the help of a comprehensive application example. Finally, the industrial challenges addressed by the method and cases of its application in industry are presented, and the relations to other approaches, such as Balanced Scorecard, are described. The book concludes with supplementary material, such as checklists and guidelines, to support the application of the method. This book is aimed at organization leaders, managers, decision makers, and other professionals interested in aligning their organization's goals and strategies and establishing an efficient strategic measurement program. It is also interesting for academic researchers looking for mechanisms to integrate their research results into organizational environments.

GPS Tracking with Java EE Components: Challenges of Connected Cars highlights how the self-driving car is actually changing the automotive industry, from programing embedded software to hosting services and data crunching, in real time, with really big data. The book analyzes how the challenges of the Self Driving Car (SDC) exceed the limits of a classical GPS Tracking System (GTS.) It provides a guidebook on setting up a tracking system by customizing its components. It also provides an overview of the prototyping and modeling process, and how the reader can modify this process for his or her own software. Every component is introduced in detail and includes a number of design decisions for development. The book introduces Java EE (JEE) Modules, and shows how they can be combined to a customizable GTS, and used as seed components to enrich existing systems with live tracking. The book also explores how to merge tracking and mapping to guide SDCs, and focuses on client server programming to provide useful information. It also discusses the challenges involved with the live coordination of moving cars. This book is designed to aid GTS developers and engineers in the automotive industry. It can also help Java Developers, not only interested in GPS Tracking, but in modern software design from many individual modules. Source code and sample applications will be available on the book's website.

The core idea of this book is that object- oriented technology is a generic technology whose various technical aspects can be presented in a unified and consistent framework. This applies to both practical and formal aspects of object-oriented technology. Course tested in a variety of object-oriented courses, numerous examples, figures and exercises are presented in each chapter. The approach in this book is based on typed technologies, and the core notions fit mainstream object-oriented languages such as Java and C#. The book promotes object-oriented constraints (assertions), their specification and verification. Object-oriented constraints apply to specification and verification of object-oriented programs, specification of the object-oriented platform, more advanced concurrent models, database integrity constraints and object-oriented transactions, their specification and verification.

This book reviews existing operational software failure analysis techniques and proposes near-miss analysis as a novel, and new technique for investigating and preventing software failures. The authors provide details on how near-miss analysis techniques focus on the time-window before the software failure actually unfolds, so as to detect the high-risk conditions that can lead to a major failure. They detail how by alerting system users of an upcoming software failure, the detection of near misses provides an opportunity to collect at runtime failure-related data that is complete and relevant. They present a near-miss management systems (NMS) for detecting upcoming software failures, which can contribute significantly to the improvement of the accuracy of the software failure analysis. A prototype of the NMS is implemented and is discussed in the book. The authors give a practical hands-on approach towards doing software failure investigations by means of near-miss analysis that is of use to industry and academia