Carl-Fredrik Sørensen

A context-aware middleware for applications in mobile Ad Hoc environments

Novel ubiquitous computing applications such as intelligent vehicles, smart buildings, and traffic management require special properties that traditional computing applications do not support, such as context-awareness, massive decentralisation, autonomous behaviour, adaptivity, proactivity, and innate collaboration. This paper presents a new computational model and middleware that reflect support for the required the properties. The sentient object model is proposed by the CORTEX¹ project to support the construction of ubiquitous applications. A flexible, run-time reconfigurable component-based middleware has been built to provide run-time support to engineer the sentient object programming paradigm. An application infrastructure using sentient objects to enable cooperation between autonomous and proactive vehicles has been implemented to demonstrate the appropriateness of the computational model and the validity of the middleware for pervasive mobile ad hoc computing.

COTS products characterization

A way to learn about Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products is to define a set of characteristics or attributes and then to collect information about these attributes. In an industrial context, the attributes used to select COTS clearly depend on project specific goals. In our educational context we made an attempt to define general COTS characterization attributes. The resulting framework provides a structure, which facilitate the learning process. Our proposed attributes have several similarities with the generic evaluation attributes defined by ISO 9126. A comparison with such a standard provides a deeper insight into the problem of characterizing COTS products.

Adoption of Open Source in the Software Industry

Is Open Source Software (OSS) undergoing a transformation to a more commercially viable form? We have performed a survey to investigate the adoption of OSS in the Norwegian software industry. The survey was based on an extensive screening of software companies, with more than 700 responses. The survey results support the transformation predicted by Fitzgerald [4]. Close to 50% of the software industry integrate OSS components into vertical solutions serving all major business sectors. In addition, more than 30% of the 95 respondents in our survey have more than 40% of their income from OSS related services or software. The extensive adoption of OSS in the software industry may be a precursor of the OSS adoption in other business sectors.

An empirical study on selection of Open Source Software - Preliminary results

Growing attention on component-based development has inspired the development of several normative methods for selection of software components. Despite these efforts, empirical studies show only minor adoption of such methods. To understand how research can contribute to improving the selection of components we interviewed developers from 16 Norwegian software companies which integrate Open Source Software (OSS) components into their systems. We find that the selection of OSS components has a situational nature where project specific properties significantly constrain the selections outcome, and that developers employ a ‘first fit’ rather than ‘best fit’ approach when selecting OSS components. This could explain the limited adoption of normative selection approaches and general evaluation schemas. Moreover, it motivates a shift from developing such methods and schemas towards understanding the situational nature of software selection.

Surveying Industrial Roles in Open Source Software Development

Industry uses Open Source Software (OSS) to a greater and greater extent. We have defined four industrial OSS roles; OSS provider, OSS integrator, OSS participant and Inner Source Software (ISS) participant. Based on these four roles we have performed a survey in the ITEA COSI project. We provide initial answers to what motivates companies to undertake these roles, what are the advantages and challenges of undertaking them, and which development practices they use while undertaking these roles.

Development of Location-Aware Applications

This paper presents the Nidaros framework for developing location-aware applications that provide location dependent functionality based on the current location of the user. The framework can be used to develop location-dependent advertisement, city guides, guides for tourist attractions, etc. The framework consists of three main components: A runtime system that manages user locations and the interaction with the user clients; a creator tool that is used to map information and multimedia content to locations; and a logging tool that is used to log the movement of users to monitor the interest for certain locations. The paper also describes an implementation of a location-aware tour guide for the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim that can run on different mobile devices. Further, the paper describes experiences from installing, configuring, and running a location-aware tour guide in a real environment. A demonstration of the tour guide was tested on PDAs and mobile phones.

Using the MOWAHS characterisation framework for development of mobile work applications

This paper describes an evaluation of a characterisation framework to analyse mobile work scenarios in order to make corresponding software systems. The framework identifies complexity issues to be taken into account when implementing a system. The framework can also be used to elicit requirements from a scenario. Three research questions are investigated in this evaluation: 1) Can the framework be used to identify relevant challenges in the final system? 2) Can the framework be used to identify functional requirements for the final system? and 3) Can the framework be used to identify non-functional requirements for the final system? The evaluation was performed using the framework to analyse and implement an IT-support scenario. The paper also describes a web-tool for this framework that makes the characterisation process simpler. The tool introduces consistency rules to ensure stricter characterisation of the scenarios.

Writing as a Tool for Learning Software Engineering

This paper presents an educational method used to improve teaching of tedious topics in software engineering courses that can be difficult for students to comprehend without any reference to own practical experience. The method utilizes the students existing software engineering knowledge to understand new theory, methods, and techniques. The goals of the method are to improve student participation in the lectures and to enable the students to think through the topics on their own before giving answers and explanations. The method allows the students to learn in three different settings: Individually, in groups, and in class. This paper describes experiences using the method, and proposes how it can be used in software engineering courses

Associating architectural issues with quality attributes: a survey on expert agreement

The architectural decision-making process is a complex and crucial endeavor in companies that develop large and distributed software systems. In this process, choosing and evaluating a solution for each architectural issue depends on decision drivers. The drivers are mainly the business factors (e.g., cost, time-to-market, etc.) and software quality attributes (e.g., security, adaptability, etc.). This paper examines whether there is agreement among experts in associating (i.e., relating) architectural issues with relevant quality attributes. We conducted a survey with 37 experts from several industrial domains who, at least once a month, make one or more architectural decisions. The results show there is poor agreement among these experts in identifying and scoring relevant quality attributes for each architectural issue. Poor agreement implies that the associating task is subjective, and that experts inconsistently define and interpret the relevance of various quality attributes for a given architectural issue that may hurt the sustainability of their architectural decisions. This paper suggests that practitioners in their decision-making should employ approaches that are more systematic. The approaches should be supported by methods and tools designed to diminish the biases of intuitive, experience-based approaches of associating architectural issues with quality attributes.