Francisco J. García-Izquierdo

Modeling issues: a survival guide for a non-expert modeler

While developing an integral security model to be used in a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) context, we find a lot of ambiguities and inaccuracies when authors speak of models, metamodels, profiles and so on. This led us to study a great number of references in a search for precise definitions to help us to address our research. Our study and discussions were so extensive that we are convinced they will be a valuable contribution to the community. In particular, in this paper we present several Reference Concept Maps that depict graphically a large number of definitions with their associated bibliographical references. Nevertheless, we truly believe that there are still a lot of concepts to be clarified and that this clarification is essential so that basic modeling concepts can be best used by non-expert modelers.

Capstone projects in computer science: evaluated by stakeholders

This study evaluates several aspects related to capstone projects in a computer science degree: level of advisor involvement, type of student, and type of project. We consider the points of view of students, advisors, and evaluation committees. Students claimed the level of advisor involvement to be significantly greater than that perceived by the advisors themselves. Regarding students skills, we found no significant differences between the opinions of advisors and students. And lastly, students have a significantly better opinion about their projects than advisors do.

References-enriched Concept Map

Finding and sharing a common vocabulary is a critical task for the development of any area of knowledge. However, it is very common to find heated debate in the literature on the meaning of particular terms. Different authors propose different definitions, some of them even contradictory. This situation, while enriching the scientific process, may hinder the understanding of fundamental concepts regarding a certain subject. To address this problem, we propose a technique called References-enriched Concept Maps (RCM), inspired by concept maps. RCM can be used to compare definitions and therefore improve the understanding of terms, keeping track of the publications in which the different definitions were proposed. We present a method of RCM construction as well as different metrics for analysing them. An analysis carried out using the proposed metrics allows one to find answers while also raising new questions about the discussed concepts.

A tool for management of knowledge dispersed throughout multiple references

When modeling tasks are performed, it is important that the different modeling team members share a common vocabulary. This implies not only agreement on the terminology itself but especially on the meaning of the terms used. To this end it comes in handy to have graphical tools for sharing and analyzing the knowledge dispersed throughout different sources. In this paper we present RCMTool, a tool for creating References-enriched Concept Maps (RCM). This technique has been specially designed to facilitate the compact presentation and comparison of different definitions provided by multiple authors in diverse sources. This paper presents the main features of RCMTool, based on the development of an RCM metamodel and the inclusion of a natural language processing engine.

Automating Provenance Capture in Software Engineering with UML2PROV

UML2PROV is an approach to address the gap between application design, through UML diagrams, and provenance design, using PROV-Template. Its original design (i) provides a mapping strategy from UML behavioural diagrams to templates, (ii) defines a code generation technique based on Proxy pattern to deploy suitable artefacts for provenance generation in an application, (iii) is implemented in Java, using XSLT as a first attempt to implement our mapping patterns. In this paper, we complement and improve this original design in three different ways, providing a more complete and accurate solution for provenance generation. First, UML2PROV now supports UML structural diagrams (Class Diagrams), defining a mapping strategy from such diagrams to templates. Second, the UML2PROV prototype is improved by using a Model Driven Development-based approach which not only implements the overall mapping patterns, but also provides a fully automatic way to generate the artefacts for provenance collection, based on Aspect Oriented Programming as a more expressive and compact technique for capturing provenance than the Proxy pattern. Finally, there is an analysis of the potential benefits of our overall approach.