Frank P. Coyle

Cobol: perception and reality

The authors list the perceptions they have uncovered and counter them with the reality of Cobol. Some of the perceptions are: Cobol is a mainframe language-it has been available on PCs since their inception; Cobol stopped evolving in the 1970s, stopped growing in popularity in the 1980s, and stopped being used to develop client-server and Web-based applications in the 1990s; and Cobol is not an object-oriented language, when, in fact, it has objects galore.

Breathing life into legacy

The Internet makes it imperative to unlock legacy data. Three technologies may let companies dust off legacy code and make it work with the Web: Extensible Markup Language, or XML, describes data through the use of tags, eliminating the need to conform to a specific programming infrastructure; Web services let companies wrap software and tailor its distribution, allowing innovative code configurations; and wireless technology offers the ability to get legacy content to mobile workers and clients. Each technology is part of the new arsenal for leveraging existing applications and data, perhaps realizing the elusive goal of anywhere, anytime services.

Implementing cleanroom software engineering into a mature CMM-based software organization

This report describes the adoption of Cleanroom Software Engineering Methodology into a mature software organization as defined by the SEI’s Capability Maturity Model. The organization, a defense contractor operating at SEI Level 4/5, has been working to develop a large real time system under tight budget and schedule constraints. This overview describes how Cleanroom principles were incorporated into an existing, mature software development framework and outlines some of the techniques used to facilitate the transition from a conventional to a Cleanroom development effort. In addition, we also describe issues related to impact and technology insertion.

Meeting the Needs of Industry: SMU's Master's Degree Program in Software Engineering

In response to industry demand, the Masters degree program in software engineering at Southern Methodist University (SMU) was established in 1993. Drawing on the strengths of the university, the regional business community, and the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), SMUs curriculum addresses the software engineering process from both a technical and management perspective. The SMU curriculum affirms the tenet that software engineering must be a well-managed discipline supported by an underpinning of science and technology.

A framework and process for curricular integration and innovation using project based interdisciplinary teams

This paper describes a framework and process for ongoing curricular integration and innovation based on feedback from the performance of undergraduate interdisciplinary teams working on problems that reflect the needs of industry. The five-step process is based on a top-down, objectives-based approach to bringing the computer science and engineering curriculum in line with computing practice. Critical to the effort is the selection of projects for undergraduate teams since project definitions serve both as an opportunity to challenge students and to lay the foundation for departmental direction. Each project is associated with a set of capability requirements that reflect what team members should both know and be able to do to meet project requirements. Upon project completion, expectations and actual performance are used in a curricular feedback loop to identify possible curricular modifications. We report on an ongoing implementation of this framework at Southern Methodist University (SMU) where integration between computer science and computer engineering serves as a testbed for the framework. At SMU, undergraduate students from computer science and computer engineering are teamed to develop applications that serve to bring core curricula in line with current trends in computing and industry needs.

Improving the Reliability of Object-Oriented Software through Object-Level Behavioral Simulation

In this paper we propose an Object-level Behavior Simulation Model (OBSM) that simulates the behavior of each object according to the message pattern exhibited by behavioral design pattern to verify it for its correctness. The model evaluates the existing reliability of the object-oriented software and allows developer to improve it during early phases of the development.

Behavioral factors in software development

Software development is essentially a human activity. As a result, factors affecting the behavior of those involved in the development process are of great importance to the software community. We identify three levels at which behavioral factors associated with software development can be investigated: individual behavior, team behavior and organizational behavior. Analysis of studies on individual and team behavior in software development environments reveals the failure of existing tools in supporting team-based software development. Our survey on team practices among software professionals also confirms this fact. To address this situation we propose a software development environment based on a blackboard architecture that supports multi-agent, opportunistic problem-solving. We expect that this architecture holds promise for the next generation software tools by providing a kernel for team-based software development.