G. Scanniello

Reengineering Web applications based on cloned pattern analysis

Web applications are subject to continuous and rapid evolution. Often it happens that programmers indiscriminately duplicate Web pages without considering systematic development and maintenance methods. This practice creates code clones that make Web applications hard to maintain and reuse. This paper presents an approach for reengineering Web applications based on clone analysis that aims at identifying and generalizing static and dynamic pages and navigational patterns of a Web application. Clone analysis is also helpful for identifying literals that can be generated from a database. A case study is described which shows how the proposed approach can be used for restructuring the navigational structure of a Web application by removing redundant code.

Understanding cloned patterns in Web applications

We propose a tool to identify and analyze cloned patterns in Web applications using clone analysis and clustering of static and dynamic Web pages. The tool first detects cloned pages, which are then grouped into clusters as well as the groups of links between clusters. In this way the navigational schema is simplified and the duplicated functionalities corresponding to cloned navigational patterns can be more easily analyzed. The tool also allows filtering out uninteresting parts of the restructured navigational schema, thus to further improve the understanding.

Architecture Recovery Using Latent Semantic Indexing and K-Means: An Empirical Evaluation

A number of clustering based approaches and tools have been proposed in the past to partition a software system into subsystems. The greater part of these approaches is semiautomatic, thus requiring human decision to identify the best partition of software entities into clusters among the possible partitions. In addition, some approaches are conceived for software systems implemented using a particular programming language (e.g., C and C++). In this paper we present an approach to automate the partitioning of a given software system into subsystems. In particular, the approach first analyzes the software entities (e.g., programs or classes) and then using Latent Semantic Indexing the dissimilarity between these entities is computed. Finally, software entities are grouped using iteratively the k-means clustering algorithm. The approach has been implemented in a prototype of a supporting software system as an Eclipse plug-in. Finally, to assess the approach and the plug-in, we have conducted an empirical investigation on three open source software systems implemented using the programming languages Java and C/C++.

Enhancing collaborative synchronous UML modelling with fine-grained versioning of software artefacts

Software development teams are composed of people with different knowledge and skills, who contribute to a project from often widely dispersed locations. Software development in geographically distributed environments creates software engineering challenges due to the interaction among members of distributed teams and the management of consistency and concurrency among project artefacts. In this paper, we propose Synchronous collaborative modelling Tool Enhanced with VErsioning management (STEVE) a collaborative tool supporting distributed Unified Modelling Language (UML) modelling of software systems. The tool provides a communication infrastructure enabling the concurrent editing of the same UML diagram at the same time by distributed developers. Complex UML diagrams are decomposed and managed in a fine-grained hierarchy of sub-artefacts, thus providing change and configuration management functionalities for both the diagram and the graphical objects. Thus, software predefined diagram components can be consistently reused and shared across different diagrams of a given project.

A Strategy and an Eclipse Based Environment for the Migration of Legacy Systems to Multi-tier Web-based Architectures

We present an incremental approach to the migration of non decomposable COBOL applications to a Web-enabled multi-tier architecture. The relevant software components of the target architecture, namely the communication middleware and the generator of graphical user interfaces, are developed once for all in order to reduce the migration effort. An Eclipse plug-in has also been developed to support the software engineer in the migration of the graphical user interface and in the restructuring and wrapping of the original legacy code. A pilot project on a COBOL legacy system evolved during the last thirty years has been used to experiment the migration strategy and the plug-in

Using a Competitive Clustering Algorithm to Comprehend Web Applications

We propose an approach based on winner takes all, a competitive clustering algorithm, to support the comprehension of static and dynamic Web applications. The process first computes the distances between the Web pages and then identifies similar pages through the winner takes all clustering algorithm. Two different instances of the process are presented to identify similar pages at structural and content level, respectively. The first instance encodes the page structure into a string and then uses the Levenshtein algorithm to achieve the distances between pairs of pages. On the other hand, to group similar pages at content level we use the latent semantic indexing to produce the page representations as vectors in the concept space. The Euclidean distance is then computed between the vectors to achieve the distances between the pages to be given as input to the adopted clustering algorithm. A prototype to automate the identification of group of similar pages has been implemented. The approach and the prototype have been assessed in a case study

A component-based visual environment development process

We present the Component-Based Visual Environment Development (CB-VED) process for building visual language environments and introduce the Visual Language Desk (VLDesk) system supporting its implementation. The proposed approach is based on software reuse at different granularity levels and enables incremental development. The VLDesk exploits all the knowledge gained from the development of the Visual Language Compiler-Compiler tool extending its functionalities with many adjunctive features useful in the presented development process. One of the aims of this research consists of the application of software engineering techniques to the incremental development of visual language environments.

Visual Language-Based System for Designing and Presenting E-Learning Courses

In this chapter we present a system supporting instruction designers in the design and deployment of e-learning courses. The system includes integrated modules for several authoring activities, such as the definition of knowledge content objects, and the creation of assessment and selfassessment tests. The distinguishing characteristics of the proposed system is that it is based on a suite of visual languages, enabling the modelling of different aspects of the construction process for Web-based distance courses. The languages include a Learning Activity Diagram, which extends UML Activity Diagrams to make them suitable for modelling distance course structures; a Self-Consistent Learning Object language used to define knowledge contents; and a Test Maker Language for specifying assessment and self-assessment tests. The use of visual languages provides an intuitive and friendly system user interface that allows instruction designer to easily compose and analyze the distance course structure and keep track of the knowledge acquisition process individually for each learner.

COMOVER: Concurrent model versioning

Concurrent versioning of source code is a common and well-established practice to manage concurrency and consistency within source code repository. Similarly to source code, software models are often the result of cooperative work by different software engineers, that need to update them even concurrently. Unfortunately, modeling tools rarely provide support for concurrency and consistency. On the other hand, the available concurrent versioning tools do not provide an adequate support for software models. In this paper we present COMOVER (COncurrent MOdel VERsioning), a tool that integrates software modeling features with versioning and concurrency management as well as model elements sharing and exchanging.

MELIS: an Eclipse Based Environment for the Migration of Legacy Systems to the Web

In this demonstration, we present MELIS (migration environment for legacy information systems) an integrated environment for the migration of legacy systems to a multi-tier Web-based architecture. This environment has been developed as an Eclipse plug-in to support the software engineer in the migration of the graphical user interface, and in the restructuring and wrapping of the original legacy code