Jacinto González Dacosta

A component framework for reusing a proprietary computer-aided engineering environment

Nowadays, it is becoming more frequent for engineers to deal with problems and situations that require specific software and the commercially available applications may not result adequate. Because of this, the reuse of software components is becoming a normal practice for improving the productivity of the software programmers, and the quality of the products that they develop. The employment of reusable components presents a number of advantages, such as the reduction in time necessary to develop new software, or the simplification of many computational tasks. There are some proprietary software environments in the engineering domain that are practically de facto standards, since they offer a broad functionality, robustness and constant updating. Therefore, those environments could be ideal candidates to be reusable components when developing new software. An example of this is Matlab, which can be encapsulated, in order to use it as a true reusable component. This will provide the user with efficient tools for designing his/her own applications. Moreover, there is an increasing importance for any software to offer distributed services. To perform this task, it is fundamental to have at ones disposal reusable components that support Internet-based distributed applications and services development. In the present work, a software component framework that effectively encapsulates Matlab is described. This software allows developers the reuse of Matlab, for both local and distributed applications. To address those issues the .NET technology was employed. The component framework developed can be integrated in the toolbars of software development environments supporting the .NET framework. This facilitates the construction of applications that can reuse the components, since the software developers can use and test them and change their properties in design-time.

Virtual Electronics Laboratory: A new tool to improve Industrial Electronics Learning

This paper describes a new tool to improve the industrial electronics education process. The tool really constitute a virtual electronic laboratory because it is made up of a set of virtual experiments with a user-friendly graphic interface and interactive simulated electronic instruments relating practical concepts with theoretical ones. The virtual laboratory can be used with a traditional book as well as with a hypermedia learning system. The combination of the tutorial and the virtual electronic laboratory constitute a bridge between theoretical lessons and laboratory classes. The professor can use the experiments of the virtual laboratory in the classroom to improve student retention. Using this tool, undergraduate technical students improve their performance and increase their efficiency in the laboratory. A pilot experience has been implemented for ANALOG AND DIGITAL ELECTRONICS. The analog virtual laboratory includes a set of circuits using discrete electronic devices and operational amplifiers and four different simulated instruments: a signal generator, a power supply, a multimeter and an oscilloscope. The digital electronics virtual laboratory includes the different combinational and sequential digital circuits and a virtual logic analyzer to visualize the evolution of the different input and output signals

Neuro-Lab: A highly reusable software-based environment to teach artificial neural networks

It is increasingly usual to find notions of artificial neural networks (ANNs) included in the curricula of many engineering studies. In this article, we present Neuro‐Lab, a simulation software to teach basic concepts of ANNs to undergraduate students of the Computer Engineering School in the University of Vigo (Spain). Neuro‐Lab was designed with the aim of offering a very easy‐to‐use user interface, support of exploratory learning activities, and also high reusability. This feature allows for an easy extension, integration, and interoperation of the software with other applications.

Visual Wavelet‐Lab: An object‐oriented library and a GUI application for the study of the wavelet transform

In this work, we present Visual Wavelet‐Lab, a software application that offers object‐oriented library and a graphical user interface (GUI) to learn and apply wavelet transforms to one‐ and two‐dimensional signals. The solution described is based on encapsulating and reusing the proprietary environment Matlab and the corresponding Wavelet Toolbox. This will allow for developing custom user applications, with well‐defined and specific characteristics, aimed at learning the wavelet transform and applications. Since functionality is reused, and therefore it has not to be implemented, we gain the possibility to build in powerful and ad hoc tools for teaching and investigating, in a short term and at low costs. The application developed was presented to several users and evaluated in terms of usability. The results obtained are encouraging and indicate that using Visual Wavelet‐Lab can be a useful tool for educational purposes.

Integrating Matlab Neural Networks Toolbox functionality in a fully reusable software component library

In this work, we present a reusable software component library, called IMO.Net Artificial Neural Networks library, which encapsulates the functionality of the Matlab Neural Networks Toolbox (MNNT). The MNNT is a powerful tool to work with neural networks. However, MNNT has not been conceived as a reusable and integrable software piece, and its results are clearly inadequate to be used for development of applications. The component library presented in this paper is fully reusable, allowing the integration of the neural networks toolbox objects and functions in software applications, independently of the platform and tools used to build it. Furthermore, this library provides two different sets of classes to the programmers, one of them presenting an application program interface (API) similar to the Matlab toolbox, and the other a fully object-oriented designed API, which is easier to use and more adequate for object-oriented and rapid application development. This library combines the advantages of being fully reusable and internally employing the MNNT to perform the algorithmic task, consequently inheriting all its power, robustness and comprehensiveness, but without its reusability limitations.

Two-Layer Wrapping for COTS Software Integration: An Experience with Matlab

Although commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) product integration presents clear advantages in a variety of engineering fields, several problems can arise in part due to their heterogeneous nature. Little research addresses the integration of particular COTS to specific domains. A University of Vigo project for reusable software development in the engineering domain adopted this approach. The underlying hypothesis was that making COTS integration easier would facilitate the development of domain-specific applications. The solution consists of a two-layer wrapping approach. The first layer captures the COTS domain model, facilitating integration of general-purpose functionality. A second layer provides better integration of more domain-specific functionality. Several real software development projects have used the proposed solution, and the results yielded notable effort savings, showing the approachs utility in reducing COTS integration efforts.

IMO.Net Artificial Neural Networks: an object-oriented reusable software component library to integrate Matlab Neural Networks functionality

We describe a reusable software component library which encapsulates the functionality of the Matlab Neural Networks Toolbox (MNNT). Our library allows the integration of the neural networks toolbox in the software applications development, independently of the platform and development tools used to build it. This library offers two different sets of classes: 1) an API (application program interface) similar to the Matlab toolbox; and 2) a fully object-oriented designed AP. The benefits of using this software component are: 1) to build reusable applications; and 2) to take advantage of the MNNT functionality, power, and robustness

Encapsulating an engineering calculus environment in a reusable component framework

In many scientific and engineering domains it is necessary to develop specific software to solve complex problems. Nowadays a lot of complex algorithms and required functionalities are already provided by de facto standard CAD, CAE or CAM environments in several domains. But they often are inadequate in other concerns, particularly when specific user interfaces or integration with other systems are needed. To reuse their required functionality without those drawbacks, component-based software development appears as an interesting technology. It guaranties a faster and lower-cost development of ad-hoc software solutions, and a higher quality. Anyway, just by providing the desired functions, a software environment is not automatically a fully reusable component. In addition, some very specific features are necessary. A solution can be to encapsulate those robust software environments including their large functionality into a framework that provides fully reusable components. Even more, beyond local software development, nowadays it could be very interesting to support distributed applications development. This work presents a concrete application of that solution: a software component framework that encapsulates Matlab - a widely used system of the engineering domain - as a true set of object-oriented components. The described framework permits the developer to reuse Matlab in local and distributed application development. This framework is developed using .NET technology, being accessible within .NET software development environments, what allows the usage of the component in design-time development

Maja: a way to design multimedia/hypermedia software to teach engineering

The actual research in educational software involves, in engineering, multidisciplinary teams. These teams create common languages in order to obtain products that can solve the problems that the teams are trying to solve. In this work we present developments we are using in our University and the things that these developments have solved. Our work is based on our and other experiences in the design of software for education. Software should solve problems that normally do not appear in the creation on enterprise, business or industrial software. This paper proposes a methodology and a tool for work. The development proposed and its theory permit creation of multimedia/hypermedia software to work in an independent or in a web based environment. Their theory completes a way to coordinate the different persons involved in the real development of that type of software.