Jorge Enrique Pérez-Martínez

Public intervention in the access to advanced telecommunication services: Assessing its theoretical economic basis

Any public intervention in the access to advanced telecommunications services should be based on one or more of the causes that justify State intervention in industry activities. More importantly, the opportunity and magnitude of the intervention should be directly related to the intensity with which such causes appear and, among these, to the one considered predominant. There are four bmarket failureQ groups: inherent to the good (public goods, merit goods, externalities), referred to the market situation (failure of competition, incomplete markets, information failures), regarding the incidence in the economical development, and last, based on equity. We have analyzed the presence of these bjustifyingQ causes in telecommunications on a general level, and particularly with regard to new infrastructures and services, and concluded that the greater part of these circumstances could justify public intervention. The assessment made of them provides a strict basis on which to construct every opinion this debate can generate. D 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

UML 1.4 versus UML 2.0 as Languages to Describe Software Architectures

UML 1.4 is widely accepted as the standard for representing the various software artifacts generated by a development process. For this reason, there have been attempts to use this language to represent the software architecture of systems as well. Unfortunately, these attempts have ended in representations (boxes and lines) already criticized by the software architecture community. Recently, OMG has published a draft that will constitute the future UML 2.0 specification. In this paper we compare the capacities of UML 1.4 and UML 2.0 to describe software architectures. In particular, we study extensions of both UML versions to describe the static view of the C3 architectural style (a simplification of the C2 style). One of the results of this study is the difficulties found when using the UML 2.0 metamodel to describe the concept of connector in a software architecture.

From analysis model to software architecture: a PIM2PIM mapping

To our knowledge, no current software development methodology explicitly describes how to transit from the analysis model to the software architecture of the application. This paper presents a method to derive the software architecture of a system from its analysis model. To do this, we are going to use MDA. Both the analysis model and the architectural model are PIMs described with UML 2. The model type mapping designed consists of several rules (expressed using OCL and natural language) that, when applied to the analysis artifacts, generate the software architecture of the application. Specifically the rules act on elements of the UML 2 metamodel (metamodel mapping). We have developed a tool (using Smalltalk) that permits the automatic application of these rules to an analysis model defined in RoseTM to generate the application architecture expressed in the architectural style C2.

A coordinated plan for teaching software engineering in the Rey Juan Carlos University

Nowadays both industry and academic environments are showing a lot of interest in the Software Engineering discipline. Therefore, it is a challenge for universities to provide students with appropriate training in this area, preparing them for their future professional practice. There are many difficulties to provide that training. The outstanding ones are: the Software Engineering area is too broad and class hours are scarce, the discipline requires a high level of abstraction; it is difficult to reproduce real world situations in the classroom to provide a practical learning environment; the number of students per professor is very high (at least in Spain); companies develop software with a maturity level rarely over level 2 of the CMM for Software (again, at least in Spain) as opposed to what is taught at the University. Besides, there are different levels and study plans, making more difficult to structure the contents to teach in each term and degree. In this paper we present a plan for teaching Software Engineering trying to overcome some of the difficulties above.

Heuristics for the transition from analysis to software architecture

To our knowledge, no current software development methodology explicitly describes how to transit between the different development stages it proposes. This is more evident in the transition from the analysis stage to the software architecture of the application. This paper presents the first semiautomatic method to derive the software architecture of a system from its analysis. The proposal is a set of heuristics that, when applied to the analysis artifacts, generate the software architecture of the application. This proposal has several benefits: (1) the software architecture of the system is directly derived by applying the heuristics; (2) there is a direct trace relationship between the analysis artifacts and the elements of the resulting architecture, which eases the system maintenance.

Teamwork, motivational profiles and academic performance in computer science engineering

This paper is aimed at discussing several issues related to the teamwork generic competence, motivational profiles, and academic performance. In particular, we study the improvement of teamwork attitude, the predominant types of motivation in different contexts, and some correlations among these three components of the learning process. The above-mentioned aspects are of great importance. Currently, the professional profile of engineers has a strong teamwork component, and the motivational profile of students determines both their tendencies when they come to work as part of a team and their performance at work. Taking these issues into consideration, we suggest four hypotheses: (H1) students improve their teamwork capacity through specific training and by carrying out a set of activities integrated into an active learning process; (H2) students with higher mastery motivation have a better attitude toward teamwork; (H3) students with different types of motivations reach different levels of academic performance; and (H4) students show different motivation profiles in different circumstances, such as types of courses, teaching methodologies, and different times of the learning process. This study was carried out with Computer Science Engineering students from two Spanish universities. The first results point to an improvement in teamwork competence of students if they have previously received specific training in facets of that competence. Other results indicate that there is a correlation between the motivational profiles of students and their perception of teamwork competence. Finally, the results point to a clear relationship between some kind of motivation and academic performance. In particular, four kinds of motivation are analyzed, and students are classified into two groups according to them. After analyzing several marks obtained in compulsory courses, we perceive that the students who show higher motivation for avoiding failure obtain, in general, worse academic performance.