Mario Žagar

Avoiding scylla and charybdis in distributed software development course

Teaching Distributed Software Development (DSD) is a challenging task. A convincing simulation of distributed environment in a local environment is practically impossible. Teaching DSD in distributed environment is more realistic since the students directly experience all its specifics. However, teaching in distributed environment, in which several geographically separated teams participate, is very demanding. Different types of obstacles occur, from administrative and organizational to technical ones. This paper describes some of the challenges, lessons learned, but also success stories of the DSD course performed now eight year in a row.

Student motivation in distributed software development projects

In this paper we discuss challenges faced in conducting distributed student projects within a scope of a distributed software development university course. Student motivation and demotivation factors, along with perceived cultural differences, are identified and analyzed on the basis of data collected from a number of student projects.

Scenario Description Language for Multi-agent Systems

Increasing complexity of interactions among agents presents a serious challenge in designing, building and maintaining of such systems. This paper analyses existing interaction description languages and methods, and proposes a novel language based on descriptions of interaction scenarios. Program code generated from scenario descriptions, in synergy with related platform components, simplifies design, implementation and maintenance phases of multi-agent systems characterized by complex and interwoven communication.

ElaClo: A framework for optimizing software application topology in the cloud environment

Abstract Application architectures in the cloud employ elastic components, and achieve lower operating costs without sacrificing quality. Software architects strive to provide efficient services by deciding on software topology: a set of structural architectural decisions. For a given application, there can be numerous software topology alternatives creating the need for automated optimization methods. Current optimization approaches rely on experts providing application performance models built upfront, based on their experience and the requirements provided. While such techniques are effective and valuable, they require additional maintenance effort as the software evolves. This paper introduces ElaClo, a framework for optimizing application topologies in a cloud environment. ElaClo’s main contribution is in providing optimization in the software assembly phase from automatically extracted application models. ElaClo provides workload generation, monitoring, topology management, elasticity mechanisms, and algorithms to support the optimization process. We have implemented ElaClo as an expert tool and evaluated it on a real-life cloud application from the retailing business domain. ElaClo was used to select optimal topologies with regards to service response time objectives and infrastructure costs. The efficiency of the optimization process and the quality of optimization results were validated quantitatively on a set of optimization runs. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the suggested framework in yielding optimal topologies.

Exploring Students' Happiness in Distributed Software Projects

Teaching realistic Global Software Engineering in a university setting requires exposing students to intricacies of the approach by immersing them into simulated or real distributed projects. However, such an approach requires careful student and course management by the university staff, additionally hampered by reduced visibility of distributed teams. In this paper we describe the concept of happiness polls aimed at gaining better insight into dynamics of distributed student projects, and some preliminary results identifying the key process properties influencing students perception of development process.

Workshop on Enhancing Software Engineering Education: WESEE 2015

Software engineering education is on a different level of maturity in different countries. In many countries software engineering is still on the way to be established. The aim of this workshop is to attract faculties to discuss and provide successful examples and lessons learned about development of software engineering courses or a curriculum on bachelor and master level, as well as the ability to increase international collaboration. The second goal of the workshop is to attract local communities to participate in the workshop and in the conference.

Something old is new again: reimagining the oldest social networking platform

The phenomenon of social networking has entered the lives of millions of people via the ubiquitous Web-based platforms such as Facebook and Google+ which are centralized platforms completely controlled by single entities. However, a complete parallel message-passing infrastructure already exists and has the benefit of 30 years experience and investments: the SMTP e-mail network, which together with the latest technologies can be utilized to provide a completely decentralized, convenient, private and even fault-tolerant social networking platform. This work in progress aims to design and implement a proof of concept of such idea.

Scenario description language in multi-agent simulation system

Multi-agent system based simulation is used in a number of different areas ranging from modelling of social and economic to technical complex and dynamic systems. In this paper we analyse feasibility of using scenario description language and platform in design and implementation of MAS-based models. A case study is presented where the SDLMAS framework is used to aid in design and implementation of a complex Aero Repair and Overhaul simulator.