Mark R. Vigder

Building maintainable COTS based systems

Maintaining large software systems based on Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components is a major cost driver for these systems. Maintenance includes activities from component replacement to trouble-shooting and configuration management. The maintenance costs for COTS based software systems can be reduced by building systems according to specific design criteria. This paper identifies the major activities of a system maintainer, describes the properties that can be designed into a system to facilitate these activities, and outlines a checklist of items that can be verified during a design or code review, or during the evaluation of a COTS components in order to guarantee these properties are built into the system. The verification is illustrated using a photo imaging system that is currently under development.

Maintaining COTS-based systems: start with the design

The use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software in building software systems presents new challenges to maintenance personnel who are required to evolve and enhance these systems. Unlike custom-built systems where maintenance is performed at the source code level, maintainers of COTS-based systems deal with the system as a set of large-scale black boxes that are owned by third-parties. This paper outlines a strategy for building maintainable COTS-based systems. The strategy was developed by interviewing a number of organizations involved in the acquisition, development, and maintenance of such systems. Based on these interviews, the high-cost maintenance activities were identified, and design strategies developed for minimizing these costs. The approach is illustrated with an example from a Web-based application.

Supporting Scientists' Everyday Work: Automating Scientific Workflows

An action research project involving scientists from the National Research Council Canada and the Institute for Ocean Technology analyzed difficulties in using software to collect data and manage processes. The project identified three requirements for increasing research productivity: ease of use for end users, managing scientific workflows, and facilitating software interoperability. On the basis of these requirements, the researchers developed Sweet, a software framework, to help automate scientific workflows.

Managing dependencies between software products

Systems constructed from diverse software products are often difficult to assemble and deploy correctly, particularly as the products evolve and the underlying platform changes over time. Many of these problems arise because of the many assumptions and dependencies, often implicit, that software products make about the context in which they are deployed. This paper describes an approach to managing the dependencies between the software elements of a system during assembly and deployment. A formal model of dependencies is developed, and it is shown how the model can be applied during the deployment process to verify the correct assembly of a system. The approach is designed to allow system developers, assemblers, and deployers to be part of the user group that collectively manages the dependencies that exist within an assembly.

COTS Workshop: continuing collaborations for successful COTS development

COTS Workshop: Continuing Collaborations for Successful COTS Development John Dean, National Research of Council Canada fJohn.Dean@nrc.ca} Patricia Oberndorf, Software Engineering Institute {po(~_sei.cmu.edu} Mark Vigder, National Research Council Canada fMark.Viader~_nrc.ca~ Chris Abts, University of Southern California {cabts~sunset.usc.edu} Hakan Erdogmus, National Research Council of Canada {Hakan.Erdogmus~nrc.ca} Nell Maiden, City University, UK fN.A.M.Maiden(~citv.ac.uk} Michael Looney, DERA, UK fmiloonev@dra.hmo.ab} George Heineman, Worcester Polytechnic Institute {heineman(~cs.wpi.edu} Michael Guntersdorfer, University of California, Irvine fmQunters~uci.edu}

End-user software development in a scientific organization

Scientific and engineering research is dependent on effective use of software artifacts; many of these artifacts are produced by the scientists themselves, rather than by trained software engineers. In order to improve the productivity of groups involved in scientific research, we have undertaken a project to understand the types of software development being undertaken by scientists, and to build a system that will help these end-users to build and manage the software. This paper summarizes the issues we have identified and the system we have built to support the scientists in their software engineering activities.

COTS acquisition: getting a good contract

Organizations that are acquiring a COTS based system must adapt many of their acquisition process activities that are traditionally used for acquiring non-COTS based systems. Much of this adaptation becomes quite difficult within government environments where the process is often constrained by government rules and regulations. This paper provides an experience report on COTS based acquisition for a government agency during the early stages of the process. The impact on requirements engineering and the steps for developing the Request For Proposal (RFP) and evaluating the proposals are outlined. The parties involved in the acquisition process are identified, and their relationship within a project governance structure are discussed. The final discussion provides some guidance as to how the early stages of the acquisition process should be adapted to minimize risk through the project.

Evaluating COTS Based Architectures

The criteria for evaluating the architecture of COTS based software systems is different from the criteria used for custom-built software systems. These differences arise due to the different development and maintenance scenarios that are the business drivers for COTS based software systems. Current architecture evaluation methods must be adapted to take these differences into account. One approach is to use the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis MethodSM (ATAMSM) as a basis for the evaluation. This can be done by identifying the Scenarios and Utility Trees that are applicable to COTS based software systems.