Naji Habra

ASAX: Software Architecture and Rule-Based Language for Universal Audit Trail Analysis

After a brief survey of the problems related to audit trail analysis and of some approaches to deal with them, the paper outlines the project ASAX which aims at providing an advanced tool to support such analysis. One key feature of ASAX is its elegant architecture build on top of a universal analysis tool allowing any audit trail to be analysed after a straight format adaptation. Another key feature of the project ASAX is the language RUSSEL used to express queries on audit trails. RUSSEL is a rulebased language which is tailor-made for the analysis of sequential files in one and only one pass. The conception of RUSSEL makes a good compromise with respect to the needed efficiency on the one hand and to the suitable declarative look on the other hand. The language is illustrated by examples of rules for the detection of some representative classical security breaches.

Initiating software process improvement in very small enterprises

The paper concerns software process improvement in Very Small Enterprises (VSEs). It presents briefly a gradual methodology to initiate software process improvement in VSE through three steps approach and develops the first and most original step. This first step is based on a light evaluation achieved by means of a dedicated Micro-Evaluation approach. It has been experimented during 7 years in 86 organizations from three countries. The experience with that utilization tends to show that such a light approach is practicable and promising, at least for the targeted enterprises.

OWPL: A Gradual Approach for Software Process Improvement In SMEs

This paper describes an experience with a software process improvement (SPI) approach particularly adapted to small structures with low software maturity level (e.g. small and medium enterprises in software businesses, small software teams in bigger businesses, small software teams in public organisations). A characterisation of software process in-the-small is first made on basis of a deep analysis of software processes actually followed by a number of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The approach proposes a gradual software process improvement framework based on three nested models. It allows SMEs to start SPI in a very targeted manner, to quickly progress within a limited budget and, eventually, to reach an acceptable level according to SPI standard models such as CMM and SPICE

A framework for the design and verification of software measurement methods

At the core of any engineering discipline is the use of measures, based on ISO standards or on widely recognized conventions, for the development and analysis of the artifacts produced by engineers. In the software domain, many alternatives have been proposed to measure the same attributes, but there is no consensus on a framework for how to analyze or choose among these measures. Furthermore, there is often not even a consensus on the characteristics of the attributes to be measured. In this paper, a framework is proposed for a software measurement life cycle with a particular focus on the design phase of a software measure. The framework includes definitions of the verification criteria that can be used to understand the stages of software measurement design. This framework also integrates the different perspectives of existing measurement approaches. In addition to inputs from the software measurement literature the framework integrates the concepts and vocabulary of metrology. This metrological approach provides a clear definition of the concepts, as well as the activities and products, related to measurement. The aim is to give an integrated view, involving the practical side and the theoretical side, as well as the basic underlying concepts of measurement.

A Metamodel-Based Approach for Customizing and Assessing Agile Methods

In todays dynamic market environments, producing high quality software rapidly and efficiently is crucial. In order to allow fast and reliable development processes, several agile methodologies have been designed and are now quite popular. Although existing agile methodologies are abundant, companies are increasingly interested in the construction of their own customized methods to fit their specific environment. In this paper, we investigate how agile methods can be constructed in-house to address specific software process needs. First, we examine a case study focusing on the tailoring of two agile methodologies, XP and Scrum. Then, we focus on the high-level scope of any agile method customization and investigate an approach based on the Situational Method Engineering (SME) paradigm that includes measurement concepts for constructing context specific agile methodologies. We also examine several existing metamodels proposed for use in SME. Finally, we introduce an agile metamodel designed to support the construction of agile methods and relying on measurements to provide guidance to agile methodologists during the construction phase and throughout the development process itself.

gViz, a novel tool for the visualization of co-expression networks

BackgroundThe quantity of microarray data available on the Internet has grown dramatically over the past years and now represents millions of Euros worth of underused information. One way to use this data is through co-expression analysis. To avoid a certain amount of bias, such data must often be analyzed at the genome scale, for example by network representation. The identification of co-expression networks is an important means to unravel gene to gene interactions and the underlying functional relationship between them. However, it is very difficult to explore and analyze a network of such dimensions. Several programs (Cytoscape, yEd) have already been developed for network analysis; however, to our knowledge, there are no available GraphML compatible programs.FindingsWe designed and developed gViz, a GraphML network visualization and exploration tool. gViz is built on clustering coefficient-based algorithms and is a novel tool to visualize and manipulate networks of co-expression interactions among a selection of probesets (each representing a single gene or transcript), based on a set of microarray co-expression data stored as an adjacency matrix.ConclusionsWe present here gViz, a software tool designed to visualize and explore large GraphML networks, combining network theory, biological annotation data, microarray data analysis and advanced graphical features.

PathEx: a novel multi factors based datasets selector web tool

BackgroundMicroarray experiments have become very popular in life science research. However, if such experiments are only considered independently, the possibilities for analysis and interpretation of many life science phenomena are reduced. The accumulation of publicly available data provides biomedical researchers with a valuable opportunity to either discover new phenomena or improve the interpretation and validation of other phenomena that partially understood or well known. This can only be achieved by intelligently exploiting this rich mine of information.DescriptionConsidering that technologies like microarrays remain prohibitively expensive for researchers with limited means to order their own experimental chips, it would be beneficial to re-use previously published microarray data. For certain researchers interested in finding gene groups (requiring many replicates), there is a great need for tools to help them to select appropriate datasets for analysis. These tools may be effective, if and only if, they are able to re-use previously deposited experiments or to create new experiments not initially envisioned by the depositors. However, the generation of new experiments requires that all published microarray data be completely annotated, which is not currently the case. Thus, we propose the PathEx approach.ConclusionThis paper presents PathEx, a human-focused web solution built around a two-component system: one database component, enriched with relevant biological information (expression array, omics data, literature) from different sources, and another component comprising sophisticated web interfaces that allow users to perform complex dataset building queries on the contents integrated into the PathEx database.

Supported approach for agile methods adaptation: an adoption study

Adopting agile software development methods is a wide and complex organisational change that usually impacts several aspects of the organisation (e.g., its structure, culture, management practices, produced artefacts, technologies in use, etc). In order to successfully handle the several key challenges, its crucial to understand the organisation context and carefully study the transformation strategies. This paper presents an agile transformation experience that has been undertaken in a public organisation in Belgium and during which Scrum was applied in two pilot projects. The first project retrospective shows that the change cannot be accomplished only at the team-level without taking into account the overall structure of the organisation and that we must carefully evolve toward a context-specific adapted method. In the second pilot project, we defined structured and repeatable steps to assist the adoption of agile practices. The experience shows the usefulness of such an approach but suggests that automation efforts should be addressed. The last section of the paper summarizes the issues encountered and presents the AM-QuICK framework which aims at providing a supported approach to guide the agile adoption, adaptation and assessment.

AM-QuICk: A Measurement-Based Framework for Agile Methods Customisation

Software development practitioners are increasingly interested in adopting agile methods and generally recommend customisation so that the adopted method can fit the organisational reality. Many studies from the literature report agile adoption and customisation experiences but most of them are hardly generalisable and few are metric-based. They therefore cannot provide quantitative evidence of the suitability of the customised agile method, neither assess the organisation readability to adopt it, nor help in decision-making concerning the organisation transformation strategy. In this paper, we first describe the Agile Methods Quality-Integrated Customisation framework (AM-QuICk) that relies on measurements and aims to continuously assist agile methodologists throughout the agile adoption and customisation process, i.e., during the initial organisation adoption, the method design and throughout the working development process. Then, we present a case study using AM-QuICk within an organisation. With this study, we aim to analyse the current development process and its level of agility and identify the initial risk factors. The data were collected using preliminary interviews with the different team members and two questionnaires. The results reveal that though most respondents are enthusiastic towards agile principles, a progressive transformation strategy would be beneficial.

QUALGEN: Modeling and Analysing the Quality of Evolving Software Systems

In this article we present an ongoing interuniversity research collaboration in the context of a large ERDF-funded research project aiming to enhance and support the quality of evolving software-intensive systems. The project focuses on two aspects in particular, namely the development of a quality metamodel for measuring and controlling the quality of software-related activities, and the instantiation of this framework to measure the quality of evolving libre software distributions from the point of view of different stakeholders.