Nur Atiqah Sia Abdullah

Software security characteristics for function point analysis

Software cost estimation (SCE) has been an important but difficult task since the beginning of the computer era. It considers list of parameters to estimate accurately the software cost. However, security cost is always excluded in most of the parametric cost estimation models. It is because of the security aspect is normally considered late in the software development. To overcome this problem, we proposed an enhancement to one of the parametric estimation models, which is Function Point Analysis (FPA), to address the security concerns. The enhancement suggests potential software security characteristics during system development life cycle (SDLC). These characteristics are then integrated into FPA calculation to encounter the security cost estimation. This paper also points to the validation of a survey findings and calibration of the FPA calculation.

Formulating Kansei concept of assistive device for people with physical disabilities

The mobility limitations in daily activities for people with physical disabilities have rapidly spurred on various inventions of assistive devices to fulfill their needs. However, misunderstanding of specifications and conflicting of design and expectation do certainly exist between the user with physical disabilities and the designer. This phenomenon leads to a big gap between psychological aspects of human and technical element of product used. Thus, this paper proposes Kansei Engineering (KE) technology to investigate the affective values beneath the products and incorporate them into design specifications. An exploratory study is conducted to derive Kansei words for assistive devices. Experts are asked to perform affinity process using KJ Method and classify Kansei words into four segments which are sensational, physical, aesthetic, and operational. As a result, 95 Kansei words are clustered into 10 sub headers which contained in those four Kansei segments. These results will become a reference model for Kansei concepts of assistive device for people with physical disability to designer and user in defining device specifications and meeting users implicit needs.

Mobile game size estimation: COSMIC FSM rules, UML mapping model and Unity3D game engine

Mobile game application is a crucial feature in mobile devices. Due to the complexity and parameters like game environment, platform and context performance, it leads to the challenges to estimate accurately the size and effort of mobile game application. Furthermore, the current software effort and parametric estimation models invented before emergence of mobile application. Therefore, there is a possibility gap that existing estimation models cannot estimate accurately the development effort based on the mobile application requirements and characteristics. Hence, this paper attempts to adapt COSMIC Functional Size Measurement (COSMIC FSM) as an alternative to estimate the size of mobile game application and uses Unity3D game engine to represent the mobile game architecture as it is able to control the features and components for mobile game application development. The Unity3D component diagram is created to visualize the requirements of common mobile game and to capture the embedded functional processes. The functional processes are then analyzed and classified into different types of data movement for the further estimation according to the COSMIC FSM rules and UML mapping model. The proposed measurement suggests possibility of software measurement in estimating mobile game application based on functional size measurement method.

Evaluating endpoint detection algorithms for isolated word from Malay parliamentary speech

This paper presents the endpoint detection approaches specifically for an isolated word uses Malay spoken speeches from Malaysian Parliamentary session. Currently, there are 7,995 vocabularies of utterances in the database collection and for the purpose of this study; the vocabulary is limited to ten words which are most frequently spoken selected from ten speakers. Endpoint detection, which aims to distinguish the speech and non-speech segments of digital speech signal, is considered as one of the key preprocessing steps in speech recognition system. Proper estimation of the start and end of the speech (versus silence or background noise) avoids the waste of speech recognition evaluations on preceding or ensuing silence. In this study, the endpoint detection and speech segmentation task is achieved by using the short-time energy (STE) and short-time zero crossing (STZC) measures and combination of both approaches. As a result, the Hidden Markov Model (HMM) recognizer derived the recognition accuracy rate of 91.4% for combination of both algorithms, if compared only 86.3% for STE and 82.1% for STZC rate alone. The experiments show that there are many problems arise where there are still misdetection of word boundaries for the words with weak fricative and nasal sounds. Other obstacles issues such as speaking styles or mood of speaking can also cause the recognition performance.

Potential security factors in software cost estimation

Software houses are now keen to provide secure software as requested by customerspsila desire with respect to security and quality of their products especially related to the software costing estimation in the software development and implementation environment. Therefore, there is a need to identify the potential security risks while estimating the application cost. In this paper, we provide a list of potential security risks throughout the system development life cycle (SDLC). This list provides useful insights for software developers and practitioners in identifying security risks so that it can be encountered as security cost in the application.

A case study in COSMIC functional size measurement: Angry Bird Mobile Application

UML-based measurement is of great interest for industry because of its popularity in logical designs. UML models have been successfully used to support COSMIC-based functional size measurement (COSMIC FSM). In this paper, UML-based functional measurement through COSMIC function point is proposed to be used to estimate the mobile game application. The key idea is to use UML representations for capturing the information needed for the measurement and estimation. A case study, Angry Birds mobile game application is used to demonstrate how UMLs can actually improve the practice of COSMIC measurement by mapping the UML context with COSMIC FSM rules and measurement. The UML representations involve use case diagram, behavioral model elements, component diagram, object diagram and sequence diagrams to represent the basic functional requirements and workflow requirements. This paper shows the usage of UML representations with COSMIC function point is applicable to the case study in mobile game. It provides an option to the software developers to estimate the mobile game application size by using UML-based COSMIC FSM method. This paper contributes on building UML models according to the COSMIC measurement rules, which ease the measurement procedures.

Extended function point analysis prototype with security costing estimation

Software cost estimation is a complex activity that requires knowledge of a number of key attributes about the project for which the estimate is being constructed. Nevertheless, security is becoming more and more important in most of the software construct. Reviews on several widely recognized parametric estimation models found the insufficient of current estimation in software security costing. Comparison of common security standards successfully highlighted software security characteristics to be considered in cost estimation. A survey based on the rating of these characteristics has been conducted. Analysis results from RASCH have validated the relative importance of these characteristics based on Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) software developers perspective. These validated characteristics are then extended the calculation and implemented in a Function Point Analysis prototype. The paper also points to the steps of calibrating the calculation through this prototype by conducting controlled experiments.

Mobile application development feasibility studies: A case study in Universiti Teknologi MARA

Mobile application is trendy and receives high demand in marketplace. Thus, mobile technology has been identified as a potential delivery alternative since it is able to provide services anywhere anytime. Basically, most of the universitys services are provided through web-based systems, including Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM). However, due to the increasing demand from the students and university, mobile application is proposed as an alternative channel for these services. Therefore, the feasibility studies are needed before continuing the mobile requirement engineering and development process. This study aims to delineate the guidelines for mobile application development from feasibility studies in terms of technical aspect and integration issues of web services from the existing systems. A case study in UiTM, which is an alternative mobile service for student portal, is carried out. The feasibility studies in terms of technical aspect are derived in detail and the architecture of the mobile application is examined to get better understanding. Technical aspects include mobile type application, mobile operating system, web services, mobile application architecture are analyzed to be a guideline in any future mobile application development in the future in UiTM.

Cognitive Knowledge Representation for Examination Questions Specification Analysis

The quality of education is relatively important to improve the quality of teaching. The quality of teaching is reflected on the quality of examination paper. A quality examination paper can be measured against the specification stated in Test Specification Table (JSU). In order to reduce the subjectivity and randomness of the evaluation on examination paper, this paper demonstrates a representation model, which assists the educators to analyze the percentage of accuracy between examination paper specification (EPS) and JSU. The parameters used are cognitive level and score. Keyword extraction and classification approach based on Information Retrieval has been implemented to yield the analysis. In addition, the analysis provides the error percentage between EPS and JSU. The specification analysis gives high impact to educational sectors by ensuring quality standard of assessment mechanism. It can be used by all tertiary level of education to evaluate the quality of examination question paper.

Software Application for Analyzing Photovoltaic Module Panel Temperature in Relation to Climate Factors

Discovering factors and relationships that affect the temperature of photovoltaic module panel is vital to solar energy based research in an attempt to generate green energy effectively. Despite the availability of visualization tools that assist in the discovery, they are not dedicated. They require some efforts, time and certain level of skills to gain benefits out of them. Thus, this research has designed and developed a dedicated application system called RAID Explorer to assist the researchers in their attempts to explore various factors that contribute to photovoltaic module temperature. With the system, discoveries are through observation that stimulates human cognitive ability. The system strength’s resides in its three main components, which are data entry, visualization and visual analytics. The components are flexible as such, visual interaction is intuitive and users are able to manage it with minimum instruction. They also enable personal customization as such judicious judgment can be made. For performance analysis, the system was implemented and utilized by Green Energy Research Centre (GERC), Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia to determine its functionality and usability. The findings show that RAID capabilities are beyond merely to discover the factors contributed to photovoltaic module temperature. In fact, it has successfully supported the discovering of various relationships in the photovoltaic dataset. Thus, RAID Explorer supports scientists’ need for flexible, speed and interactive exploration of huge photovoltaic dataset in relation to relationship discovery.