Shahida Sulaiman

Improving a web application using design patterns: A case study

Adopting design pattern while designing web applications can promote reusability and consistency of the web application. Without the adoption of design patterns or wrong selection of them will make the development of web application more complex and hard to be maintained. Thus knowledge in design patterns is essential in selecting the most appropriate patterns in the web applications development. Unfortunately, the ability of developers in applying design pattern is undetermined. The good practice of using design patterns is encouraged and efforts have to be taken to enhance the knowledge on design pattern. This paper analyses and compares a number of design patterns focusing on architectural and navigational design patterns for general features in web applications. Finally, we discuss a case study of our schools website and propose several design patterns to enhance the usability of the website.

Web caching and prefetching: What, why, and how?

The demand for Internet content rose dramatically in recent years. Servers became more and more powerful and the bandwidth of end user connections and backbones grew constantly during the last decade. Nevertheless users often experience poor performance when they access web sites or download files. Reasons for such problems are often performance problems which occur directly on the servers (e.g. poor performance of server-side applications or during flash crowds) and problems concerning the network infrastructure (e.g. long geographical distances, network overloads, etc.). Web caching and prefetching have been recognized as the effective schemes to alleviate the service bottleneck, minimize the user access latency and reduce the network traffic. In this paper, we express the discussion on what is the Web caching and prefetching, why we have to opt its and how to pertain of these two technologies.

Re-documenting, visualizing and understanding software system using DocLike Viewer

Visualizing the artifacts of a software system graphically has proven to improve the cognitive strategies and understanding of the subject system by programmers. This is more crucial when they need to maintain a software system with out-dated documentation or without system documentation at all. Many tools have emerged and they predominantly consist of a reverse engineering environment and a viewer to visualize software artifacts such as in the form of graphs. The tools also grant structural redocumentation of existing software system but they do not directly utilize document-like software visualization in their approaches. We propose DocLike modularized graph (DMG) method that represents the software architectures of a reverse engineered subject system graphically in a modularized and standardized document-like manner. To realize this method, we have built a prototype tool called DocLike Viewer that enables a user to redocument, visualize and comprehend a subject system written in C language that is parsed by an existing parser. From the experiment conducted we found that our method managed to statistically improve cognition of a subject system in terms of productivity and quality to solve certain types of maintenance tasks.

A Hybrid of Rule and Frame Based Approach in Solving Hajj Complex Problems

Hajj is the fifth commandment in Islamic religion that is compulsory to all able bodied Muslims to perform at least once in their whole life. Hajj pilgrims must be well prepared before going to Mecca. They may face complex problems when preparing for and performing hajj. In such situations they require experts’ guidance. Accessing information from explicit and tacit knowledge from hajj experts has some limitations in the aspects of availability, time and cost. Thus, it motivates us to propose a hybrid of rule and frame based knowledge representation approach to eliminate current drawbacks on using both methods separately. The main objective is to solve complex and layered problems with regards to hajj rituals. The proposed hajj knowledge base applies the hybrid approach due to several factors such as more structured, support large number of conditions and rules, support complex tasks, more flexible and easy to use. We implement the approach in a prototype. We conducted both lab experiment for comparative study and usability study to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The result shows that the hybrid approach never fails to solve problems given since this approach predetermine the problems and solutions before transforming the knowledge into the hajj knowledge base. The knowledge becomes cases to be used in future reasoning. In addition, the approach reduces the time to solve a problem as compared to searching static information via the Internet.

Hajj-QAES: A Knowledge-Based Expert System to Support Hajj Pilgrims in Decision Making

Most Muslim countries provide trainings to their pilgrims before departing for Mecca in order to assist them in achieving a perfect or mabrur hajj. However they probably encounter hajj related problems that require them to make immediate decisions especially while performing hajj. In such situations they may refer to hajj guide books or their fellow pilgrims. Besides, they may need to refer to hajj experts in the decision making process pertaining to more complex problems. Nevertheless, experts may not be around all the time especially while performing hajj rituals. We propose a knowledge-based approach that can capture possible problems and solutions from the experts in a prototype known as hajj Q&A expert system or Hajj-QAES. It provides an interface that enables experts to capture both simple and advanced questions. Thus, we anticipate Hajj-QAES can support pilgrims both in learning process and most importantly while performing hajj in Mecca. Such systems would be more accessible should it be installed in handheld devices such as a hand phone or a personal digital assistant (PDA).

A risk identification architecture pattern based on Bayesian network

Web projects continually face a high degree of visible developmental failure. Such inefficiencies in web projects cost losses in terms of money and time thus negatively impacting on business growth. Web development projects have an array of unique risks different from those found in traditional software development projects. Many failures associated with web projects are the consequences of poor awareness of the risks involved and the weak management of these risks. Although many approaches have been proposed to overcome this shortcoming, there is still a huge gap between these approaches and actual industry needs. This research aims to improve risk management through the design of a risk identification architecture pattern based on Bayesian network to help avoid risks in the web project, and improve the chances of managing critical risks beforehand. The paper presents a case study of the practical applications of the proposed model in an actual web project.

Current Practices of Programming Assessment at Higher Learning Institutions

Assessing students’ programming exercises has become a difficult activity that most educators encounter nowadays. The activity basically includes the tasks to construct questions and solution models in programming exercises as well as the method to evaluate students’ solutions. Existing studies particularly in the area of programming assessment still have limited discussions on current practices in conducting the activity. This paper reports the preliminary study conducted among educators who have been teaching programming courses at higher learning institutions within the northern region in Malaysia. The study aims to gauge the current practices in the construction and evaluation of programming exercises item among educators at the associated institutions. The study used a questionnaire to gather the relevant data from the selected subjects. The results reveal that both the negative and positive testing criteria are essential in constructing and evaluating programming exercises. The findings of this study will be the input to identify the adequate criteria that should be included in developing a schema of test set for automatic programming assessment.

A knowledge-based approach to facilitate queries by hajj pilgrims

Hajj pilgrims need to undergo a proper and comprehensive training before leaving their mother countries in order to perform a successful and rewarding hajj. Despite of being trained, the pilgrims might not be aware of some rules and regulations that may affect their hajj rituals or rites if the pilgrims do not follow them. They may have many queries pertaining to hajj rituals, which cannot be found in their guidebooks. They could have the queries while doing any of the rituals in the middle of the crowded areas and might need to call the experts to solve the queries. However if they cannot contact the experts at the moment, they might not be able to find the solution immediately. We propose a question and answer (Q&A) expert system using a knowledge-based approach to facilitate queries by the hajj pilgrims either before or while performing their hajj rituals. We have developed the research prototype on a Web-based application, which we suggest to be installed on kiosks located around Mecca or Madinah or in handheld devices. This paper covers the theoretical aspects of knowledge-based approach to facilitate queries by hajj pilgrims. We also discuss some basic examples of how the approach can be realized in a hajj Q&A system as a personalized e-hajj guidebook.

A point-based semi-automatic expertise classification (PBaSE) method for knowledge management of an online Special Interest Group

An online Special Interest Group is a group of people with the same interest gather to form an online community through the Internet. In certain cases where the knowledge is being manipulated, the portal of a Special Interest Group is in a form of knowledge portal. This portal allows interaction among its community members. Interaction through forum in the portal makes activities such as discussion of problems and knowledge sharing among each other possible. The need to classify users’ expertise in a Special Interest Group is crucial task. This paper describes a Point-based Semiautomatic Expertise classification method to classify users’ expertise in a Special Interest Group knowledge portal.

Com^+HDM: Extending UML Profiles for Modeling Complex Web Hypermedia Applications

Web hypermedia applications have evolved from a simple static information webpage to a more complex web application, supporting sequence of complex processes and transactional workflows. The coexistence of various design features and modeling concepts in web hypermedia engineering therefore raises new issues on modeling approach paradigm. In this paper, we present and discuss the uses of object oriented approach and UML paradigm for complex web hypermedia design. Our main objective is to propose a hypermedia design method, called Com+HDM, which is based on UML profile and its general extension mechanisms. We define and propose specific modeling elements, called stereotypes to model conceptual, navigational, and user interface aspects of complex web hypermedia applications. The novelty of our design method stands in the modeling concepts, stereotypes used, and design patterns of the modeling approaches. Some arguments and future refinements will be summarized at the end of the paper.