Sylvia Ilieva

Analyses of an agile methodology implementation

In the last few years agile methodologies appeared as a reaction to traditional ways of developing software and acknowledge the need for an alternative to documentation driven, heavyweight software development processes. This paper shortly presents an agile approach for software development of e-business applications. The approach, named eXPERT, is applicable to small teams developing projects characterised by often changing requirements, tight schedules, and high quality demands. The present article describes a case study about eXPERT approach implementation at software developing company. Experiment results based on preliminary defined series of metrics are presented and analyzed.

A Composable Framework for Test Automation of Service-Based Applications

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) provides a new generation of software architectures which attracts attention as promising way for smooth integration of loosely coupled software applications. In addition to all benefits, it adds new dimensions to the complexity of designing, building, testing, deploying and maintaining Service-based applications. Research in verification and validation applied to compositions of web services still is not mature enough. In this paper we present a framework named TASSA for testing and validation of both functional and non-functional behavior of service-based applications. TASSA provides end-to-end testing of all three layers (Service layer, Service Composition and Coordination, Business Process) of service-based applications. The framework is based on SOA principles and is composable depending on user requirements. The software developers and particularly application integrators are lacking practical testing suites and respective testing methodologies to be used both at design time and run time of the service-based applications. TASSA framework has the goal to be both practical and complete in order to satisfy these needs. It aims to reduce the cost and improve the effectiveness of testing Service-based applications by automating the testing process.

Automation of Test Case Generation and Execution for Testing Web Service Orchestrations

Testing service orchestrations is a challenging research domain due to necessity of additional testing efforts, complementing traditional software testing. Although various testing approaches and tools have been proposed, most of them provide partial solutions covering single testing activities such as test path analysis, test case generation, Web service emulation, fault injection and so on. Following the current research direction, we have developed an integrated testing framework, called TASSA, which aims to provide end-to-end testing of Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) orchestrations. This paper introduces its core capability for automation of test cases generation, execution and management implemented in an open source tool for WSDL-based testing of both single Web services and composite Web services, described with BPEL. The tools functionality includes identification of web service operations as well BPEL variables in case of service composition testing, generation of SOAP request templates, data driven testing, definition of assertions at different levels (HTTP, SOAP and BPEL variable), execution and management of test cases.

Framework for Testing Service Compositions

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) provides a new generation of software architectures that attracts attention as promising way for smooth integration of loose coupled software applications. In addition to all benefits, it adds new dimensions to the complexity of designing, building, testing, deploying and maintaining Service-based applications (SBA). Research in verification and validation applied to compositions of web services still is not mature enough. In this paper we present a framework named TASSA for testing, and validation of both functional and non-functional behavior of service-based applications. The paper focuses on one of the TASSA tools named Isolation tool. The framework is based on SOA principles and is composable depending on user requirements.

A comparison of the Essence 1.0 and SPEM 2.0 specifications for software engineering methods

In this paper we present a comparison of the draft Essence 1.0 and SPEM 2.0 specifications for software engineering methods. The comparison is based on results from the REMICS research project where we are defining an agile methodology for model-driven modernization of legacy applications to service clouds.

Challenges for Migrating to the Service Cloud Paradigm: An Agile Perspective

Migrating to the Service Cloud Paradigm implies the migration of legacy software systems to a service-oriented architecture with deployment in the cloud. Although this specific software modernization paradigm promises numerous strategic and operational advantages, it poses also many complex organizational and technical challenges, among which is the lack of mature processes, methods and techniques. This paper examines the questions of whether agile methods and techniques could be scaled to fit the migration to the Service Cloud Paradigm and how they could help overcoming the challenges of software modernization in this specific context. The research methodology presented here first extracts the challenges of the migration to Service Cloud Paradigm through a systematic literature review and then, using expert judgment, evaluates how different agile techniques, taken from Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP), could address the identified challenges. As a result, a ranked list of applicable agile techniques is presented and suggestions for their adoption in software modernization projects are drawn.

Experience-based approach for adoption of agile practices in software development projects

The agile approach for software development has attracted a great deal of interest in both academic and industry communities in the last decade. Nevertheless the wide adoption of agile methods in ever growing number of software development projects, shifting the development process of an organization to an agile one is not straightforward. Certain considerations for the applicability of agile practices should be taken into account when this transition is performed. In this paper, an approach for situational engineering of agile methods is proposed. The approach is based on the experience gained in adopting agile practices in both internal and external projects of organizations. A knowledge-base supporting the selection of agile practices that are suitable for certain project is introduced. Automated generation of appropriate software development process is included as well. Particular realization of the approach supported by SPEM-based tools is also presented in the paper.

Reliability models in architecture description languages

In recent years, component-based approach has shown a great potential in cost and time reduction of software development. Research in non-functional characteristics also becomes a major issue in this domain. For these reasons, special interest raises the ability for compositional reasoning, in a formal way, about non-functional characteristics. In this paper, we focus the attention on one of them, namely reliability. Although, in the last 20 years, there appeared a number of Component-Based Reliability Models (CBRMs), there does not exist enough efforts to relate CBRM to methods for description of software architecture. Instead, a separate research direction in Architecture Description Languages (ADLs) evolved independently. The paper shows a way to bridge the gap between ADLs and CBRMs and lay out possibilities for comparison of different CBRMs. An extension of Petri-nets and Finite-State Machines, called Generalized Nets, is used to specify software architecture.

Using GSwE2009 in the creation and modification of graduate software engineering programs and related curricula

The current ACM and IEEE Computer Society recommended guidelines for graduate software engineering programs (GSwE2009) were created in 2009 by an international group of experts from industry, government and academia. We report here on some of the early experiences using GSwE2009 to create a new curriculum in software assurance and to create and/or improve 4 different academic programs in 3 countries. All of these experiences have been positive, confirming the validity and usefulness of GSwE2009.

DDAT: data dependency analysis tool for web service business processes

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) provides a new generation of software architectures intended to integrate loosely coupled applications. In order to meet changing business goals, SOA systems incorporate multiple independent services supported by various providers. The complex structure of the resulting business processes can be defined in Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (WS-BPEL). One of the main tasks of the quality assurance specialists during software design is testing the execution of different paths of the WS-BPEL process. In order to solve that task we propose an approach that augments the WS-BPEL process for test case generation by analyzing the conditional activities concerning given path of testing.