International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering

Software-intensive information systems have a major impact on our lives, both privately and professionally. Development of these systems is a complex activity that requires the involvement of people with different competences and skills. Even though software-intensive systems have been developed since the 1960s, the success rate is still low. A major hindrance to successful system development projects is the lack of consistent terminology. Since systems development is a collaborative activity, involving not only systems developers but also domain experts and user representatives, the understanding of each other is a prerequisite for an effective collaboration. The aim of this paper is to explore and present definitions, dependencies, and relationships of the most fundamental concepts in systems development in the form of an ontology. The ontology consists of four categories of concepts: General concepts, Description concepts, Realization concepts, and Appearance concepts. The two core concepts in the ontology are Systems and Systems development.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) provides an application framework which integrates variety of technology services in a loosely coupled way. Mule Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is a widely-used ESB product that provides important functions such as message routing, message transformation, protocol-mediation, and event handling. These functions enable Mule ESB to integrate services implemented on various platforms and technologies. However, Mule ESB does not support business logic at all. Another approach to integrate services is to use a business process language such as BPEL (Business Process Execution Language). BPEL is used to define activities along with control flow. It is limited to Web service connections. One major difference is that BPEL is capable of orchestrating a business process with programming constructs, whereas Mule ESB is capable of processing messages in many protocal connections. Both BPEL and Mule ESB have different advantages. Unfortunately, neither one is powerful enough to solve some classes of business problems. In this paper we present the COMBO framework, which merges the strengths of Mule ESB and BPEL. We develop a tool to translate an extended BPEL file to a Mule ESB configuration file. The configuration file is used within a Mule ESB to execute the process that has been described within the BPEL document. We add extension modules to the standard Mule ESB for supporting BPEL functions that Mule ESB does not provide. The extended ESB has capabilities for supporting variable assignment and conditional branches in complex business processes. Our translation can cover frequently used activities in business processes. We also present case studies that use many business activities to show how the COMBO framework supports various activity translation.

With the advent of multitier and service-oriented architectures, the presentation tier is more detached from the rest of the web application than ever. Moreover, complex web applications can have thousands of linked web pages built using different technologies. As a result, the description of navigation maps has become more complex in recent years. This paper presents NMMp, a UML extension that: (i) provides an abstract vision of the navigation structure of the presentation tier of web applications, independently of architectural details or programming languages; (ii) can be automatically transformed into UML-WAE class diagrams, which can be easily integrated with the design of the other tiers of the web application; (iii) encourages the use of architectural and multitier design patterns; and (iv) has been developed according to OMG standards, thus facilitating its use with general purpose UML CASE tools in industry.

In Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMSs), the structure of the system can be changed during execution of the system. This reconfiguration can be motivated by a new requirement in the production process, or to avoid some problems caused by machines breakdowns. These systems offer a high flexibility leading to more productivity and efficiency. However, their design is more complicated implying new techniques and paradigms. The use of formal high level Petri Nets offers the ability to design these systems and to analyse or prove their properties. In this paper, we apply Reconfigurable Object Nets (RONs) for the modelling, simulation and analysis of reconfigurable manufacturing systems. We propose a formal approach, where the reconfiguration is specified as graph transformations, the simulation is realized using the RON-tool, and the analysis exploits some software tools such as TINA-tool and PIPE-tool.

This paper analyses the influence of different tool types (visual or textual) on a developer's perception of efficiency during XML Schema development. We conducted a controlled experiment that focused on discovering which XML Schema development tool type enables better efficiency and also engenders a friendlier environment for developers while developing XML Schemas. The experiment was conducted with 240 participants and divided into two practical parts (visually developing an XML Schema and manually using a mark-up language intelligent textual editor). After the experiment, the participants' opinions were gathered via a web survey. In the survey, a technology acceptance model (TAM) was used as the basis for constructing the measurement items in order to answer the following questions: (1) which tool type is preferred and perceived as better, and (2) which variables influence the user's perceptions and decisions. In this study, we searched for an optimal way of building XML Schemas. The general tendency of most participants was towards a visual tool, suggesting that visual support is perceived as more useful, and can create better results with less effort.

This paper proposes a novel strategy for formally analyzing functional requirements specification (FRS) and applies it to the Automatic Train Protection and Block (ATPB) system, which is proposed to reconstruct conventional rail lines in Japan. Based on the FRS in natural language, firstly, dynamic state transitions are extracted to express the operational mechanisms and determine the system parameters. A complete model of the ATPB system is then established using Unified Modeling Language (UML) to express the system structure graphically and explicitly. After achieving a common understanding, a VDM++ model is established formally to redescribe the original FRS of the ATPB system which is written in natural language (i.e. Japanese). Following that, in order to ensure internal consistency of the specification, proof obligations of the VDM++ model are discharged. Furthermore, a comprehensive testing is implemented to ensure that the FRS meets actual requirements. Finally, the system is simulated strictly in accordance with the formal specification. Without any runtime errors, collisions or derailments, the results of the simulation demonstrate the high quality and safety of the specification.

Websites built using Web Content Management Systems (WCMSs) usually provide their users with three types of access structures to surf their contents: indexes of categories, breadcrumb trails, and sitemaps. In addition, to find contents of his/her interest, a user can perform more or less advanced full-text searches. In this paper we propose an automatic approach to extend the navigation structure of websites developed using WCMSs with Semantic Navigation Maps (SNMs), a complementary navigation structure that enables linking and navigating contents based on their lexical similarity. The approach uses an information retrieval technique (namely, Latent Semantic Indexing) to identify lexical similarities between textual contents, and a fuzzy clustering algorithm to form groups of similar web pages. For each page of the website, a set of navigation links towards pages showing similar content and a measure of such similarity is provided. The paper presents the approach to generate SNMs, an implementation for the Joomla! open source WCMS, and the results of an empirical evaluation involving two real world websites built using this WCMS.