Papers by Alessandro Bianchi
Software systems are affected by degradation as an effect of continuous change. Since late interv... more Software systems are affected by degradation as an effect of continuous change. Since late interventions are too much onerous, software degradation should be detected early in the software lifetime. Software degradation is currently detected by using many different complexity metrics, but their use to monitor maintenance activities is costly. These metrics are difficult to interpret, because each emphasizes a particular aspect of degradation and the aspects shown by different metrics are not orthogonal. The purpose of our research is to measure the entropy of a software system to assess its degradation. In this paper, we partially validate the entropy class of metrics by a case study, replicated on successive releases of a set of software systems. The validity is shown through direct measures of software quality such as the number of detected defects, the maintenance effort and the number of slipped defects.
Results show that no significant differences exist among the distributed and collocated work with... more Results show that no significant differences exist among the distributed and collocated work with respect to the ability to detect defects.
This chapter faces the problem of identifying a set of parameters characterizing COTS products. T... more This chapter faces the problem of identifying a set of parameters characterizing COTS products. The need for such a characterization derives from the problem to identify and select among many available products the ones which are appropriate for a specific software system. The characterization should allow to foresee the integration and maintenance effort in target systems developed with a COTS-based approach. In our study we identified a set of COTS product parameters and executed an empirical study for evaluating if there exists any statistically significant correlation among them and the effectiveness of development and maintenance process of two industrial software projects. The obtained results show that COTS products characterization can be used to foresee integration and maintenance effort of the target system. The analysis also shows the need to continue the on-field experimentation, in order to make the learned lessons effective and applicable.
La comunità dell’Ingegneria del Software si sta dedicando allo sviluppo di approcci alla realizza... more La comunità dell’Ingegneria del Software si sta dedicando allo sviluppo di approcci alla realizzazione e manutenzione di applicazioni di impresa innovativi, nei quali è centrale il riuso di componenti software preesistenti. Tale pratica, seppur promettente, pone nuovi interrogativi. Il lavoro propone un insieme di parametri di caratterizzazione delle componenti mediante il quale condurre indagini empiriche per valutare l’impatto che le componenti hanno in fase di manutenzione. L’insieme proposto include oltre a quelli già presentati in precedenza anche nuovi parametri e ne specializza la caratterizzazione rispetto alla tipologia delle componenti, che possono essere sia Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) che componenti Open Source.
Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2015
State Machines (ASMs) represent a general model of computation which subsumes all other classic c... more State Machines (ASMs) represent a general model of computation which subsumes all other classic computational models. Since the notion of ASM state naturally captures the classic notion of program state, ASMs are suitable to be verified through a predicate abstraction approach. The aim of this paper is to discuss how predicates over ASM states can support the formal verification of ASM-based models. The proposal can overcome the main limitations that penalize traditional model checking techniques applied to ASMs.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2003
This chapter faces the problem of identifying a set of parameters characterizing COTS products. T... more This chapter faces the problem of identifying a set of parameters characterizing COTS products. The need for this characterization derives from the problem to identify and select among many available products the ones which are appropriate for a specific software system. The characterization has the goal to foresee the integration and maintenance effort in COTS based systems developed with a COTS-based approach. In our study we propose a set of COTS product parameters and perform an empirical study in the context of two industrial software projects to assess these parameters. The assessment aims at finding any statistically significant correlation among the proposed parameters and the effectiveness of development and maintenance process. The obtained results show that our COTS products characterization can be used to foresee integration and maintenance effort of the COTS based system. The analysis also shows the need to continue the on-field experimentation, in order to make the learned lessons effective and applicable.
Proceedings 10th International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing, 1999
This paper discusses the design of the Image Compression Laboratory (ICL), a visual environment s... more This paper discusses the design of the Image Compression Laboratory (ICL), a visual environment supporting radiologists in interactively compressing medical images but still maintaining the diagnostic information. In ICL lossy image compression techniques and the interactive image interpretation approach are merged following the cooperative visual environment approach. In this way the radiologists themselves can perform the compression using their professional
Proceedings 26th Annual International Computer Software and Applications, 2002
A transferable quality model must be general. This implies that only the high level characteristi... more A transferable quality model must be general. This implies that only the high level characteristics can be transferred into different settings and that the refinement of the characteristics into metrics must be operated according to the context peculiarities. In spite of the amount of quality ...
Seventh European Conference onSoftware Maintenance and Reengineering, 2003. Proceedings., 2003
It is known that during maintenance activities the system quality tends to degrade. This work pre... more It is known that during maintenance activities the system quality tends to degrade. This work presents an investigation on field carried out on two industrial projects with the aim of comparing the efficacy of the "full reuse" compared to the "iterative enhancement" maintenance process. The results of the work confirm the greater efficacy of the first process in slowing down the degradation of software quality. Furthermore, through the analysis of both process and product metrics, we have pointed out that monitoring maintenance performances is a poor indicator of system quality degradation. In fact, when the reduction of maintenance performance becomes important, the quality has degraded considerably and to a point that ordinary maintenance may no longer be taken into account.
Proceedings Seventh Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, 2000
This paper presents an iterative approach to database reengineering, starting from the assumption... more This paper presents an iterative approach to database reengineering, starting from the assumption that for the user organization, the data are the most important asset in a legacy system. The most innovative feature of the proposed approach, in comparison with other rival approaches, is that it can eliminate all the ageing symptoms of the legacy data base. The new database can therefore be readily used to integrate data used by new functions introduced in the legacy software. Moreover, the approach allows all the services offered by modern data base management systems to be exploited. To test the effectiveness of the process described in this paper, it was experimented on a real legacy system; the results reported in the paper confirm its effectiveness.
Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance. ICSM 2001, 2001
Abstract This paper describes a process of gradual reengineering of the procedural components of ... more Abstract This paper describes a process of gradual reengineering of the procedural components of a legacy system. The process is integrated and completed by the data reengineering process analyzed in a previous paper by the same authors. The proposed method enables the ...
21st IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM'05), 2005
Software reuse can become a key factor for improving and guaranteeing software quality, when adop... more Software reuse can become a key factor for improving and guaranteeing software quality, when adopted systematically all along the software process. The main characteristic of reuse-oriented processes is that they require a common repository for storing, searching and retrieving software modules. Moreover, reuse occurs systematically and is an integrated part of the process. Previous works of the same authors have empirically shown that the Full Reuse Maintenance model (FRM) slows down quality degradation following to maintenance interventions on a software system. This work is a further step in the investigation towards demonstrating how Reuse Oriented Development (ROD) impacts on software quality; how it favors FRM model; and finally, whether reuse-oriented development influences productivity, and as so, is more efficient. This has been done through a case study carried out on two ongoing industrial projects. Results are positive and support our research hypotheses.
Proceedings Seventh International Software Metrics Symposium, 2000
Software systems are affected by degradation as an effect of continuous change. Since late interv... more Software systems are affected by degradation as an effect of continuous change. Since late interventions are too much onerous, software degradation should be detected early in the software lifetime. Software degradation is currently detected by using many different complexity metrics, but their use to monitor maintenance activities is costly. These metrics are difficult to interpret, because each emphasizes a particular aspect of degradation and the aspects shown by different metrics are not orthogonal. The purpose of our research is to measure the entropy of a software system to assess its degradation. In this paper, we partially validate the entropy class of metrics by a case study, replicated on successive releases of a set of software systems. The validity is shown through direct measures of software quality such as the number of detected defects, the maintenance effort and the number of slipped defects.
Global software development has a big impact on current software engineering practices. Current q... more Global software development has a big impact on current software engineering practices. Current quality frameworks and improvement strategies need to be adapted for distributed software engineering environments. GQM is an approach to measurement that can be used within the context of a more general strategy to software quality improvement. We present a variant of GQM, called D-GQM (Distributed- GQM), whose
The aim of this work is to point out through experimentation some of the problems that arise with... more The aim of this work is to point out through experimentation some of the problems that arise with distributed software development, such as the need for new techniques and methods for managing projects and processes, so as to achieve better assignment of activities among the various working groups, together with efficient communication among the members of each team. The paper
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Papers by Alessandro Bianchi