Research Methodology Research Paper Summaries

Sugandh Wafai Reg# 1171110 date: 20-11-11 Submitted to: Professor Naeem Janjua

Table of Contents
Paper 1: CMMI / SPICE based Process Improvement ................................................................................ 3 Paper 2: Requirements Engineering Practices in Very Small Software Enterprises: A Diagnostic Study ..... 4 Paper 3: An Effective Requirement Engineering Process Model for Software Development and Requirements Management .................................................................................................................... 5 Paper 4: A Software Architecture-Based Approach for Formalizing Middleware Behavior ........................ 6 Paper 5: Towards Efficient Processing of General-Purpose Joins in Sensor Networks ............................... 7

Paper 1: CMMI / SPICE based Process Improvement

By: Dr. N. Ehsan, A. Perwaiz , J. Arif , E. Mirza, A. Ishaque
Department of Engineering Management, Center for Advanced Studies in Engineering, Islamabad, Pakistan

This paper identifies the relationship between the process improvement approaches of CMMI and ISO/IEC 15504 SPICE. This paper presents the structure and effects of the two approaches. It covers suggestions for using the two models by merging and mapping into each other in order to identify the areas of the organizational processes that can be effectively improved. The paper ends concluding that both models generally conform to each other. CMMI is in a total conformity with ISE/IEC 15504. There are many overlapping areas in the two and very few differences.

Paper 2: Requirements Engineering Practices in Very Small Software Enterprises: A Diagnostic Study
By: Alcides Quispe, Maira Marques, Luis Silvestre, Sergio F. Ochoa, Romain Robbes
Department of Computer Science Universidad de Chile

This research paper presents the results of a diagnostic study that the authors performed in very small software houses in Chile. the study tries to identify the state of practice in this niche and also the potential limitations to adopt appropriate requirement engineering practices in Chilean very small software enterprises. This paper identifies the characteristics of the very small software enterprise and the problems they face. This diagnostic study also points out the consequences of poor requirements engineering practices. The paper points out two major issues to address: i) Communication between the client and companies is lacking and does not focus on the right issues, yielding imperfect specifications, scope creep, and ultimately dissatisfaction with the project. ii) VSSEs use ad-hoc RE practices. The paper also suggest possible solutions for investigation by assessing the benefits of practices aimed at improving the communication between the companies and customers and by tailoring RE practices for a better acceptance by VSSEs and alleviating their concerns that RE practices are ill-suited for them. The paper also suggests that additional studies are needed to assess the generality of their findings.

Paper 3: An Effective Requirement Engineering Process Model for Software Development and Requirements Management
By: Dhirendra Pandey, U. Suman, A. K. Ramani

This paper proposes an effective requirement engineering process model to produce quality requirements for software development. In the proposed model, the requirement management and planning phase is executed independently for an effective management of requirements. This paper also discusses requirements engineering process and the phases involved in it. First it discusses the requirements elicitation and development and the activities in the process requirements analysis and allocation and flow down of requirements. Further on the paper discusses the documentation of requirements and various steps through which requirements are documented, like, requirement identification and requirement specification. This paper also briefly discusses verification and validation of requirements and requirements management planning. This paper argues that not all software requirements engineering phases are incorporated in any single process, which is why they have proposed a new model. The proposed model introduces all important and hidden aspects of requirements engineering process. It is iterative in nature, which is why it is useful in requirements prototyping with more user participation.

Paper 4: A Software Architecture-Based Approach for Formalizing Middleware Behavior

By: Nelson Souto Rosa and Paulo Roberto Freire Cunha Centro de Informatica Universidade Federal de Pernambuco

The Middleware is the collection of distributed services that takes the primary responsibility of communicating distributed applications. A lot of distributed systems find it easier to use a ready to use middleware service rather than creating their own. It has its own advantages. Using middleware hides the complexity of communication and enables the reusability. The problem with the middleware is that it keeps the distributed application developers, unaware of its mechanisms and for middleware developers, it becomes very difficult to change the middleware or modify it because of lack of specification. In this paper the author tries to suggest the way of formalizing middleware using LOTOS, an architecture specification language. The author has identified that the middleware is easy to use for software engineers but it is very difficult to make any changes to them, because of lack of formal specification available. This paper identifies three ways in which middleware is used, and it then tries to formalize those three ways using LOTOS. This paper also presents a case study of converting CORBA as per the LOTOS specification.

Paper 5: Towards Efficient Processing of General-Purpose Joins in Sensor Networks

By: Mirco Stern, Erik Buchmann, Klemens Bhm Universitt Karlsruhe (TH), Germany

The main idea of this paper is to create a join that will take the data from two or more sensors and send it to the base station. As opposed to general purpose join, which must be able to handle any number and any kind of join conditions and join attributes, and it must also be able to efficiently handle queries with arbitrary placements of the tuples involved, the new join should be able to identify the tuples that join and only send them through the network. This new join is known as SENS-Join an energy efficient general-purpose join method for sensor networks. SENS-Join consists of a pre-computation which I identifies the tuples that join and a subsequent final result computation. The proposed design by the authors combines centralized computations at the base station with a distributed in-network filtering. The pre-computation consists of two steps: a) the join attribute values of both relations are sent to the base station where they are joined in order to create a filter. The filter specifies which values will be in the result. b) the filter is disseminated in the network. Subsequently, all tuples that match the filter are sent to the base station where the result is computed. Using the proposed join save 80% of the energy consumption, as compared to the state of the art.