35th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications

On last week, between 27-29 August, it was run the 12th Euromicro Conference on Digital System Design (DSD) and the 35th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA) 2009.

Both conferences took place at the Cultural and Conference Center, in the University of Patras. The event put togther research from various places of the world. All of them interested in discussing new ideas, such work in progress, and concluded work. The RiSE group was represented by Yguaratã Cerqueira Cavalcanti, in the SEAA 2009 sessions, where he presented three works from the group, as follows:

1 - Martins, A. C; Garcia, V. C.; Almeida, E. S.; Meira, S. R. L. Suggesting Software Components for Reuse in Search Engines Using Discovered Knowledge Techniques, 35th IEEE EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA), Service and Component Based Software Engineering (SCBSE) Track, Patras, Greece, 2009.

2 - Neiva, D. F. S; Almeida, E. S.; Meira, S. R. L. An Experimental Study on Requirements Engineering for Software Product Lines, 35th IEEE EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA), Service and Component Based Software Engineering (SCBSE) Track, Short Paper, Patras, Greece, 2009.

3 - Silva, F. R. C; Almeida, E. S.; Meira, S. R. L. A Component Testing Approach Supported by a CASE Tool, 35th IEEE EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA), Service and Component Based Software Engineering (SCBSE) Track, Short Paper, Patras, Greece, 2009.

The paper "A Component Testing Approach Supported by a CASE Tool" was presented in the SCBSE: Component-based Systems Correctness and Test session. In conjunction with this work, several other articles were presented , showing really interesting approaches.

The paper "Suggesting Software Components for Reuse in Search Engines Using Discovered Knowledge Techniques" was presented in the session SCBSE: Experiences and Applications. And th paper "An Experimental Study on Requirements Engineering for Software Product Lines" was showed in the session SPPI: Empirical Approaches.

All the work presented were very interesting. People showed a lot of new ideas to solve the most well know problems regarding SCBSE, and the importance of the empirical approaches session should be emphasized, since there is a lack of well made empirical validation in most of CS work.

Oh, we had also a very amazing gala dinner organized by the Euromicro committee, in front of a very beautiful beach. There we could taste really nice Greek food, and it was also possible to see some Greek dance and to listen Greek music. Really nice!!!

The next Euromicro will take place on Lilly, France. I hope to see you there.

IEEE Software - Top List

"From its start in 1984 through 2008, IEEE Software published more than 1,200 peer-reviewed articles".

In order to celebrate 25 years of publication, they prepared a very nice list of 35 highly recommended articles based on several issues of software development. I read some of them but sure I will do the full list.

The list is here. Enjoy and spread this very useful knowledge in any project.

21st IEEE Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T)

Last week, I participated in a good conference the 21st IEEE Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T). I said good because in this conference there was 3rd Academy for Software Engineering Educators & Trainers (ASEE&T). I did not know both and especially the second was incredible. Incredible because we have lectures with Barry Boehm, Victor Basili e Dieter Rombach. That was very nice. The slides are there. You can see it.

About CSEE&T, it was very good also. It is a good conference to discuss about software engineering education and training in general. There, we had discussions about games in software engineering, agiles and formal methods, etc. The keynote speakers included Bertrand Meyer and Watts Humphrey.

I was there presenting part of our experience teaching software reuse with the paper: A Case Study in Software Product Lines: An Educational Experience. It, in general, was well received by the software engineering education community with some questions. Next year, the conference will be in India.

Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society - Special Issue on Software Reuse

Today was published the new issue the Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society (JBCS). In this special issue the focus was Software Reuse: Methods, Processes, Tools and Experiences. The guest editors were me, and the professors Silvio Meira and Bill Frakes.

The call for this special issue attracted 15 submissions and the papers were reviewed by at least three reviewers. Based on the reviewers’ recommendations, 4 papers were finally accepted, which corresponds to a relevant acceptance rate that reflects the high quality of the papers in this special issue. The papers involve aspects related to software component, software product lines and quality in software reuse.

You can see the free digital version here.

RiSE publishes a survey about software reuse in the Brazilian industry scenario

The paper entitled "Software Reuse: The Brazilian Industry Scenario", authored by Daniel Lucrédio, Kellyton Brito, Alexandre Alvaro, Vinicius Garcia, Eduardo Almeida, Renata Fortes and Silvio Meira, will be published in the Journal of Systems and Software, one of the world's most important vehicles in the Software Engineering area. The study analyzed 57 small, medium and large companies in the country, with the objective of identifying the decisive factors for adopting a software reuse program. The study aimed at answering the main doubts and concerns of the companies seeking to promote software reuse.

Similar studies were already conducted in other countries, including surveys from Bill Frakes, from VirginiaTech, Maurizio Morisio, from Politecnico di Torino and David Rine, from George Mason University. Now, with this survey from the RiSE group being published, the Brazilian scenario begins to figure as an important part of the reuse literature, serving as basis for other reuse researchers and practitioners.

Writing Scientific Papers – The problems with copy-and-paste and its derivations

Last month, I was reviewing a reuse paper for an important conference and I had a Déjà vu feeling about that one. Performing a more rigorous search on the author’s publication me and my colleagues in the RiSE group could identify the problem. The paper was about 80 percent similar to the previous one, and, that was one of the problems, since the authors did not cite the previous paper in the references list. Our decision was to notify the conference chair about the problem and the paper was discarded. We believe that this problem is increasing in the community in general [IEEE reported that 14 papers in 2004, 26 in 2005, and 47 in 2006 had this problem] and based on this fact, I started an analysis in this direction. For us, it was good because we discovered that the computer society is working hard in this direction.

The Institute, a journal published by the IEEE Spectrum Magazine,Vol. 31, No. 01, March 2007, discussed this aspect very well with [read the full paper here] some data which we should share. According to them, in a recent U.S. survey released by the Center for Academic Integrity involving 50.000 undergraduates shows that the problem is increasing. According to the center, 10 percent admitted to plagiarizing in 1999, whereas almost 40 percent said they did so in 2005. Additionally, in the last year, 21 mechanical engineering graduates from Ohio University, in Athens, were found to have plagiarized their master’s and doctoral theses [that is incredible!], and others at the school are now under investigation.

The IEEE is working to decrease this problem [see the plagiarism guidelines page]. The institute has developed some sanctions for plagiarists that range from sending a letter of apology to being banned from publishing with the IEEE for up to five years. Other solutions include tools such as Turnitin which checks papers against other manuscripts submitted via Turnitin, tutorials and flowchart that illustrates the process used to investigate a plagiarism complain.

Some professors believe that the Internet can be the roots for this problem. I agree with them in some sense, but I think that the problem is more related to a more formal education and mentoring with these students. We know that the professors have a lot of things to do, but in my opinion, this problem can be reduced in the base working in this direction in high schools and universities during scientific activities until a master or doctoral program. I agree with Professor Michael Hoffman when he said: “before students begin to write, I go over our institute’s rules of conduct, how to cite a source, and what makes a good scientific writing”. Michael's students, after understanding it, must sign a document stating that they understand the rules. I believe that we can work in some levels before writing letters like this one. But, here, just the future could show it. By the way, our work is to keep our attention with this problem.