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.

RiSE’s Interviews: Episode 6 – Software Reuse with Dr. John D. McGregor

After the 4th Workshop to Introduce Reuse in Enterprises (WIRE), in Recife. An interview was performed with John D. McGregor an associate professor of computer science at Clemson University, a founding partner of Luminary Software, and a Visiting Scientist at Software Engineering Institute (SEI).

This interview is available here.

I would like to thank McGregor for accepted the podcast invitation, and inform that was a very nice experience and a pleasure, interview a person with this importance for the research community.

1) Talk a little bit about your career, how do you initiated, your graduation and their relationship with industry. I would like to know about your experiences and the work at the university and industry, your challenges as a reuse practitioner and after in the industry and how as the road to be there because it is a incredible career.

2) You worked a lot with software architecture and software product lines. For you, what is the importance of the industry in the field?

3) In the software product line area, we can see the community increasing. In the last year, during SPLC, we had more than 200 participants and too many from the industry. In your opinion what are the ingredients for this success in this conference?

4) For you, is there difference between domain engineering and software product lines?

5) You had/have many projects with the industry. What are the main problems to introduce software product lines in companies? What are the risks and how to avoid them? Finally, how to define a road to start it in companies?

6) Some companies believe that software product lines can be a good approach to obtain benefits related to time-to-market cost reduction, etc. However, we do not have many specific models to show the risks, the benefits, economic models etc. So, how to show for companies that a software product lines approach can be good?

7) You had many industrial projects in the software product lines area. For you, what were the strong, weak points and main lessons learned?

8) How to introduce software product lines in a software factory working with different domains?

9) We can see in the reuse field, ideas like: modules, objects, components, software product lines, and others ones such as models, services, DSLs. For you what can be the next one?

10) For you what is the state of the practice in the area and the directions for future research?

* This interview was performed by Paulo Anselmo from RiSE Labs.

2nd RiSS - RiSE Summer School

In the last year, we created RiSS - RiSE Summer School on Software Reuse. The main goal of RiSS is to discuss the main software reuse issues with the main experts in the field from industry and university. In this year, we had the second edition and I believe that the summer school was very nice. In the program, a full discussion about software product lines, the main topic on the software reuse area. As lecturers, we had experts from industry and university from several countries around the world. This mix is part of the RiSS successful.

In this year, we had five lecturers, one Workshop on Software Reuse Efforts and an awesome panel with the lecturers answering questions from the attendants.

During three days, we were in front of the sea as you can see and with a full room composed of 100 people interested on the topic.
In this year, we had the award again for the best lecture and Paul Clements joined to Wayne Lim with the best presentation about product line architecture.
















In name of the organization, I would like to say thank you for the participants, lecturers, and authors.

See you next time!!

12th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC) - Conference Report

Last week, during September 8-12, in Limerick, Ireland, was held the 12th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC). The conference put together more than 220 researchers and practitioners from several places around the world interested in several issues about software product lines.

In the first day, initial ideas were discussed in four workshops approaching Dynamic Software Product Lines (a mix from adaptive systems, middleware and SPL ideas), Aspect Oriented and SPL (conducted by Vander Alves and his colleagues), Service-Oriented Architectures and Software Product Lines and Software Product Line Testing. In my opinion, these workshops discussed current hot topics in the field with some ones more consolidated than others. For example, the community does not have a common understanding about Dynamic Software Product Lines yet. On the other hand, some areas such as testing and AOP start to be more concrete with the integration. In addition, some tutorials were also important to disseminate the topic.

On Tuesday, we had the first keynote speaker: David Parnas. David started discussing his inspiration with the Fred Brooks’ work, and discussed his brilliant ideas about program families and other experiences. His talk was titled Multi-Dimensional Software Families: Document Defined Partitions of a Set of Products. David also discussed about the importance of documentation in software development. Another remarkable moment was his warning about the paper counting process, it was very important. David said that one important point in his papers is that it is still applicable today and makes total sense [This book is a compilation of his work. I strongly recommend it.].
For me, it was special because one day before I was introduced to him by David Weiss. I did not have much time to talk to him but it is very good when you have the opportunity to meet someone that was inspiration in the field for you. David said about his experience in Brazil years ago and other points. My first advice here is to carry on your camera all the time. [I did not have my camera there]. After the talk, David left the conference. Actually, I would like to see him more around.

Next, the sessions were started in parallel. The first one, involving feature models and the second one: SPL experiences. I decided attendant for the second one and it was good. Experiences in banks, automotive and embedded were presented. In this section, Dirk Muthig and his colleagues from Fraunhofer Institute showed their two experiences. Closing the sessions, time for lunch and discussing SPL with different people. In the afternoon sessions, information retrieval and clustering were integrated to discover product lines requirements. At the same time, it was started a panel with experts on scoping. I decided to keep my focus on the first area but I would like to see the second too. During the last sessions, after coffee, I decided to do a merge and saw a presentation about clone detection and SPL and switched for the other room to participate in a good discussion about the SPL roots and its foundations in the software reuse (during the Software Productivity Consortium) area by Grady Campbell. In the end of the day, we went to a reception in a pub with music, food and few of the Irish culture.

On Wednesday, the second keynote speaker, Luc Koch from Phillips Medical System, presented their experience in Phillips Healthcare discussing the past, present and future of this effort. Next, the sessions started and I had to decide again which one to attendant. I did a good choice and DSL and Code Generation was widely discussed. In the afternoon, I participated in a working session about the possible integration between Agile and SPL. It was very good and you can see the summary here. Finally, we ended up in the conference dinner in Irish castle. It was awesome with wine, dance, music, food and more wine.

On Thursday, the conference started with an industrial panel leaded by Charlie Krueger and other companies discussing their experiences in the field. It showed different views and impressions by the companies with different levels of expertise. After the panel, the sessions started and I participated in one about Service-Oriented Product Lines. It was very good but we can see that we have too much room for research in this direction.

After that, it was time to see some tools demo and participated in the Product Line Hall of Fame conducted by David Weiss and Paul Clements. That was awesome. The ceremony is very good with perfect sound, video, lights and sure, their presentation. Everybody loved it. Two companies were nominated. The first one was conducted by Krueger.

In the last day, we have another good agenda with some tutorials, workshops and the Doctoral Symposium. I decided to participate in the last one for two reasons: the first one because I will be the Doctoral Symposium chair in the next year, and the second one, because I was interested in seeing the new research in the field and the future new researchers. The session was conducted by Klaus Schmid and had four presentations discussing since agile and SPL until testing and aspect. The good point here was to see one work from Brazil there. After that, the conference finished.

In summary, the conference was very good with people from industry and academy from different countries, with new ideas, tools and important experiences. Next year, I hope see you in San Francisco, California.

Get the call for papers here.

34th IEEE EUROMICRO Conference

During the last week, from September 3rd to 5th, the 34th IEEE EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications was held in Parma, Italy. Two papers from RiSE group have been accepted for the conference: the first is entitled “A Case Study in Software Product Lines – The Case of the Mobile Game Domain”, from Leandro Nascimento, Eduardo Almeida and Silvio Meira; the other one is entitled “InCoME: Integrated Cost Model for Product Line Engineering”, Jarley Nobrega, Eduardo Almeida and Silvio Meira. I had the pleasure to attend to the conference and present both papers.

The conference was composed of keynote speeches and special sessions including regular papers, work in progress and posters (see the program here).

The keynote speeches were held in the mornings and the special sessions in the afternoons, handling different topics and bringing great discussions among the participants. My presentation was held in the first day of the conference, September 3rd, in the Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) track. Two special sessions occurred in this first day: Services and Product Lines. In this last special session, I presented firstly the Jarley’s work followed by my work. During both presentations relevant questions and suggestions came up contributing significantly to the progress of both works. At the end of the day, a welcome cocktail was served in the Palazzo Sanvitale, giving the participants the opportunity to taste a typical Parmesan Cheese.

In the second day of EUROMICRO conference, I participated in two special sessions in the CBSE track: OSGi and Embedded Systems. As it was not a surprise, OSGi has got one dedicated special session as it is considered the new buzzword in academia in aspects related to Component-Based Development (CBD). As the technology is being applied in different context in practice, the three works in OSGi session presented practical solutions for real problems involving bundle updates, resource monitoring in OSGi-based components and OSGi stale references. In the sequence, the Embedded Systems session included papers describing techniques for CBD in the embedded systems context. At the end of the day, we attended to a concert by Corale Verdi, a world famous chorus specialized in opera pieces, followed by a social dinner at Cavallino Bianco.

In the last day of conference, I attended to a special session also in CBSE track named Component Models. Topics related to Model-Driven Development (MDD) and compositional CBD for embedded systems were covered in this special session.

It is very grateful to see the academia recognition of RiSE’s work in different conferences around the world as you could see in older posts in this blog. I hope to see many other posts like this written by conference attendees from RiSE group.

2nd RiSS - RiSE Summer School on Software Product Lines

Hello, Folks! We proudly would like to announce the 2nd RiSS - RiSE Summer School on Software Product Lines. Based on the success from the last edition, this year, we have another edition of the conference. In the previous one, we discussed several technical and non-technical issues of software reuse. This year, the topic is Software Product Lines considered the key approach to achieve large-scale reuse. In this year, we have specialist from different countries discussing software product lines introduction, requirements engineering in software product lines, software product line architectures, software product line implementation and software product lines evolution.

We have too many discussions to choose the topics and the lecturers from academia and industry and we believe that it will be awesome. Be fast and take your seat because there are just 100 ones. In addition, you will have the opportunity to enjoy the summer in Recife with several attractions.

See you there!

3rd Workshop for Introducing Reuse in Enterprises (WIRE)

As posted before in this blog, during June 27-28 happened the 3rd Workshop for Introducing Reuse in Enterprises (WIRE) in Recife, Brazil. The workshop was composed of tutorials, panels, keynotes, and a lot of discussions (see the program here). Key researchers working on the topic were there, such as Jan Bosch (VP, Engineering Process Intuit Inc., EUA) and Paulo Merson (Software Engineering Institute, USA).
During these days, the main topic in discussion was Software Product Lines. Jan Bosch (here and here) talked a lot about his experience in Software Product Lines adoption in industry, the main problems, the benefits, the big challenges, his maturity model for SPL. At the end of the first day, professor Paulo Borba (UFPE) presented an industrial report about a big project involving several institutions and a Game Mobile company addressed to implement a product line in the game mobile domain. The results were very interesting and the opportunity to see something closer to us was very important for the attendance. Moreover, in the first day we had other two industrial reports regarding reuse in industry. In the first one, Eduardo Cruz talked about RiSE's solutions to improve the productivity in software development, covering process, methods and tools. In the second one, Eliseu Santos talked about the CPM Braxis experience in adopt reuse in it software development process, the main problems, the business decisions related to reuse practices, and the solutions adopted to face these challenges.

In the second day was held the Industrial Panel, where the attendance asked the guests about everything related to reuse adoption, software product lines challenges, legal aspects related to software reuse, non technical decision, etc. The panel was formed by Eduardo Almeida (RiSE), Eliseu Santos (CPM Braxis), Jan Bosh (Intuit Inc.), Paulo Adeodato (Neurotech) and was moderated by Eduardo Cruz (RiSE). After the painel, Paulo Merson started his talk about Service-Oriented Architecture for Quality-Oriented Architects, a practical information for the creation and evaluation of the architecture of an SOA system was discussed. Next, Paulo Merson discussed important questions to how to document product lines architectures using UML 2.0 and other solutions.
If you did not have the opportunity to be there, the workshop pictures and presentations are available in the WIRE web site. If you were there, it is time to remember more.

RiSE’s Interviews: Episode 5 – Software Reuse with Dr. Jan Bosch

During the 3rd Workshop to Introduce Reuse in Enterprises (WIRE), I performed an interview with Jan Bosch, an outstanding researcher working in the software architecture and software product lines area. Nowadays, Jan is a VP from Intuit. You can listen it here.

I would like to thank Jan for the interview and patience because of the noise at the hotel during this podcast. Thus, I will publish the questions here in order to facilitate it.

1 - You started you career as a software engineering professor in the Netherlands and after that you moved to Nokia Research Center and nowadays you are working at Intuit in the U.S. I would like to know about these experiences and the work at the university and industry, your challenges as a professor and after that in the industry as a VP and how as the road to be there because it is an incredible career.

2 - You worked a lot with software architecture and software product lines. For you, what is the importance of the industry in the field?

3 - In the software product line area, we can see the community increasing. In the last year, during SPLC, we had more than 200 participants and too many from the industry. In your opinion what are the ingredients for this success in this conference?

4 - For you, is there difference between domain engineering and software product lines?

5 - You had/have many projects with the industry. What are the main problems to introduce software product lines in companies?
What are the risks and how to avoid them? Finally, how to define a road to start it in companies?

6 - Some companies believe that software product lines can be a good approach to obtain benefits related to time-to-market cost reduction, etc. However, we do not have many specific models to show the risks, the benefits, economic models etc. So, how to show for companies that a software product lines approach can be good?

7 - You had many industrial projects in the software product lines area. For you, what were the strong, weak points and main lessons learned?

8 - How to introduce software product lines in a software factory working with different domains?

9 - We can see in the reuse field, ideas like: modules, objects, components, software product lines, and others ones such as models, services, DSLs. For you what can be the next one?

10 - For you what is the state of the practice in the area and the directions for future research?

3rd Workshop for Introducing Reuse in Enterprises (WIRE)

During June 27-28 in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil will be performed the 3rd Workshop for Introducing Reuse in Enterprises (WIRE). This workshop is inspired in a previous successful one: the Annual Workshop on Institutionalizing Software Reuse (WISR). WIRE will join together researchers and practitioners working with software reuse.

The workshop is composed of talks, tutorials, and panels. This year, Jan Bosch and Hassan Gomma will be the keynotes. The workshop is the right place to discuss practical software reuse. If you have time, combine the workshop with the São João in Caruaru one of the biggest party around the world. After the workshop, this blog will present a summary.

RiSE’s Interviews: Episode 4 – Software Reuse with Dr. Charles Krueger

It is one more interview performed during the RiSE Summer School on Software Reuse (RiSS). In the fourth one, Charles Krueger, CEO and foun der from BigLever Software and one of the most important researchers working Software Product Lines (SPL), answered 10 questions about software reuse and SPL. Watch the interview here. One more time, Thanks for Anderson Correia, Manager from TV C.E.S.A.R.

RiSE’s Interviews: Episode 3 – Software Reuse with Dr. Ivica Crnkovic

It is one more interview performed during the RiSE Summer School on Software Reuse (RiSS). In the second one, Ivica Crnkovic, one of the most important researchers working with Component-Based Developmet (CBD), from Mälardalen University, Sweden, answered 10 questions about software reuse and CBD. Watch the interview here. One more time, Thanks for Anderson Correia, Manager from TV C.E.S.A.R.

ACM/SAC 2008 Impressions

The ACM/SAC 2008 was held at Fortaleza-CE, Brazil from March, 16th until 20th. The conference achieved the record of 500 participants from 75 different countries participating and discussing the state-of-the-art in computer science. The track sessions ran in five rooms simultaneously during all day with free access for anyone who intends to participate. The most interaction among the participants, however, was observed during the poster sessions due to the fact that they were more relaxed and less formal. The Information Access and Retrieval Track (IAR), in particular, presented many interesting works mainly concerned in the relevance of the searches. Most of works have showed the use of adjacent technologies for increasing the semantics of their mechanisms such as latent semantic analysis, semantic web resources, term selection analysis and the use of location-based spatial queries. Although the track sessions joined people interested in the specific topic of research, at night, dinners contributed for creating a very pleasant atmosphere where participants could narrow relationships and implement the “true” network. In spite of this conference had been considered the biggest one in the history of ACM, a negative point was evidenced by the number of absences, in general, 25% of authors per session did not appear for their presentations, maybe due to the high cost of the flight to Brazil. On the other hand, it was great to see how research in Brazil is well-known and respected abroad. Next year, ACM/SAC 2009 will be held in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. See you there !

These impressions were shared with my roommates Márcio Ribeiro, advised by Paulo Borba (UFPE) and Rodrigo Teixeira, advised by Augusto Sampaio (UFPE). Both also had poster and paper accepted in the conference.

RiSE’s Interviews: Episode 2 – Software Reuse with Dr. Dirk Muthig

It is one more interview performed during the RiSE Summer School on Software Reuse (RiSS). In the second one, Dirk Muthig, one of the most important researcher/practitioner working with Software Product Lines (SPL), from Fraunhofer Institute, Germany, answered 10 questions about software reuse and SPL. Watch the interview here. One more time, Thanks for Anderson Correia, Manager from TV C.E.S.A.R.

Software Reuse Doctoral Symposium

Ph.D. candidates in software reuse consider submit a paper for the Doctoral Symposium on Software Reuse which is part of the 10th International Conference on Software Reuse (ICSR) in order to get feedback on the main specialist about your thesis. The deadline for submission is January 15, 2008.

If your paper had been accepted, sure you will get valuable feedback. I will be there on the Panel with Dr. Bill Frakes and Dr. Gregory Kulczycki (Chair).

RiSE’s Interviews: Episode 1 – Software Reuse with Dr. Ruben Prieto-Diaz

During the RiSE Summer School on Software Reuse (RiSS), the RiSE’s members had the opportunity to perform some interview with the keynote speakers at C.E.S.A.R. In the first one, Ruben Prieto- Diaz, the creator of facets ideas in the search and retrieval area of software componentes, from James Madison University answered 10 questions about software reuse. Watch the interview here. Thanks for Anderson Correia, Manager from TV C.E.S.A.R.

RiSE Summer School (RiSS) - Final Remarks

Yes, yesterday the RiSE Summer School – the first event around the world in this direction - came to its end. The event could put together the main names from industry and university together. During these days, Ivica, Frakes, Dirk, Wayne, Prieto and Krueger were incredible. In the second day, Dirk showed all his experience working with software product lines. It is incredible his experience and advances in the field. This guy is doing an incredible work in the field. After that, the show man, Wayne Lim, started a historical talk in software reuse. Wayne divided the room in a new shape and simulated a practical case study with roles and points of view. Wayne was brilliant.

In the last day, Prieto discussed his ideas about libraries, facets and their evolution into ontologies. After that, Krueger started his presentation. Krueger was incredible. He could show how a CEO can do a nice talk and present his product in a hands on way. Krueger was also very impressive. I think that he could discuss for all night.

After the talks, the awards were announced. The first one was the Reuse Guy. Ricardo Cavalcanti, software engineer at C.E.S.A.R, was incredible. This guy had several questions during all the talks and was awarded by audience and organizers. In the second one, Wayne Lim, was awarded with the best course in the summer school. Wayne was incredible and had incredible acceptance by the attendants.

If you did not have opportunity to be there, in the next week we will publish the videos and interviews during the conference. If you were there, it is time to remember more.

1st Day RiSE Summer School - RISS 2007

Today was the first day of the RiSE Summer School (RISS). The auditorium was completely crowded and the people very interested in the topic. We had attendants from different parts in Brazil from companies and universities. There, students, professors, researchers and practitioners had the first two courses. The first one was with Ivica Crnkovic. Ivica performed a very important talk on CBD with his experience in the field. He discussed definitions, principles, processes, etc. After that, Bill Frakes started the presentation about domain engineering. Bill achieved a very nice talk clarifying some concepts in the area, directions for research, and incredible reuse koans.

All the material will be published on the internet (here), in conjunction with the video of the presentations.

Software Product Lines in action

In this week, started the main conference involving software product lines around the world, the 11th International Conference on Software Product Lines (SPLC), in Kyoto, Japan. In this conference, the attendee will have several tutorials about the theme involving product lines adoption, domain-specific languages, reusable tests, generative programming, variability, etc. Moreover, the conference is the right place to meet the main names in the area from industry and university. About the industry, I believe that nowadays, SPLC is one of the conferences with more participants from the industry. In this direction, an important topic there is the Product Line Hall of Fame organized by our partner, David Weiss from Avaya. Additionally, the state-of-the-art is also discussed with key papers in the area. If you lost it, next year the conference will be held in Limerick, Ireland.

RiSS 2007 - RiSE Summer School on Software Reuse

Software reuse. It is sure a hot topic in software development even it started in 1968. Last week, we announced the ICSR conference. Now, we would like to announce the First RiSE Summer School on Software Reuse (RiSS), organized by the Recife Center for Advanced Studies and Systems (C.E.S.A.R) through its Reuse in Software Engineering (RiSE) group. This event will be the first one around the world in the software reuse area. There, you will have the opportunity to learn and discuss with the main researchers and practitioners in software reuse. The speakers include: Bill Frakes, Charles Krueger, Dirk Muthig, Ivica Crnkovic, Rubén Prieto-Díaz and Wayne Lim. In this school, reuse topics are related to: Domain Engineering, Software Product Lines, Component-Based Development (CBD), Organizational Economics aspects, Component Libraries and Software Reuse tools. However, the interested should be fast because the attendance is limited to 100 people.

Software Reuse on Focus - ICSR 10

Today was released the call for paper for the 10th International Conference on Software Reuse (ICSR) to be helded in Beijing China, during 25-29 May, 2008. The event is the main vehicle to learn and discuss about several aspects of reuse with the main names in the area.

Go there. Sure, one more time, the RiSE group will be there.