Bug tracking is one of the prominent activities during the maintenance phase of software development. The severity of the bug acts as a key indicator of its criticality and impact towards planning evolution and maintenance of various types of software products. This indicator measures how negatively the bug may affect the system functionality. This helps in determining how quickly the development teams need to address the bug for successful execution of the software system. Due to a large number of bugs reported every day, the developers find it really difficult to assign the severity level to bugs accurately. Assigning incorrect severity level results in delaying the bug resolution process. Thus automated systems were developed which will assign a severity level using various machine learning techniques. In this work, five different types of sentence embedding techniques have been applied on bugs description to convert the description comments to an n-dimensional vector. These computed vectors are used as an input of the software defect severity level prediction models and ensemble techniques like Bagging, Random Forest classifier, Extra Trees classifier, AdaBoost and Gradient Boosting have been used to train these models. We have also considered different variants of the Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE) to handle the class imbalance problem as the considered datasets are not evenly distributed. The experimental results on six projects highlight that the usage of sentence embedding, ensemble techniques, and different variants of SMOTE techniques helps in improving the predictive ability of defect severity level prediction models.

Software defect severity level helps to indicate the impact of bugs on the execution of the software and how rapidly these bugs need to be addressed by the team.The working team is regularly analyzing the bugs report and prioritizing the defects.The manual prioritization of these defects based on the experience may be an inaccurate prediction of the severity that will delay in fixing of critical bugs.It is compulsory to automate the process of assigning an appropriate level of severity based on bug report results with an objective to fix critical bugs without any delay.This work aims to develop defect severity level prediction models that have the ability to assign severity level of defects based on bugs report.In this work, seven different word embedding techniques are applied to defect description to represent the word, not just as a number but as a vector in n-dimensional space in order to reduce the number of features.Since the predictive ability of the developed models depends on the vectors extracted from text as they are used as an input to the defect severity level prediction models.Further, three feature selection techniques have been applied to find the right set of relevant vectors.The effectiveness of these word embedding techniques and different sets of vectors are evaluated using eleven different classification techniques with Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE) to overcome the class imbalance problem.The experimental results show that the word embedding, feature selection techniques and SMOTE have the ability to predict the severity level of the defect in a software.

Process mining consists of mining event logs generated from business process execution supported by Information Systems (IS). Process mining of software repositories has diverse applications because vast data is generated during Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and archived in IS such as Version Control System (VCS), Peer Code Review (PCR) System, Issue Tracking System (ITS), and mail archives. There is need to explore its applications on different repositories to aid managers in process management. We conduct two phase surveys and interviews with managers in a large, global, IT company. The first survey and in-person interviews identify the process challenges encountered by them that can be addressed by novel applications of process mining. We filter, group and abstract responses formulating 30 generic problem statements. On the basis of process mining type, we classify identified problems to eight categories such as control analysis, organizational analysis, conformance analysis, and preventive analysis. The second survey asks distinct participants the importance of solving identified problems. We calculate proposed Net Importance Metric (NIM) using 1262 ratings from 43 participants. Combined analysis of NIM and first survey responses reveals that the problems mentioned by few practitioners in first survey are considered important by majority in the second survey. We elaborate on possible solutions and challenges for most frequent and important problems. We believe solving these validated problems will help managers in improving project quality and productivity.

Issue reporting and resolution is a software engineering process supported by tools such as Issue Tracking System (ITS), Peer Code Review (PCR) system and Version Control System (VCS). Several open source software projects such as Google Chromium and Android follow process in which a defect or feature enhancement request is reported to an issue tracker followed by source-code change or patch review and patch commit using a version control system. We present an application of process mining three software repositories (ITS, PCR and VCS) from control flow and organizational perspective for effective process management. ITS, PCR and VCS are not explicitly linked so we implement regular expression based heuristics to integrate data from three repositories for Google Chromium project. We define activities such as bug reporting, bug fixing, bug verification, patch submission, patch review, and source code commit and create an event log of the bug resolution process. The extracted event log contains audit trail data such as caseID, timestamp, activity name and performer. We discover runtime process model for bug resolution process spanning three repositories using process mining tool, Disco, and conduct process performance and efficiency analysis. We identify bottlenecks, define and detect basic and composite anti-patterns. In addition to control flow analysis, we mine event log to perform organizational analysis and discover metrics such as handover of work, subcontracting, joint cases and joint activities.

There exist a number of large legacy systems that still undergo continuous maintenance and enhancement. Due to the sheer size and complexity of the software systems and limited resources, managers are confronted with crucial decisions regarding allocation and training of new engineers, intelligent allocation of testing personnel, assessment of release readiness of the software and so on. While the area of bug prediction by mining software repositories holds promise, and is a worthwhile endeavor, the current state of the art techniques are not accurate enough in predicting bugs and hence are of limited usefulness to managers. So instead of predicting files as buggy or not we take a different viewpoint and focus on providing decision support for managers. In this paper we present a set of metrics to guide the managers in taking these decisions. These metrics are evaluated using 4 open source systems and 2 proprietary systems.

While the advent of open source code search tools have made the source code of thousands of open source software (OSS) readily accessible, thereby increasing legitimate reuse, it has also opened up the possibility of unconscientious employees plagiarizing code from OSS repositories. Plagiarism in proprietary software would not only lead to costly lawsuits, but also undermine the credibility of the organization. Hence detecting plagiarism in proprietary software is an urgent need. Though there exist a number of techniques for detecting plagiarism in student project assignments, they do not scale well in the case of large proprietary software. Especially when code snippets are plagiarized from the large number of available open source software. In this paper we propose a novel approach that applies Mining Software Repositories (MSR) based techniques to the problem of plagiarism detection. We create a programming style profile for each maintenance engineer by mining the version history and use that to detect source code commits that are likely to be plagiarized. Such suspected code fragments can be analyzed using any of the existing plagiarism detection techniques to confirm the plagiarism and ascertain the original code.

There are usually more requirements than feasible in a given schedule. Thus, it's imperative to be able to choose the most valuable ones for implementation to ensure the delivery of a high value software system. There are myriad requirements prioritization frameworks and selecting the most appropriate one is a decision problem in its own right. In this paper we present our approach in selecting the most appropriate value based requirements prioritization framework as per the requirements of our stakeholders. Based on our analysis a single framework was selected, validated by requirements engineers and project managers and deployed for company-wide use by a major IT player in India.

Large, multinational software development organizations face a number of issues in supporting software design and modeling by geographically distributed architects. To address these issues, we present CoDesign, an extensible, collaborative, event-based software modeling framework developed in a distributed, collaborative setting by our two organizations. CoDesign's core capabilities include real-time model synchronization between geographically distributed architects, as well as detection and resolution of a range of modeling conflicts via several off-the-shelf conflict detection engines.

Over the last years agents have proved to be a powerful mechanism for solving a range of problem sets. In order to fully leverage their power in a multi-agent environment with heterogeneous participants, the establishment of barrier-free communication between different parties is of prime concern. In particular, such an environment may consist of numerous entities, based on different implementations and with different nonfunctional requirements (NFRs), e.g. encryption key length or latency. Currently, interoperability between the involved parties in multi-agent systems is limited as there is no established way of elaborating a common set of NFRs. In this paper, we outline a Web services-based architecture addressing this issue of interoperability in multi-agent systems. Furthermore, we introduce a soft constraints-based approach for modeling and reconciling the NFRs. In particular, Web services serve as a tool for establishing an open system providing reliable communication between a variety of agent implementations and possible non-agent based entities while lacking the limitations of Agent Communication Languages (ACLs), which are asynchronous in nature and closed in implementation. In this way, Web services enable the desired level of openness and robustness needed for maximum interoperability. Adding a soft constraints-based approach to the Web services agent layer provides an extensible and flexible mechanism for the reconciliation of interdependent NFRs. We present a prototype implementation of an open, Web services-based framework optimizing unary soft constraints in a pareto optimal way and therefore enabling barrier-free communication in a multi-agent scenario. Due to its open nature, the framework is applicable to any heterogeneous environment in need of reconciling NFRs. To illustrate its functioning, we briefly demonstrate the framework in the potential use case of a Demand Driven Supply Network (DDSN).

Summary form only given. Service oriented architecture (SAO) is latest trend in trying to bridge the gap between business strategists and IT architects. Architecting services from an enterprise perspective does not just involve identifying and fitting pieces together, but managing and addressing cross cutting concerns or non functional requirements (NFRs). With most of the discussion on SOA being around abstracting the business functions as reuse-able services, IT architects have to additionally worry about the existing system qualities. So, a flat view over services has to be complimented with an approach of looking into these additional obligations, which adds a new dimension of complexity during the adoption of SOA. This tutorial is intended to provide our insights into managing this complexity throughout the different phases of SOA adoption, by minimizing the risk through calculated assumptions. We will initially set the context of the different phases of service adoption. We will then present an approach for managing the complexities of NFRs through earlier defined adoption phases. We will conclude with a discussion of the essential artifacts and tools for guiding service design.

The variation of contexts in which a Web service could be used and the resulting variation in quality of service (QoS) expectations makes a clear case for further research to extend Web services management platforms with more sophisticated control mechanisms to cater for differentiated service offerings. However, most Web services platforms are based on a best-effort model, which treats all requests uniformly, without any type of service differentiation or prioritization. This paper presents WS-DiffServ, a service differentiation middleware based on prioritization which leverages service requestor profile to classify service requests. We first explore the typical generic requirements of a differential QoS support in Web services management. We then present in detail the design of a priority based differentiated responsiveness platform for Web services

Today Web services have grown in context of both business to business (B2B) and business to customer (B2C) applications. Web services are the most popular mode of implementing Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). With this growth and acceptance in the industry, the role of security is crucial. Most of the existing security mechanisms in Web services like XML encryption[4], digital signatures[3], user tokens etc. provide security on one basic assumption that source of the request is legitimate. But a typical Denial of Service attacker can use these sources as reflectors and play around with the contents of a Web service body to create an attack scenario. In this paper, we propose PreSODoS - a framework to detect and prevent XML based Denial of Service (XDoS) attacks on Web services based applications. The framework relies on content introspection to detect any XDoS possibility. We use a Patricia Trie based representation so that the schemas and the request messages can be compared and validated in a performance efficient manner. PreSODoS is capable of detecting any repetitive request message and sense an attack scenario and trigger corresponding prevention mechanisms.

SOA and Web services are the hottest topics of discussion currently with regards to enterprise architecture. The technologies are maturing from a standardization perspective and the level of understanding of various aspects of a SOA is gradually rising with an increasing number of clients thinking about service implementation and adoption. This trend has generated significant interest in IT and business circles alike, owing to the promise of bridging the gap between business strategists and IT architects. Service Oriented Architecture builds upon decades of distributed computing technologies and advocates the delivery of software applications in the form of an open interface based on strict contracts, leading to loosely coupled systems which are implementation independent. This tutorial will focus on providing an overview of service oriented architecture with emphasis on the evolution of SOA from other technologies such as object oriented programming and distributed computing. Subsequently, the tutorial will delve into exploring SOA from multiple perspectives, such as the relevance of SOA in EAI, SOA features of J2EE and .NET apart from illustrating specific recommendations on migrating to SOA based on some: sample implementations.

This paper discusses a solution based on Web services and service oriented architecture involving interorganizational information systems in the context of multichannel integration in retailing industry. Distribution intensive industries such as retailing have seen a proliferation of distribution channels. This is in part triggered by the intense competition as well as the retailers' drive to reach the customers through all possible channels. As the number of channels for a retailer increases, managing the dynamics of customer behavior in the multichannel environment becomes complex. Customers have an option of interacting with retailers across a number of channels. Acquiring and retaining customers requires that relationship management applications should be able to accommodate the various channels. In this paper, we provide an overview of the benefits of using Web services in multichannel integration and related retail processes. We propose a reference service oriented architecture for usage of Web services involving inter and intra company systems for multichannel integration.

Interoperability refers to the ability of software and hardware on multiple machines from multiple vendors to communicate with each other without significant changes on either side. Web services streamline enterprise application integration by making it easier to tie applications running on heterogeneous platforms together helping them communicate correctly, effectively and at reduced cost. The difficulty of integration is a function of the level of interoperability between the applications being integrated. Even though there are established standards for Web services messaging (SOAP), description (WSDL) and discovery and registry (UDDI), custom implementations of these protocols by individual vendors has led to various interoperability issues. Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) recently released Basic Profile 1.0, addressing the interoperability issues with core Web services standards. In this paper, we look at some of the key Web services interoperability issues pointed out by practitioners and critically examine how Basic Profile 1.0 addresses them. Further we also examine some limitations of the profile. We conclude by evaluating a popular Web services implementation against the profile and present our observations.

Recent technologies including Web services, business process modeling tools, and grid computing, are key to facilitating business agility. Web services standardize application interfaces to ease inter-application communication, and facilitate standards based business process management. Grid computing provides a way for virtualizing heterogeneous resources to collectively yield a computationally powerful IT environment with tremendous promise in improving utilization levels of individual IT resources. By leveraging Web services, a standards based grid is being envisaged in the OGSA model. In this paper, we explore the complementarities of Web services and business process management (BPM) technologies. We also lay the foundation for using Web services based BPM in solving orchestration and workflow issues in grid computing.