Initial observations of adopting behavior-driven development for an Internet of Things System in an agile process context is reported. Since an IoT system usually comprises multiple subsystems, the problem frames approach is adopted alongside to define the specifications that capture the overarching behaviors at the system level and constituent behaviors at the subsystem and component levels. Development of specifications based on the two practices is illustrated with the development case of a Smart Cone system.

Integer errors continue to create vulnerabilities. In fact, Integer Overflow or Wraparound is listed at position 11 in the 2020 CWE Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Weaknesses. This poster describes the Expression Evaluation (EE) visualization tool that helps students understand the type conversions that take place implicitly within a C program. This tool depicts step-wise the coercions that take place within the evaluation of a user specified expression with mixed integer type operands. The system enables students to create unlimited examples to test their understanding. The tool was evaluated in the classroom and shown to be easy to use and effective.

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a snapshot of the current status of our two-phase-eight-year nation-wide effort in improving the software engineering education in Taiwan. In the first phase of this program (2004 - 2008), the number of universities that regularly offer software engineering courses grew from 63 to 92 while the number of offered courses grew from 159 to 406. The main objective of the second phase (2010 - 2014) was set to establish and implement the core competences of software engineering in our module programs. Seven capabilities are identified to form the SE core competences, including think computationally, teamwork in software development and maintenance, build abstractions and perform problem domain decompositions, analyze and model complex systems involved various domains, develop, review and verify complex systems involved various domains, create user-friendly interfaces based on user experiences, and manage and evolve large-scale design and development efforts. Multiple actions have also been taken to enhance the core competences of students in ICT-related programs in Taiwan, including developing practical course material, holding training courses for the educators, providing onsite lecturing support, and delivering industrial-oriented practical courses.

Software lifecycle is the process by which software is conceived, developed, maintained, and decommissioned. To the development team, initiating effective application lifecycle management (ALM) is challenging for three reasons. (1) ALM definition is hard since lifecycle activities are interdependent and complex in nature that involves product, project, people, process, tool and technology. (2) ALM activities require the support of correctly tailored tools. (3) Effective ALM activities execution requires discipline. To take on the three challenges of initiating ALM, we present a new approach called Rapid Application Lifecycle Management (RALM). RALM provides a reference model with a number of templates for ALM activity definition. Once customized, the templates are converted into platform-specific process definition files with tool support. Observations from a field application of RALM are presented and discussed.

Several approaches have been proposed to support Design by Contract in Java. In this paper, through the use of markers which are predefined dummy methods and attributes, a new approach to annotate contracts is presented. The annotated programs can be directly compiled by standard Java compilers. A bytecode instrumentor is developed to manipulate the bytecode to inject contract evaluation instructions and make the contracts executable at runtime. The marker approach avoids two primary problems found in the existing practices: source compatibility that depends on language extension and symbolic barrier that leaves contracts and their targets unrelated. It also facilitates streamlined integration with IDEs and improves readability as well as writability of the contractannotated programs.

Requirements development and validation are generally agreed to be a difficult task. Current software development methodologies rely on various forms of incremental and iterative strategies to complete the task. While regarded to be effective, the strategies become limited in software outsourcing, which often requires the outsourcer to complete and validate requirements before construction work by the supplier can begin. This article presents pseudo software, a conceptual framework for iterative requirements development and validation that facilitates wide stakeholder participation by realizing tangibility of the software under construction in the early stage through simulation. Requirements are recorded in highly readable forms, including GUI mockups for presentation and free-format text descriptions for computational logic. Tool support for pseudo software and its applications are discussed.

A new feature of curves pertaining to the acceptance/rejection decision in curve detection is proposed. The feature measures a curve's distinctiveness in its neighborhood, which is modeled by a one-parameter family of curves. A computational framework based on the Hough transform for extracting the distinctiveness feature is elaborated and examples of feature extractors for the circle and the ellipse are given. It is shown that the proposed feature can be extracted efficiently and is effective in separating signals from false positives. Experimental results with circle and ellipse testing that strongly support the efficiency and effectiveness claims are obtained. The results further demonstrate that the proposed feature exhibits good noise resiliency.

Exception handling design is an important but difficult subject in software development. In Java software development, the use of checked exceptions exacerbates the difficulty. In this paper, through the use of an architectural model, we show that an application can benefit from a separation of exceptions in terms of recoverability beyond distinguishing checked and unchecked exceptions. The architectural model helps evaluate and balance conflicting quality requirements such as modifiability, readability, and fault tolerance. Facilitated by object-oriented utility libraries, the architecture model guides the design from early stage of the development; an example is given to illustrate its use.

IMS learning design is an e-learning specification that supports collaborative learning through multiple roles. In this paper, we propose an architectural model for implementing a sequencing engine for IMS learning design. A number of courses are constructed to test our implementation and to validate the standard. Our findings show that the use and semantics of a number of tags should be clarified. Also, the lack of a testing suite impedes the adoption of IMS learning design.