Many businesses depend on legacy systems, which often use outdated technology that complicates maintenance and updates. Therefore, software modernization is essential, particularly data migration between different database schemas. Established methodologies, like model transformation and ETL tools, facilitate this migration. However, these methodologies require deep knowledge of database languages and both the source and target schemas. This necessity renders data migration an error-prone and cognitively demanding task. Our objective is to alleviate developers’ workloads during schema evolution by proposing DAMI-Framework. This framework incorporates a domain-specific language (DSL) and a parser to facilitate data migration between database schemas. DAMI-DSL simplifies schema mapping, while the parser automates SQL script generation. To evaluate DAMI-Framework, we conducted an empirical evaluation with 21 developers to assess their experiences using our DSL versus traditional SQL. The study allows us to measure their perceptions of the DSL properties and user experience. The participants praised DAMI-DSL for its readability and ease of use. The findings indicate that our framework has positive impact in data migration efforts compared to SQL scripts, by reducing the lines of code and characters required for the migration by 18.3% and 35.6%, respectively.

Road traffic crashes are a global problem and represent a major cause of mortality among children and young people worldwide. Crash prediction models (CPM) play a crucial role in identifying crash-prone areas by predicting the expected number of crashes, thus facilitating the implementation of proactive measures. Previous studies have explored various CPM based on spatial analysis or modeling approaches. Nonetheless, a substantial gap still exists in exploring CPM that simultaneously address the combination of spatial units and modeling approaches, using of heterogeneous data at both the macroscopic and microscopic levels to develop models using Multi-Criteria Decision-Making and Statistical methods. Thus, the objective of this study is to develop multiple CPM using various spatial units of analysis and employing different modeling approaches, combine them, and conduct comparisons to determine the final model that best fits the data. A total of 7 models have been developed: three at the macroscopic level, utilizing Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Negative Binomial (NB), and a combination of both; one at the microscopic level using Geographic Weighted Poisson Regression (GWPR). Additionally, three combined models bring together the previous from both levels, resulting in AHP+GWPR, NB+GWPR, and AHP+NB+GWPR models. These combined and individual models have been compared, and the best-performing has been selected through a validation process. The models were calibrated using data from a case study of a highway located in the northwest of Spain for the period 2016 to 2020. Subsequently, predictions for the year 2021 were made and compared to the actual crash occurrences during that year. The results indicate that the best model is the one that combines the macroscopic and microscopic levels using the approaches AHP+NB+GWPR, which presents a Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) of 1.55, a Mean Square Error (MSE) of 2.89, does not underestimate any segments and shows a recall of 0.88. The results obtained confirm that the combination of models at the macroscopic and microscopic levels yields the best crashes predictions. This approach offers the advantage that our model, in addition to learning from historical data using statistical methods, also fits to the importance weights assigned by knowledgeable experts on the crashes propensity of the highway in the case study area using the Analytical Hierarchical Process.

Software Product Lines (SPL) enable the creation of software product families with shared core components using feature models to model variability. Choosing features from a feature model to generate a product may not be sufficient in certain situations because the application engineer may need to be able to decide on configuration time the system’s elements to which a certain feature will be applied. Therefore, there is a need to select which features have to be included in the product but also to which of its elements they have to be applied. We introduce local features that are selectively applied to specific parts of the system during product configuration. We formalize local features using multimodels to establish relationships between local features and other elements of the system models. The paper includes examples illustrating the motivation for local features, a formal definition, and a domain-specific language for specification and implementation. Finally, we present a case study in a real scenario that shows how the concept of local features allowed us to define the variability of a complex system. The examples and the application case show that the proposal achieves higher customization levels at the application engineering phase.

Abstract Even though different applications based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provide different features and functions, they all share a set of common concepts (e.g., spatial data types, operations, services), a common architecture, and a common set of technologies. Furthermore, common structures appear repeatedly in different GIS, although they have to be specialized in specific application domains. Multilevel modeling is an approach to model-driven engineering (MDE) in which the number of metamodel levels is not fixed. This approach aims at solving the limitations of a two-level metamodeling approach, which forces the designer to include all the metamodel elements at the same level. In this paper, we address the application of multilevel modeling to the domain of GIS, and we evaluate its potential benefits. Although we do not present a complete set of models, we present four representative scenarios supported by example models. One of them is based on the standards defined by ISO TC/211 and the Open Geospatial Consortium. The other three are based on the EU INSPIRE Directive (territory administration, spatial networks, and facility management). These scenarios show that multilevel modeling can provide more benefits to GIS modeling than a two-level metamodeling approach.

Digital Libraries have become popular nowadays since important libraries all over the world started distributing their collections online, properly classified, and, in many cases, with access to the digital version of the resource. These programs have been beneficial to the general population as well as research groups in fields such as language and literature. Nonetheless, since their creation is a time-consuming and costly process, small organizations are forced to rely on obsolete or poorly designed software. However, most of the features, including the data model, are shared by this type of system, with minor variations depending on the type of resources to be handled. This article presents a Software Product Line (SPL) for the semi-automatic generation of Digital Libraries (DL). Our SPL allows developers to specify which DL features are required, which will define the data model variationand the generated source code. The specification is then transformed into a fully functional DL application with the specified features that is ready for deployment. We present the feature model, the SPL implementation, and acase study on three sample projects that enabled us to evaluate the resulting software, with a focus on development effort savings.

In this paper, we present a declarative domain-specific language (DSL) for the development of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). GIS applications manage information with a spatial component, usually in the form of points, lines, polygons, or variants of these basic data types, in domains where the spatial information plays a central role. They provide the user with different functionalities on different application domains, but they are usually developed according to a common architecture and using a common set of technologies. Hence, they share a significant number of elements that make some aspects of their development quite repetitive. Our DSL allows developers to specify the entities, geographic layers, and maps of the applications using a declarative language. Then, the specification is transformed into a working GIS application. We present the language, its implementation, and a case study on two sample projects that allowed us to evaluate the resulting software, paying special attention to the savings in the development effort.

Abstract One of the main challenges of software testing research is the automated addition of oracles to the generated test cases: Whereas the automated generation of operation sequences (which is one of the essential components of test cases) is in practice a solved problem, the automated addition of the oracle (another indispensable element) is still an important problem and an open research question. This article proposes an approach to get executable test suites composed by complete test cases (i.e., they include the oracle). The core of the method is based on annotated regular expressions. The test generation process, which is supported by a tool, follows three steps: (1) creation of annotated regular expressions, where each regular expression describes a set of sequences of operations to be executed against the system under test; (2) expansion of the regular expressions to get sequences of operations, which still do not have parameter values; and (3) generation of the executable test cases with oracle. In this third step, each test case is generated with the suitable oracle, depending on the conditions specified in the regular expression.

Geographic information systems (GIS) manage entities with a spatial component (typically, in the form of a point, line, or polygon defined according to a known geographic coordinate system), and provide specific operations to process them, and specific interfaces to visualize them. Although different GIS may provide a completely different set of functionalities, they all share a common set of concepts, architecture, and technologies. Therefore, in the development of GIS there are typically large parts of the system that can be very repetitive. In this paper, we present a domain-specific language to develop GIS from high-level declarative specifications. We present a metamodel for web-based GIS, and a domain-specific language based on that metamodel. We also present a usage example that shows how the language would be used in a real scenario.

Distributing software as a service (SaaS) has become a major trend for web-based systems.However, this software distribution model poses many challenges.One of them is feature variability, that is, some features of the system may be required by some users, but not by all of them.In addition, variability is more complex than just including or excluding a feature, since different types of relationships may exist between features.The implementation of this variability, and the parametrization and configuration of the system can be complex in this context, so the development process of a SaaS system must adequately address variability management.In this paper we present an

SUMMARY Business processes have become one of the key assets of organization, since these processes allow them to discover and control what occurs in their environments, with information systems automating most of an organization's processes. Unfortunately, and as a result of uncontrolled maintenance, information systems age over time until it is necessary to replace them with new and modernized systems. However, while systems are aging, meaningful business knowledge that is not present in any of the organization's other assets gradually becomes embedded in them. The preservation of this knowledge through the recovery of the underlying business processes is, therefore, a critical problem. This paper provides, as a solution to the aforementioned problem, a model‐driven procedure for recovering business processes from legacy information systems. The procedure proposes a set of models at different abstraction levels, along with the model transformations between them. The paper also provides a supporting tool, which facilitates its adoption. Moreover, a real‐life case study concerning an e‐government system applies the proposed recovery procedure to validate its effectiveness and efficiency. The case study was carried out by following a formal protocol to improve its rigor and replicability. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The inverted index supports efficient full-text searches on natural language text collections. It requires some extra space over the compressed text that can be traded for search speed. It is usually fast for single-word searches, yet phrase searches require more expensive intersections. In this article we introduce a different kind of index. It replaces the text using essentially the same space required by the compressed text alone (compression ratio around 35%). Within this space it supports not only decompression of arbitrary passages, but efficient word and phrase searches. Searches are orders of magnitude faster than those over inverted indexes when looking for phrases, and still faster on single-word searches when little space is available. Our new indexes are particularly fast at counting the occurrences of words or phrases. This is useful for computing relevance of words or phrases. We adapt self-indexes that succeeded in indexing arbitrary strings within compressed space to deal with large alphabets. Natural language texts are then regarded as sequences of words, not characters, to achieve word-based self-indexes. We design an architecture that separates the searchable sequence from its presentation aspects. This permits applying case folding, stemming, removing stopwords, etc. as is usual on inverted indexes.

We present in this paper a web-based version of a scrabble game, describing its architecture and some implementation details. This architecture makes possible a high degree of interactivity, so that the players perceive the game as being played in real-time. Furthermore, no client-side plug-in or applet issued. These properties are achieved by means of a carefully designed architecture that uses AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XMLXML) for data exchange. This architecture guarantees low load on the server, so complex computations relative to the game logic can be done in real-time. Moreover, data structures and algorithms were designed to efficiently access a custom Galician dictionary, which supports the game functionalities. We show in this paper how this data structures and algorithms provide an efficient method to create a Scrabble move generation algorithm. We also show how the combination of these with the architecture proposed provides a fully interactive Web application that can handle complex calculations over a very large lexicon with real-time appearance.

Antique documents, which undoubtedly represent our cultural heritage and can be considered a very rich source of information, are kept in many countries only on libraries with historical archives. The antiquity and fragility of such documents makes their access very restricted. Considering that nowadays the Internet is one of the most interesting places to publish any kind of information, it seems logical to use it to both preserve our cultural heritage and provide a broader access to these documents. This work presents a virtual library that stores data, transcribed texts and digitalized pages of historic Spanish documents from the 16th–18th centuries. This virtual library has two main objectives: first, by offering a set of services, including a powerful user interface to search and browse the documents, a bulletin board, a chat, or mail boxes, the virtual library is transformed into a meeting place for researchers that use emblem books as sources of information for their studies. Second, the virtual library contributes to the preservation of emblem books. We shall describe in this work the project that led to the development of the Virtual Library of Emblem Books, showing its evolution from the beginning (simple search forms and answer pages) to its current state as a virtual library, focusing on the techniques used to build an intuitive and powerful user interface. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.