Executable unit tests are a key component of many software engineering methodologies. A “green” test is one that is reported as passing (successfully testing some software feature). However, it is common for a test harness to assume that a test has passed when, in fact, it has merely not reported a failure. In this gap, where the “excluded middle” lives and thrives, we find the Rotten Green Test: A test that looks like it does something useful, but in fact does not.

This paper describes the development and delivery of a course, in close collaboration with industry, over a ten-year period. We describe the details of this collaboration, which aims to equip students with collaborative software development experience, incorporating open source, Enterprise Middleware technologies and industry best practices. In presenting our case study we share valuable insights, into the challenges and opportunities, for all parties involved. We present the reflections of all stakeholders, including; the course leader, the industrial partner, lab demonstrators, and students. We also present the results of our investigations to track the employment of our graduates over the last five years, identifying that all students who responded are employed within relevant positions or undertaking further study. Based on our successful delivery of the course, in this paper we make all tools and teaching materials available to the open source community, for delivery at other institutions. We emphasise the importance of the continued involvement of industry partners to inform pedagogical practices within Computer Science.

SUMMARY Reduction of power consumption for any computer system is now an important issue, although this should be carried out in a manner that is not detrimental to the users of that computer system. We present a number of policies that can be applied to multi‐use clusters where computers are shared between interactive users and high‐throughput computing. We evaluate policies by trace‐driven simulations to determine the effects on power consumed by the high‐throughput workload and impact on high‐throughput users. We further evaluate these policies for higher workloads by synthetically generating workloads based around the profiled workload observed through our system. We demonstrate that these policies could save 55% of the currently used energy for our high‐throughput jobs over our current cluster policies without affecting the high‐throughput users’ experience. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Reduction of power consumption for any computer system is now an important issue, although this should be done in a manner that is not detrimental to the user base. We present a number of policies that can be applied to multi-use clusters where computers are shared between interactive users and high-throughput computing. We evaluate policies by trace-driven simulations in order to determine the effects on power consumed and impact on high-throughput users. We demonstrate that these policies could save ~60% more energy for the high-throughput jobs over our current cluster policies.

Geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA) has become an area of increasing research interest in the field of remote sensing. Land Cover Map 2000 (LCM2000) of the United Kingdom represents an early use of such techniques to create a national mapping product. The work described here makes use of the object-level metadata created in the production process of LCM2000 to assess uncertainty within the database. Many mapping applications using GEOBIA techniques use segmentation algorithms to generate parcels from imagery that have a similar spectral response. These parcels are then classified to create the final map product. Here we show that by recording detailed metadata at the object level the final map can still be analysed further to assess the uncertainty in the classification of the parcel, or to re-evaluate parcels or groups of parcels for a new system of classification, by developing criteria for classification. This can be done not only using the parcels own metadata but also that from the immediate locality. Breaking down the spatial unit of the parcel, using a region-growing technique, prevents the user from being constrained by the parcels once they have been generated and potentially increases the power of any uncertainty analysis using the available metadata in a potentially more informative way. The example presented here uses these techniques to assess the potential extent of woodland within the area of the National Forest. The technique shows considerable promise in analysing greater complexity in land cover than is possible from a standard land cover map. Object-level metadata can be used to provide an analysis of uncertainty in classification and re-evaluate one parcel in the light of the properties of its neighbours. This can identify the areas where classification uncertainty may be problematic to a user and also the areas that could be more accurately described using mixed classes to represent the heterogeneity at the location.

The use of open, Internet-based communications for business-to-business (B2B) interactions requires accountability for and acknowledgment of the actions of participants. Accountability and acknowledgment can be achieved by the systematic maintenance of an irrefutable audit trail to render the interaction non-repudiable. To safeguard the interests of each party, the mechanisms used to meet this requirement should ensure fairness. That is, misbehavior should not disadvantage well-behaved parties. Despite the fact that Web services are increasingly used to enable B2B interactions, there is currently no systematic support to deliver such guarantees. This paper introduces a flexible framework to support fair non-repudiable B2B interactions based on a trusted delivery agent. A Web services implementation is presented. The role of the delivery agent can be adapted to different end user capabilities and to meet different application requirements.

The use of open, Internet-based communications for business-to-business (B2B) interactions requires accountability for and acknowledgment of the actions of participants. Accountability and acknowledgment can be achieved by the systematic maintenance of an irrefutable audit trail to render the interaction non-repudiable. To safeguard the interests of each party, the mechanisms used to meet this requirement should ensure fairness. That is, misbehaviour should not disadvantage well-behaved parties. Despite the fact that Web services are increasingly used to enable B2B interactions, there is currently no systematic support to deliver such guarantees. This paper introduces a flexible framework to support fair non-repudiable B2B interactions based on a trusted delivery agent. A Web services implementation is presented. The role of the delivery agent can be adapted to different end user capabilities and to meet different application requirements.

The wide variety of services and resources available over the Internet presents new opportunities to create value added, inter-organisational composite services (CSs)from multiple existing services. To preserve their autonomy and privacy, each organisation needs to regulate access both to their services and to shared information within the CS. Key mechanisms to facilitate such regulated interactions are the collection and verification of non-repudiable evidence of the actions of the parties to the CS. The paper describes how component-based middleware can be enhanced to support non-repudiable service invocation and information sharing. A generic implementation, based on a J2EE application server, is presented.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to determine whether physician offices located in high-minority and low-income neighborhoods have different levels of access to information technology than offices located in lower-minority and higher-income areas. DESIGN: A cross-sectional survey was conducted of pediatrics, family medicine, and general practice offices in Orange County, California. Survey data were linked with community demographic data from the 2000 Census using a geographical information system. RESULTS: Of 307 offices surveyed, 141 responded (46%). Offices located in high-minority and high-poverty areas were as likely to respond as other offices. Among responding offices, 94% had a computer, 77% had Web access, 29% had broadband Internet access, and 53% used computerized scheduling and billing systems. Offices located in minority and low-income communities had equivalent access to each technology. Offices in communities with larger proportions of Hispanics were less likely to have practice Web pages, but other uses of the Internet were not associated with practice location. Offices reported high levels of interest in online clinical systems but also high levels of concern about these systems' usability and confidentiality. Offices with Web access and those with practice management systems expressed greater interest in online clinical systems but also greater levels of concern about usability and confidentiality. These attitudes were equivalent among offices in different communities. CONCLUSION: Primary care offices located in poor and minority communities in a large, suburban county had high levels of access to and interest in Web-based systems. Physicians' offices may therefore provide a venue for online services aimed at improving health outcomes for poor and minority communities. Research is needed in other geographic regions to determine the generalizability of these findings.