Papers by Maria Tortorella
Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Software Technologies, 2017
The availability of quality models and metrics that permit an objective evaluation of the quality... more The availability of quality models and metrics that permit an objective evaluation of the quality level of a software product is a relevant aspect for supporting software engineers during their development tasks. In addition, the adoption of software analysis tools that facilitate the measurement of software metrics and application of the quality models can ease the evaluation tasks. This paper proposes a preliminary investigation on the behaviour of existing software metric tools. Specifically, metrics values have been computed by using the different software analysis tools for three software systems of different sizes. Measurements show that, for the same software system and metrics, the software analysis tools provide different values. This could impact on the overall software quality evaluation for the aspect based on the selected metrics.
Software Quality. Complexity and Challenges of Software Engineering in Emerging Technologies, 2016
Reuse of software components depends on different aspects of software artifacts. In particular, s... more Reuse of software components depends on different aspects of software artifacts. In particular, software quality should be taken into account before considering an open source software for being adopted in an operative context. In this direction, this paper presents a study aimed at assessing the quality of open source software projects along the software project history. The study entails the gathering and analysis of relevant information of some open source projects. The analysis of the considered software projects required the evaluation of the quality of the software products, their attractiveness and community trustworthiness. The related trends are presented as results.
Proceedings of the 11th International Joint Conference on Software Technologies, 2016
Enterprises need to follow the rapid evolution of their business processes and promptly adapt the... more Enterprises need to follow the rapid evolution of their business processes and promptly adapt the existing software systems. A preliminary requirement is that the software components are available, working and interoperable. A widely diffused solution is moving the adopted software solution toward an evolving architecture, such as the services-based one. The objective of this paper is to propose an approach for supporting the identification of reusable components in software systems by analyzing the business process using them. The proposed solution is based on the idea that a Service Oriented Architecture can be obtained by using a wide range of existing pieces of code. Such code components can be extracted from the existing software systems by identifying those ones supporting the business activities. Then, the paper proposes an approach for identifying the software components supporting a business process activity and candidate them for implementing a service. With this purpose, the recovery of the links existing between the business process model and the supporting software systems is exploited. An impact analysis activity is also performed starting from the initial traced components.
Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2010
Software systems mainly considered from enterprises for dealing with a business process automatio... more Software systems mainly considered from enterprises for dealing with a business process automation belong to the following two categories: Workflow Management Systems (WfMS) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The wider diffusion of ERP systems tends to favourite this solution, but there are several limitations of most ERP systems for automating business processes. This paper reports an empirical study aiming at comparing the ability of implementing business processes of ERP systems and WfMSs. Two different case studies have been considered in the empirical study. It evaluates and analyses the correctness and completeness of the process models implemented by using ERP and WfM systems.
Seventh European Conference onSoftware Maintenance and Reengineering, 2003. Proceedings.
The enactment of eBusiness processes requires the effective usage of the existing legacy applicat... more The enactment of eBusiness processes requires the effective usage of the existing legacy applications in the eBusiness initiatives. Therefore, technical issues are not enough to drive the evolution of the existing legacy applications, but it is necessary to consider also problems concerning the perspectives, strategies, and businesses of the enterprises. In particular, there is a strict relationship between the evolution of the legacy system and the evolution of the eBusiness process. In order to support this evolution this paper proposes an approach to extract the requirements for a legacy system evolution from the requirements of the eBusiness process evolution. The proposed approach aims to characterize the software system within the whole environment in which its evolution will be performed It provides a set of parameters that are useful to address technical, process, and organizational issues.
Comprehending a software system essentially means recognising which functionalities it implements... more Comprehending a software system essentially means recognising which functionalities it implements in a given application domain. This problem can be solved by localizing in the code the software components implementing these functionalities. Tipically a software system o ers two di erent views Wil]. The rst view is close to the opinion users have about the system: users look at the system as a set of partially and/or completely speci ed functionalities, which can be de ned as user view. This view consists of the set ...
Achieving quality in software: proceedings of the Third International Conference on Achieving Quality in Software, 1996, 1996
Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice, 2001
To improve a working process, one or more process components can be replaced by innovative ones. ... more To improve a working process, one or more process components can be replaced by innovative ones. The literature provides a possible source of innovative process components. However, it is often difficult to evaluate whether a particular innovative process component satisfying an improvement goal can be introduced to replace a process component in the working software process to be improved. In previous works, the authors of this paper proposed a characterization and evaluation framework to address the above problem. To improve the usability of the framework, a scenario was defined for each question to help the user answer it methodically. The experiment presented in this paper aims to verify if a scenario-based reading technique improves the usability of the framework. The results obtained show that the technique proposed makes assessment of which process components of a working process are candidates for making innovation more reliable. Moreover, the scenario-based reading technique is user independent and only a little training may be sufficient to sensibly improve the effectiveness of use of the scenarios. The trustworthy results of this technique and its independence of the user's previous knowledge and ability ensure that it can be applied methodically.
Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering, 2018
A relevant aspect of development and maintenance tasks is the evaluation of the software system q... more A relevant aspect of development and maintenance tasks is the evaluation of the software system quality. Measurement tools facilitate the measurement of software metrics and application of the quality models. However, differences and commonalities exist among the evaluation results obtained by the adoption of different measurement tools. This does not allow an objective and unambiguous evaluation of a software product quality level. In this direction, this paper proposes a preliminary investigation on the impact of measurement tools on the evaluation of the software maintainability metrics. Specifically, metrics values have been computed by using different software analysis tools for three software systems of different size. Measurements show that the considered measurement tools provide different values of metrics evaluated for the same software system.
Since 2008, when it was first cited, blockchain technology represents an innovation from both a s... more Since 2008, when it was first cited, blockchain technology represents an innovation from both a structural and application point of view. Since then, thanks to its peculiarities and capabilities of implementing smart contracts, blockchain technology has undergone a strong development in different application domains. The interest around this technology also brought to the definition of several platforms facilitating its use and application. Due to their variety, , choosing the most suitable blockchain platform to support a specific business need represents a strategic problem. This paper proposes an analysis for the definition of an evaluation framework and related quality attributes, helping to characterize and compare different blockchain platforms for identifying the most suitable one to the implementation of smart contracts in a specific business context. The analysis of a set of blockchain platforms is proposed for discussing the applicability and use of the proposed framework
Proceedings of the 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2018
Open source software projects represent a significant source of existing pieces of software to be... more Open source software projects represent a significant source of existing pieces of software to be identified and used to implement new or emerging requirements. However, the high complexity of the existing software systems makes difficult the identification of software components to be reused in other systems and the evaluation of their quality. This paper proposes an approach aiming at identifying the core components of a software system and proposing and evaluating some metrics for measuring the evolution of their architecture instability across multiple releases. Then, the paper analyses how the architecture of core components of a software system evolves respect to the whole system. It also investigates the different factors influencing the instability of the core components and it verifies if it decreases across multiple releases assumed that this is a good indication that they can constitute a good candidate to be reused.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2016
Quality models and metrics permit an objective evaluation of the quality level of a software prod... more Quality models and metrics permit an objective evaluation of the quality level of a software product. Moreover, the adoption of software analysis tools that facilitate the measurement of software metrics can ease the evaluation tasks. However, the available tools do not interpret and measure metrics in the same manner. This paper proposes a preliminary investigation on the behavior of existing software metric tools and shows that the evaluation of the metrics of a software system by using different analysis tools provides different values. This aspect could impact on the overall software quality evaluation.
Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design, 2015
Enterprise necessitates to follow the rapid evolution of its business processes and rapidly adapt... more Enterprise necessitates to follow the rapid evolution of its business processes and rapidly adapt the existing software systems to its arising needs. A preliminary requirement is that the software subsystems are available and interoperable. A widely diffused solution is moving the adopted software solutions toward an evolving architecture, such as the one based on services. The objective of the research presented in this paper is to support the reuse of the existing software systems in a Service Oriented Architecture. The proposed solution is based on the idea that a Service Oriented Architecture can be obtained from a wide range of existing pieces of software. Such code components can be extracted from the existing software systems by identifying those ones supporting the business activities. Then, the paper proposes an approach for identifying the parts of software candidate to support a business process activity and it is based on the recovering of the links existing between the model of a business process and the supporting software systems. .
Procedia Computer Science, 2015
Enterprise Open Source Software is continuously gaining acceptance in business organizations. Thi... more Enterprise Open Source Software is continuously gaining acceptance in business organizations. This is essentially due to the understanding of the potential benefits deriving from the adoption of OSS project solution. Indeed, Open Source Software solutions offer great opportunities for cost reduction and quality improvement, especially for small and medium enterprises that typically have to address major difficulties due to the limited resources. In this direction it is relevant understand and gain knowledge regarding the evolution of such software over systems the time. This paper report results of an empirical study aimed at analyzing the evolution of most relevant ERP open source system during their lifetime.
Proceedings International Conference on Software Maintenance
To acquire refined seismic targets, the use of more accurate and more precise methods of seismic ... more To acquire refined seismic targets, the use of more accurate and more precise methods of seismic signal processing is crucial. Novel seismic processing approach is even more important in case of the complex geology of mountainous regions (e.g., Carpathians, Carpathian Foredeep) where sub-vertical layering of varying rock complex can be found, but also in case of old seismic data reprocessing (especially when the signal-to-noise ratio and general quality are low). Regardless of many research papers and significant progress in seismic processing techniques, a properly processed and interpreted seismic image is still hardly affordable for this region. Obtaining a new value in seismic data processing is a core function of the presented research. The use of dip-guided filtering combined with beam partitioned analysis and Z-domain dip analysis for reprocessing of 3D and 2D seismic data from the Carpathians region has been studied.
Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Software Engineering and Applications, 2015
Evaluation of software quality is one of the main challenges of software engineering. Several res... more Evaluation of software quality is one of the main challenges of software engineering. Several researches proposed in literature the definition of quality models for evaluating software products. However, in the context of Free/Open Source software, differences in production, distribution and support modality, have to be considered as additional quality characteristics. In particular, software reliability should be taken into account before selecting software components. In this direction, this paper evolves a quality model for Free/Open Source Software projects, called EFFORT-Evaluation Framework for Free/Open souRce projects for including reliability aspects and presents an empirical study aimed at assessing software reliability and its evolution along the software project history.
Proceedings 1994 IEEE 3rd Workshop on Program Comprehension- WPC '94
Thia paper presents th,e results of experiments carried out on identifyinq Abstract Data Types in... more Thia paper presents th,e results of experiments carried out on identifyinq Abstract Data Types in existinq code by an, improved a1.qorith.m described in, previous work. It presents a brief description of th.e im,proved al.qorith,m and then deacribea th,e reault.9 of thee experiments. It addresses issues i n proqmm, compreh.emion from the perspective of software reuse.
Uploads
Papers by Maria Tortorella