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Title: Detection of change-prone telecommunications software modules.
Creator: Weir, Ronald Eugene., Florida Atlantic University, Khoshgoftaar, Taghi M., College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: Accurately classifying the quality of software is a major problem in any software development project. Software engineers develop models that provide early estimates of quality metrics which allow them to take actions against emerging quality problems. The use of a neural network as a tool to classify programs as a low, medium, or high risk for errors or change is explored using multiple software metrics as input. It is demonstrated that a neural network, trained using the back-propagation...
Show moreAccurately classifying the quality of software is a major problem in any software development project. Software engineers develop models that provide early estimates of quality metrics which allow them to take actions against emerging quality problems. The use of a neural network as a tool to classify programs as a low, medium, or high risk for errors or change is explored using multiple software metrics as input. It is demonstrated that a neural network, trained using the back-propagation supervised learning strategy, produced the desired mapping between the static software metrics and the software quality classes. The neural network classification methodology is compared to the discriminant analysis classification methodology in this experiment. The comparison is based on two and three class predictive models developed using variables resulting from principal component analysis of software metrics.
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Date Issued: 1995
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/15183
Subject Headings: Computer software--Evaluation, Software engineering, Neural networks (Computer science)
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Modeling software quality with classification trees using principal components analysis.
Creator: Shan, Ruqun., Florida Atlantic University, Khoshgoftaar, Taghi M., College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: Software quality models often have raw software metrics as the input data for predicting quality. Raw metrics are usually highly correlated with one another and thus may result in unstable models. Principal components analysis is a statistical method to improve model stability. This thesis presents a series of studies on a very large legacy telecommunication system. The system has significantly more than ten million lines of code written in a high level language similar to Pascal. Software...
Show moreSoftware quality models often have raw software metrics as the input data for predicting quality. Raw metrics are usually highly correlated with one another and thus may result in unstable models. Principal components analysis is a statistical method to improve model stability. This thesis presents a series of studies on a very large legacy telecommunication system. The system has significantly more than ten million lines of code written in a high level language similar to Pascal. Software quality models were developed to predict the class of each module either as fault-prone or as not fault-prone. We found out that the models based on principal components analysis were more robust than those based on raw metrics. We also found out that software process metrics can significantly improve the predictive accuracy of software quality models.
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Date Issued: 1999
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/15714
Subject Headings: Principal components analysis, Computer software--Quality control, Software engineering
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Modeling software quality with TREEDISC algorithm.
Creator: Yuan, Xiaojing, Florida Atlantic University, Khoshgoftaar, Taghi M., College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: Software quality is crucial both to software makers and customers. However, in reality, improvement of quality and reduction of costs are often at odds. Software modeling can help us to detect fault-prone software modules based on software metrics, so that we can focus our limited resources on fewer modules and lower the cost but still achieve high quality. In the present study, a tree classification modeling technique---TREEDISC was applied to three case studies. Several major contributions...
Show moreSoftware quality is crucial both to software makers and customers. However, in reality, improvement of quality and reduction of costs are often at odds. Software modeling can help us to detect fault-prone software modules based on software metrics, so that we can focus our limited resources on fewer modules and lower the cost but still achieve high quality. In the present study, a tree classification modeling technique---TREEDISC was applied to three case studies. Several major contributions have been made. First, preprocessing of raw data was adopted to solve the computer memory problem and improve the models. Secondly, TREEDISC was thoroughly explored by examining the roles of important parameters in modeling. Thirdly, a generalized classification rule was introduced to balance misclassification rates and decrease type II error, which is considered more costly than type I error. Fourthly, certainty of classification was addressed. Fifthly, TREEDISC modeling was validated over multiple releases of software product.
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Date Issued: 1999
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/15718
Subject Headings: Computer software--Quality control, Computer simulation, Software engineering
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Classification of software quality using tree modeling with the SPRINT/SLIQ algorithm.
Creator: Mao, Wenlei., Florida Atlantic University, Khoshgoftaar, Taghi M., College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: Providing high quality software products is the common goal of all software engineers. Finding faults early can produce large savings over the software life cycle. Therefore, software quality has become the main subject in our research field. This thesis presents a series of studies on a very large legacy telecommunication system. The system has significantly more than ten million lines of code written in a high-level language similar to Pascal. Software quality models were developed to...
Show moreProviding high quality software products is the common goal of all software engineers. Finding faults early can produce large savings over the software life cycle. Therefore, software quality has become the main subject in our research field. This thesis presents a series of studies on a very large legacy telecommunication system. The system has significantly more than ten million lines of code written in a high-level language similar to Pascal. Software quality models were developed to predict the class of each module either as fault-prone or as not fault-prone. We used the SPRINT/SLIQ algorithm to build the classification tree models. We found out that SPRINT/ SLIQ as an improved CART algorithm can give us tree models with more accuracy, more balance, and less overfitting. We also found that software process metrics can significantly improve the predictive accuracy of software quality models.
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Date Issued: 2000
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/15767
Subject Headings: Computer software--Quality control, Software engineering, Software measurement
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Analyzing software repository data to synthesize and visualize relationships between development artifacts.
Creator: Mulcahy, James J., College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: As computing technology continues to advance, it has become increasingly difficult to find businesses that do not rely, at least in part, upon the collection and analysis of data for the purpose of project management and process improvement. The cost of software tends to increase over time due to its complexity and the cost of employing humans to develop, maintain, and evolve it. To help control the costs, organizations often seek to improve the process by which software systems are developed...
Show moreAs computing technology continues to advance, it has become increasingly difficult to find businesses that do not rely, at least in part, upon the collection and analysis of data for the purpose of project management and process improvement. The cost of software tends to increase over time due to its complexity and the cost of employing humans to develop, maintain, and evolve it. To help control the costs, organizations often seek to improve the process by which software systems are developed and evolved. Improvements can be realized by discovering previously unknown or hidden relationships between the artifacts generated as a result of developing a software system. The objective of the work described in this thesis is to provide a visualization tool that helps managers and engineers better plan for future projects by discovering new knowledge gained by synthesizing and visualizing data mined from software repository records from previous projects.
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Date Issued: 2011
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3333053
Subject Headings: Data mining, Mathematical models, Software engineering, Inofrmation visualization, Data processing, Application software, Development, Object-oriented programming (Computer science)
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Model-Driven Architecture and the Secure Systems Methodology.
Creator: Morrison, Patrick, Fernandez, Eduardo B., Florida Atlantic University, College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: As a compamon and complement to the work being done to build a secure systems methodology, this thesis evaluates the use of Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) in support of the methodology's lifecycle. The development lifecycle illustrated follows the recommendations of this secure systems methodology, while using MDA models to represent requirements, analysis, design, and implementation information. In order to evaluate MDA, we analyze a well-understood distributed systems security problem,...
Show moreAs a compamon and complement to the work being done to build a secure systems methodology, this thesis evaluates the use of Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) in support of the methodology's lifecycle. The development lifecycle illustrated follows the recommendations of this secure systems methodology, while using MDA models to represent requirements, analysis, design, and implementation information. In order to evaluate MDA, we analyze a well-understood distributed systems security problem, remote access, as illustrated by the internet "secure shell" protocol, ssh. By observing the ability of MDA models and transformations to specify remote access in each lifecycle phase, MDA's strengths and weaknesses can be evaluated in this context. A further aim of this work is to extract concepts that can be contained in an MDA security metamodel for use in future projects.
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Date Issued: 2007
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00012537
Subject Headings: Expert systems (Computer science), Software engineering, Computer-aided design, Computer network architectures
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: A Comparison of Model Checking Tools for Service Oriented Architectures.
Creator: Venkat, Raghava, Khoshgoftaar, Taghi M., Florida Atlantic University, College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: Recently most of the research pertaining to Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is based on web services and how secure they are in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. This requires validation, verification, and evaluation of web services. Verification and validation should be collaborative when web services from different vendors are integrated together to carry out a coherent task. For this purpose, novel model checking technologies have been devised and applied to web services. "Model...
Show moreRecently most of the research pertaining to Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is based on web services and how secure they are in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. This requires validation, verification, and evaluation of web services. Verification and validation should be collaborative when web services from different vendors are integrated together to carry out a coherent task. For this purpose, novel model checking technologies have been devised and applied to web services. "Model Checking" is a promising technique for verification and validation of software systems. WS-BPEL (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services) is an emerging standard language to describe web service composition behavior. The advanced features of BPEL such as concurrency and hierarchy make it challenging to verify BPEL models. Based on all such factors my thesis surveys a few important technologies (tools) for model checking and comparing each of them based on their "functional" and "non-functional" properties. The comparison is based on three case studies (first being the small case, second medium and the third one a large case) where we construct synthetic web service compositions for each case (as there are not many publicly available compositions [1]). The first case study is "Enhanced LoanApproval Process" and is considered a small case. The second is "Enhanced Purchase Order Process" which is of medium size and the third, and largest is based on a scientific workflow pattern, called the "Service Oriented Architecture Implementing BOINC Workflow" based on BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure Network Computing) architecture.
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Date Issued: 2007
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00012565
Subject Headings: Computer network architectures, Expert systems (Computer science), Software engineering, Web servers--Management
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Rough Set-Based Software Quality Models and Quality of Data.
Creator: Bullard, Lofton A., Khoshgoftaar, Taghi M., Florida Atlantic University, College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: In this dissertation we address two significant issues of concern. These are software quality modeling and data quality assessment. Software quality can be measured by software reliability. Reliability is often measured in terms of the time between system failures. A failure is caused by a fault which is a defect in the executable software product. The time between system failures depends both on the presence and the usage pattern of the software. Finding faulty components in the development...
Show moreIn this dissertation we address two significant issues of concern. These are software quality modeling and data quality assessment. Software quality can be measured by software reliability. Reliability is often measured in terms of the time between system failures. A failure is caused by a fault which is a defect in the executable software product. The time between system failures depends both on the presence and the usage pattern of the software. Finding faulty components in the development cycle of a software system can lead to a more reliable final system and will reduce development and maintenance costs. The issue of software quality is investigated by proposing a new approach, rule-based classification model (RBCM) that uses rough set theory to generate decision rules to predict software quality. The new model minimizes over-fitting by balancing the Type I and Type II niisclassiflcation error rates. We also propose a model selection technique for rule-based models called rulebased model selection (RBMS). The proposed rule-based model selection technique utilizes the complete and partial matching rule sets of candidate RBCMs to determine the model with the least amount of over-fitting. In the experiments that were performed, the RBCMs were effective at identifying faulty software modules, and the RBMS technique was able to identify RBCMs that minimized over-fitting. Good data quality is a critical component for building effective software quality models. We address the significance of the quality of data on the classification performance of learners by conducting a comprehensive comparative study. Several trends were observed in the experiments. Class and attribute had the greatest impact on the performance of learners when it occurred simultaneously in the data. Class noise had a significant impact on the performance of learners, while attribute noise had no impact when it occurred in less than 40% of the most significant independent attributes. Random Forest (RF100), a group of 100 decision trees, was the most, accurate and robust learner in all the experiments with noisy data.
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Date Issued: 2008
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00012567
Subject Headings: Computer software--Quality control, Computer software--Reliability, Software engineering, Computer arithmetic
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: VoIP Network Security and Forensic Models using Patterns.
Creator: Pelaez, Juan C., Fernandez, Eduardo B., Florida Atlantic University, College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) networks is becoming the most popular telephony system in the world. However, studies of the security of VoIP networks are still in their infancy. VoIP devices and networks are commonly attacked, and it is therefore necessary to analyze the threats against the converged network and the techniques that exist today to stop or mitigate these attacks. We also need to understand what evidence can be obtained from the VoIP system after an attack has occurred....
Show moreVoice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) networks is becoming the most popular telephony system in the world. However, studies of the security of VoIP networks are still in their infancy. VoIP devices and networks are commonly attacked, and it is therefore necessary to analyze the threats against the converged network and the techniques that exist today to stop or mitigate these attacks. We also need to understand what evidence can be obtained from the VoIP system after an attack has occurred. Many of these attacks occur in similar ways in different contexts or environments. Generic solutions to these issues can be expressed as patterns. A pattern can be used to guide the design or simulation of VoIP systems as an abstract solution to a problem in this environment. Patterns have shown their value in developing good quality software and we expect that their application to VoIP will also prove valuable to build secure systems. This dissertation presents a variety of patterns (architectural, attack, forensic and security patterns). These patterns will help forensic analysts as well, as secure systems developers because they provide a systematic approach to structure the required information and help understand system weaknesses. The patterns will also allow us to specify, analyze and implement network security investigations for different architectures. The pattern system uses object-oriented modeling (Unified Modeling Language) as a way to formalize the information and dynamics of attacks and systems.
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Date Issued: 2007
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00012576
Subject Headings: Internet telephony--Security measures, Computer network protocols, Global system for mobile communications, Software engineering
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Campus driver assistant on an Android platform.
Creator: Zankina, Iana., College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: College campuses can be large, confusing, and intimidating for new students and visitors. Finding the campus may be easy using a GPS unit or Google Maps directions, but this is not the case when you are actually on the campus. There is no service that provides directional assistance for the campus itself. This thesis proposes a driver assistant application running on an Android platform that can direct drivers to different buildings and parking lots in the campus. The application's user...
Show moreCollege campuses can be large, confusing, and intimidating for new students and visitors. Finding the campus may be easy using a GPS unit or Google Maps directions, but this is not the case when you are actually on the campus. There is no service that provides directional assistance for the campus itself. This thesis proposes a driver assistant application running on an Android platform that can direct drivers to different buildings and parking lots in the campus. The application's user interface lets the user select a user type, a campus, and a destination through use of drop down menus and buttons. Once the user submits the needed information, then the next portion of the application runs in the background. The app retrieves the Campus Map XML created by the mapping tool that was constructed for this project. The XML data containing all the map elements is then parsed and stored in a hierarchal data structure. The resulting objects are then used to construct a campus graph, on which an altered version of Dijkstra's Shortest Path algorithm is executed. When the path to the destination has been discovered, the campus map with the computed path overlaid is displayed on the user's device, showing the route to the desired destination.
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Date Issued: 2012
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3359159
Subject Headings: Mobile computing, Software engineering, Application software, Development
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: A pattern-driven process for secure service-oriented applications.
Creator: Delessy, Nelly A., Florida Atlantic University, College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: During the last few years, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has been considered to be the new phase in the evolution of distributed enterprise applications. Even though there is a common acceptance of this concept, a real problem hinders the widespread use of SOA : A methodology to design and build secure service-oriented applications is needed. In this dissertation, we design a novel process to secure service-oriented applications. Our contribution is original not only because it applies...
Show moreDuring the last few years, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has been considered to be the new phase in the evolution of distributed enterprise applications. Even though there is a common acceptance of this concept, a real problem hinders the widespread use of SOA : A methodology to design and build secure service-oriented applications is needed. In this dissertation, we design a novel process to secure service-oriented applications. Our contribution is original not only because it applies the MDA approach to the design of service-oriented applications but also because it allows their securing by dynamically applying security patterns throughout the whole process. Security patterns capture security knowledge and describe security mechanisms. In our process, we present a structured map of security patterns for SOA and web services and its corresponding catalog. At the different steps of a software lifecycle, the architect or designer needs to make some security decisions., An approach using a decision tree made of security pattern nodes is proposed to help making these choices. We show how to extract a decision tree from our map of security patterns. Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) is an approach which promotes the systematic use of models during a system's development lifecycle. In the dissertation we describe a chain of transformations necessary to obtain secure models of the service-oriented application. A main benefit of this process is that it decouples the application domain expertise from the security expertise that are both needed to build a secure application. Security knowledge is captured by pre-defined security patterns, their selection is rendered easier by using the decision trees and their application can be automated. A consequence is that the inclusion of security during the software development process becomes more convenient for the architects/designers., A second benefit is that the insertion of security is semi-automated and traceable. Thus, the process is flexible and can easily adapt to changing requirements. Given that SOA was developed in order to provide enterprises with modular, reusable and adaptable architectures, but that security was the principal factor that hindered its use, we believe that our process can act as an enabler for service-oriented applications.
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Date Issued: 2008
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/58003
Subject Headings: Computer network architectures, Web servers, Management, Software engineering, Expert systems (Computer science)
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: INTEGRATING DESIGN THINKING MODEL AND ITEMS PRIORITIZATION DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS INTO REQUIREMENTS MANAGEMENT IN SCRUM.
Creator: Alhazmi, Alhejab Shawqi, Huang, Shihong, Florida Atlantic University, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, College of Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: The Agile methodologies have attracted the software development industry's attention due to their capability to overcome the limitations of the traditional software development approaches and to cope with increasing complexity in system development. Scrum is one of the Agile software development processes broadly adopted by industry. Scrum promotes frequent customer involvement and incremental short releases. Despite its popular use, Scrum’s requirements engineering stage is inadequately...
Show moreThe Agile methodologies have attracted the software development industry's attention due to their capability to overcome the limitations of the traditional software development approaches and to cope with increasing complexity in system development. Scrum is one of the Agile software development processes broadly adopted by industry. Scrum promotes frequent customer involvement and incremental short releases. Despite its popular use, Scrum’s requirements engineering stage is inadequately defined which can lead to increase development time and cost, along with low quality or failure for the end products. This research shows the importance of activity planning of requirements engineering in improving the product quality, cost, and scheduling as well as it points out some drawbacks of Agile practices and available solutions. To improve the Scrum requirements engineering by overcoming its challenges in cases, such as providing a comprehensive understanding of the customer’s needs and addressing the effects of the challenges in other cases, such as frequent changes of requirements, the Design Thinking model is integrated into the Scrum framework in the context of requirements engineering management. The use of the Design Thinking model, in the context of requirements engineering management, is validated through an in-depth scientific study of the IBM Design Thinking framework. In addition, this research presents an Items Prioritization dEcision Support System (IPESS) which is a tool to assist the Product Owners for requirements prioritization. IPESS is built on information collected in the Design Thinking model. The IPESS tool adopts Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique and PageRank algorithm to deal with the specified factors and to achieve the optimal order for requirements items based on the prioritization score. IPESS is a flexible and comprehensive tool that focuses on different important aspects including customer satisfaction and product quality. The IPESS tool is validated through an experiment that was conducted in a real-world project
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Date Issued: 2021
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00013699
Subject Headings: Scrum (Computer software development), Computer software--Development--Management, Software engineering
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Fuzzy logic techniques for software reliability engineering.
Creator: Xu, Zhiwei., Florida Atlantic University, Khoshgoftaar, Taghi M., College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: Modern people are becoming more and more dependent on computers in their daily lives. Most industries, from automobile, avionics, oil, and telecommunications to banking, stocks, and pharmaceuticals, require computers to function. As the tasks required become more complex, the complexity of computer software and hardware has increased dramatically. As a consequence, the possibility of failure increases. As the requirements for and dependence on computers increases, the possibility of crises...
Show moreModern people are becoming more and more dependent on computers in their daily lives. Most industries, from automobile, avionics, oil, and telecommunications to banking, stocks, and pharmaceuticals, require computers to function. As the tasks required become more complex, the complexity of computer software and hardware has increased dramatically. As a consequence, the possibility of failure increases. As the requirements for and dependence on computers increases, the possibility of crises caused by computer failures also increases. High reliability is an important attribute for almost any software system. Consequently, software developers are seeking ways to forecast and improve quality before release. Since many quality factors cannot be measured until after the software becomes operational, software quality models are developed to predict quality factors based on measurements collected earlier in the life cycle. Due to incomplete information in the early life cycle of software development, software quality models with fuzzy characteristics usually perform better because fuzzy concepts deal with phenomenon that is vague in nature. This study focuses on the usage of fuzzy logic in software reliability engineering. Discussing will include the fuzzy expert systems and the application of fuzzy expert systems in early risk assessment; introducing the interval prediction using fuzzy regression modeling; demonstrating fuzzy rule extraction for fuzzy classification and its usage in software quality models; demonstrating the fuzzy identification, including extraction of both rules and membership functions from fuzzy data and applying the technique to software project cost estimations. The following methodologies were considered: nonparametric discriminant analysis, Z-test and paired t-test, neural networks, fuzzy linear regression, fuzzy nonlinear regression, fuzzy classification with maximum matched method, fuzzy identification with fuzzy clustering, and fuzzy projection. Commercial software systems and the COCOMO database are used throughout this dissertation to demonstrate the usefulness of concepts and to validate new ideas.
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Date Issued: 2001
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/11948
Subject Headings: Software engineering, Fuzzy logic, Computer software--Quality control, Fuzzy systems
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Count models for software quality estimation.
Creator: Gao, Kehan, Florida Atlantic University, Khoshgoftaar, Taghi M., College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: The primary aim of software engineering is to produce quality software that is delivered on time, within budget, and fulfils all its requirements. A timely estimation of software quality can serve as a prerequisite in achieving high reliability of software-based systems. More specifically, software quality assurance efforts can be prioritized for targeting program modules that are most likely to have a high number of faults. Software quality estimation models are generally of two types: a...
Show moreThe primary aim of software engineering is to produce quality software that is delivered on time, within budget, and fulfils all its requirements. A timely estimation of software quality can serve as a prerequisite in achieving high reliability of software-based systems. More specifically, software quality assurance efforts can be prioritized for targeting program modules that are most likely to have a high number of faults. Software quality estimation models are generally of two types: a classification model that predicts the class membership of modules into two or more quality-based classes, and a quantitative prediction model that estimates the number of faults (or some other software quality factor) that are likely to occur in software modules. In the literature, a variety of techniques have been developed for software quality estimation, most of which are suited for either prediction or classification but not for both, e.g., the multiple linear regression (only for prediction) and logistic regression (only for classification).
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Date Issued: 2003
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/12042
Subject Headings: Computer software--Quality control, Software engineering, Econometrics, Regression analysis
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Software reliability engineering with genetic programming.
Creator: Liu, Yi., Florida Atlantic University, Khoshgoftaar, Taghi M., College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: Software reliability engineering plays a vital role in managing and controlling software quality. As an important method of software reliability engineering, software quality estimation modeling is useful in defining a cost-effective strategy to achieve a reliable software system. By predicting the faults in a software system, the software quality models can identify high-risk modules, and thus, these high-risk modules can be targeted for reliability enhancements. Strictly speaking, software...
Show moreSoftware reliability engineering plays a vital role in managing and controlling software quality. As an important method of software reliability engineering, software quality estimation modeling is useful in defining a cost-effective strategy to achieve a reliable software system. By predicting the faults in a software system, the software quality models can identify high-risk modules, and thus, these high-risk modules can be targeted for reliability enhancements. Strictly speaking, software quality modeling not only aims at lowering the misclassification rate, but also takes into account the costs of different misclassifications and the available resources of a project. As a new search-based algorithm, Genetic Programming (GP) can build a model without assuming the size, shape, or structure of a model. It can flexibly tailor the fitness functions to the objectives chosen by the customers. Moreover, it can optimize several objectives simultaneously in the modeling process, and thus, a set of multi-objective optimization solutions can be obtained. This research focuses on building software quality estimation models using GP. Several GP-based models of predicting the class membership of each software module and ranking the modules by a quality factor were proposed. The first model of categorizing the modules into fault-prone or not fault-prone was proposed by considering the distinguished features of the software quality classification task and GP. The second model provided quality-based ranking information for fault-prone modules. A decision tree-based software classification model was also proposed by considering accuracy and simplicity simultaneously. This new technique provides a new multi-objective optimization algorithm to build decision trees for real-world engineering problems, in which several trade-off objectives usually have to be taken into account at the same time. The fourth model was built to find multi-objective optimization solutions by considering both the expected cost of misclassification and available resources. Also, a new goal-oriented technique of building module-order models was proposed by directly optimizing several goals chosen by project analysts. The issues of GP , bloating and overfitting, were also addressed in our research. Data were collected from three industrial projects, and applied to validate the performance of the models. Results indicate that our proposed methods can achieve useful performance results. Moreover, some proposed methods can simultaneously optimize several different objectives of a software project management team.
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Date Issued: 2003
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FADT12047
Subject Headings: Computer software--Quality control, Genetic programming (Computer science), Software engineering
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: CBR-based software quality models and quality of data.
Creator: Xiao, Yudong., Florida Atlantic University, Khoshgoftaar, Taghi M., College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: The performance accuracy of software quality estimation models is influenced by several factors, including the following two important factors: performance of the prediction algorithm and the quality of data. This dissertation addresses these two factors, and consists of two components: (1) a proposed genetic algorithm (GA) based optimization of software quality models for accuracy enhancement, and (2) a proposed partitioning- and rule-based filter (PRBF) for noise detection toward...
Show moreThe performance accuracy of software quality estimation models is influenced by several factors, including the following two important factors: performance of the prediction algorithm and the quality of data. This dissertation addresses these two factors, and consists of two components: (1) a proposed genetic algorithm (GA) based optimization of software quality models for accuracy enhancement, and (2) a proposed partitioning- and rule-based filter (PRBF) for noise detection toward improvement of data quality. We construct a generalized framework of our embedded GA-optimizer, and instantiate the GA-optimizer for three optimization problems in software quality engineering: parameter optimization for case-based reasoning (CBR) models; module rank optimization for module-order modeling (MOM); and structural optimization for our multi-strategy classification modeling approach, denoted RB2CBL. Empirical case studies using software measurement data from real-world software systems were performed for the optimization problems. The GA-optimization approaches improved software quality prediction accuracy, highlighting the practical benefits of using GA for solving optimization problems in software engineering. The proposed noise detection approach, PRBF, was empirically evaluated using data categorized into two classes. Empirical studies on artificially corrupted datasets and datasets with known (natural) noise demonstrated that PRBF can effectively detect both artificial and natural noise. The proposed filter is a stable and robust technique, and always provided optimal or near-optimal noise detection results. In addition, it is applicable on datasets with nominal and numerical attributes, as well as those with missing values. The PRBF technique supports two methods of noise detection: class noise detection and cost-sensitive noise detection. The former is an easy-to-use method and does not need parameter settings, while the latter is suited for applications where each class has a specific misclassification cost. PRBF can also be used iteratively to investigate the two general types of data noise: attribute and class noise.
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Date Issued: 2005
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/12141
Subject Headings: Computer software--Quality control, Genetic programming (Computer science), Software engineering, Case-based reasoning, Combinatorial optimization, Computer network architecture
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Multivariate modeling of software engineering measures.
Creator: Lanning, David Lee., Florida Atlantic University, Khoshgoftaar, Taghi M., College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: One goal of software engineers is to produce software products. An additional goal, that the software production must lead to profit, releases the power of the software product market. This market demands high quality products and tight cycles in the delivery of new and enhanced products. These market conditions motivate the search for engineering methods that help software producers ship products quicker, at lower cost, and with fewer defects. The control of software defects is key to...
Show moreOne goal of software engineers is to produce software products. An additional goal, that the software production must lead to profit, releases the power of the software product market. This market demands high quality products and tight cycles in the delivery of new and enhanced products. These market conditions motivate the search for engineering methods that help software producers ship products quicker, at lower cost, and with fewer defects. The control of software defects is key to meeting these market conditions. Thus, many software engineering tasks are concerned with software defects. This study considers two sources of variation in the distribution of software defects: software complexity and enhancement activity. Multivariate techniques treat defect activity, software complexity, and enhancement activity as related multivariate concepts. Applied techniques include principal components analysis, canonical correlation analysis, discriminant analysis, and multiple regression analysis. The objective of this study is to improve our understanding of software complexity and software enhancement activity as sources of variation in defect activity, and to apply this understanding to produce predictive and discriminant models useful during testing and maintenance tasks. These models serve to support critical software engineering decisions.
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Date Issued: 1994
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/12383
Subject Headings: Software engineering, Computer software--Testing, Computer software--Quality control
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Information theory and software measurement.
Creator: Allen, Edward B., Florida Atlantic University, Khoshgoftaar, Taghi M., College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: Development of reliable, high quality, software requires study and understanding at each step of the development process. A basic assumption in the field of software measurement is that metrics of internal software attributes somehow relate to the intrinsic difficulty in understanding a program. Measuring the information content of a program attempts to indirectly quantify the comprehension task. Information theory based software metrics are attractive because they quantify the amount of...
Show moreDevelopment of reliable, high quality, software requires study and understanding at each step of the development process. A basic assumption in the field of software measurement is that metrics of internal software attributes somehow relate to the intrinsic difficulty in understanding a program. Measuring the information content of a program attempts to indirectly quantify the comprehension task. Information theory based software metrics are attractive because they quantify the amount of information in a well defined framework. However, most information theory based metrics have been proposed with little reference to measurement theory fundamentals, and empirical validation of predictive quality models has been lacking. This dissertation proves that representative information theory based software metrics can be "meaningful" components of software quality models in the context of measurement theory. To this end, members of a major class of metrics are shown to be regular representations of Minimum Description Length or Variety of software attributes, and are interval scale. An empirical validation case study is presented that predicted faults in modules based on Operator Information. This metric is closely related to Harrison's Average Information Content Classification, which is the entropy of the operators. New general methods for calculating synthetic complexity at the system level and module level are presented, quantifying the joint information of an arbitrary set of primitive software measures. Since all kinds of information are not equally relevant to software quality factors, components of synthetic module complexity are also defined. Empirical case studies illustrate the potential usefulness of the proposed synthetic metrics. A metrics data base is often the key to a successful ongoing software metrics program. The contribution of any proposed metric is defined in terms of measured variation using information theory, irrespective of the metric's usefulness in quality models. This is of interest when full validation is not practical. Case studies illustrate the method.
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Date Issued: 1995
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/12412
Subject Headings: Software engineering, Computer software--Quality control, Information theory
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Modeling fault-prone modules of subsystems.
Creator: Thaker, Vishal Kirit., Florida Atlantic University, Khoshgoftaar, Taghi M., College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: In software engineering software quality has become a topic of major concern. It has also been recognized that the role of maintenance organization is to understand and estimate the cost of maintenance releases of software systems. Planning the next release so as to maximize the increase in functionality and the improvement in quality are essential to successful maintenance management. With the growing collection of software in organizations this cost is becoming substantial. In this research...
Show moreIn software engineering software quality has become a topic of major concern. It has also been recognized that the role of maintenance organization is to understand and estimate the cost of maintenance releases of software systems. Planning the next release so as to maximize the increase in functionality and the improvement in quality are essential to successful maintenance management. With the growing collection of software in organizations this cost is becoming substantial. In this research we have compared two software quality models. We tried to see whether a model built on entire system which predicts subsystem and a model built on subsystem which predicts the same subsystem has similar, better or worst classification results. We used Classification And Regression Tree algorithm (CART) to build classification models. A case study is based on a very large telecommunication system.
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Date Issued: 2000
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/12700
Subject Headings: Computer software--Quality control, Software engineering
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Developing accurate software quality models using a faster, easier, and cheaper method.
Creator: Lim, Linda., Florida Atlantic University, Khoshgoftaar, Taghi M., College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Abstract/Description: Managers of software development need to know which components of a system are fault-prone. If this can be determined early in the development cycle then resources can be more effectively allocated and significant costs can be reduced. Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) is a simple and efficient methodology for building software quality models that can provide early information to managers. Our research focuses on two case studies. The first study analyzes source files and classifies them as fault...
Show moreManagers of software development need to know which components of a system are fault-prone. If this can be determined early in the development cycle then resources can be more effectively allocated and significant costs can be reduced. Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) is a simple and efficient methodology for building software quality models that can provide early information to managers. Our research focuses on two case studies. The first study analyzes source files and classifies them as fault-prone or not fault-prone. It also predicts the number of faults in each file. The second study analyzes the fault removal process, and creates models that predict the outcome of software inspections.
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Date Issued: 2001
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/12746
Subject Headings: Computer software--Development, Computer software--Quality control, Software engineering
Format: Document (PDF)

Computer software--Quality control (14)	+ -
Computer network architectures (3)	+ -
Expert systems (Computer science) (3)	+ -
Application software (2)	+ -
Case-based reasoning (2)	+ -

Development (2)	+ -
Genetic programming (Computer science) (2)	+ -
Combinatorial optimization (1)	+ -
Computer arithmetic (1)	+ -
Computer network architecture (1)	+ -
Computer network protocols (1)	+ -
Computer simulation (1)	+ -
Computer software--Development (1)	+ -
Computer software--Development--Management (1)	+ -
Computer software--Evaluation (1)	+ -
Computer software--Reliability (1)	+ -
Computer software--Testing (1)	+ -
Computer-aided design (1)	+ -
Data mining (1)	+ -
Data processing (1)	+ -
Decision trees (1)	+ -
Econometrics (1)	+ -
Fuzzy logic (1)	+ -
Fuzzy systems (1)	+ -
Global system for mobile communications (1)	+ -
Information theory (1)	+ -
Inofrmation visualization (1)	+ -
Internet telephony--Security measures (1)	+ -
Management (1)	+ -

College of Engineering and Computer Science (22)	+ -
Florida Atlantic University (20)	+ -
Khoshgoftaar, Taghi M. (16)	+ -
Fernandez, Eduardo B. (2)	+ -
Alhazmi, Alhejab Shawqi (1)	+ -

Allen, Edward B. (1)	+ -
Bullard, Lofton A. (1)	+ -
Delessy, Nelly A. (1)	+ -
Gao, Kehan (1)	+ -
Huang, Shihong (1)	+ -
Lanning, David Lee. (1)	+ -
Lim, Linda. (1)	+ -
Liu, Yi. (1)	+ -
Mao, Wenlei. (1)	+ -
Morrison, Patrick (1)	+ -
Mulcahy, James J. (1)	+ -
Nguyen, Laurent Quoc Viet. (1)	+ -
Pelaez, Juan C. (1)	+ -
Puppala, Kishore. (1)	+ -
Shan, Ruqun. (1)	+ -
Thaker, Vishal Kirit. (1)	+ -
Venkat, Raghava (1)	+ -
Weir, Ronald Eugene. (1)	+ -
Xiao, Yudong. (1)	+ -
Xu, Zhiwei. (1)	+ -
Yuan, Xiaojing (1)	+ -
Zankina, Iana. (1)	+ -

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