sss ssss rrrrrrrrrrr
ssss ss rrrr rrrr
sssss s rrrr rrrr
ssssss rrrr rrrr
ssssssss rrrr rrrr
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s ssssss rrrr rrrr
ss sssss rrrr rrrr
sss sssss rrrr rrrr
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+===================================================+
+======= Quality Techniques Newsletter =======+
+======= April 2005 =======+
+===================================================+
QUALITY TECHNIQUES NEWSLETTER (QTN) is E-mailed monthly to
subscribers worldwide to support the Software Research, Inc. (SR),
eValid, and TestWorks user communities and to other interested
parties to provide information of general use to the worldwide
internet and software quality and testing community.
Permission to copy and/or re-distribute is granted, and secondary
circulation is encouraged, provided that the entire QTN
document/file is kept intact and this complete copyright notice
appears in all copies. Information on how to subscribe or
unsubscribe is at the end of this issue. (c) Copyright 2004 by
Software Research, Inc.
========================================================================
Contents of This Issue
o Case Study: The Case of the Puzzling Patriot, by Larry
Bernstein
o eValid: Latest News, News, New Features, Updates and Updates
o eValid: V5 New Feature Summary
o Rex Black's Reply
o Prof. Vic Basili Honored
o Interest in CS as Major Drops Among Incoming Freshmen
o DACS Introduces "gold Practice" Document
o eValid V5 Feature Summary
o Networking and Electronic Commerce Research Conference
o European Conference on Web Services
o QTN Article Submittal, Subscription Information
========================================================================
Case Study: The Case of the Puzzling Patriot
by Larry Bernstein
Author's Note: Here is a case study I teach in my
senior software engineering class that I formalized for
a book. Other software engineering instructors and
practitioners will find the insights helpful and
interesting. We learn best from story telling.
-Larry Bernstein
Industry Research Professor, Software Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Hoboken, NJ
During the Gulf War, the United States' Patriot missile defense
system was widely hailed as a savior of the war. News reports and
government sources alike attributed to it a nearly perfect success
rate in destroying Iraqi Scud missiles. Not until the war was over
did observers begin to express doubts regarding the success of the
Patriot. Although controversy persists concerning the actual
effectiveness of the Patriot missile in the Gulf War, one thing is
certain: the Patriot failed to intercept a Scud missile which hit
an American military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, on February
25, 1991. In fact, no Patriot missile was launched to intercept the
Scud that day--twenty-eight people were killed and ninety-seven were
injured. Why did the Patriot fail to respond to this threat?
Eventually, the Army attributed the Patriot missile failure in
Dhahran to "a software failure in the computer" as a result of "long
use of the radar system. But, as is the case in any failure of a
complex system, many factors may have contributed to the failure of
the Patriot missile to reliably perform its duty. The Patriot
problems likely stemmed from one fundamental aspect of its design:
the Patriot was originally designed as an anti-aircraft, not anti-
missile, defense system. With this limited purpose in mind,
Raytheon designed the system with certain constraints. One such
constraint was that the Patriot system was not to operate for more
than a few hours at a time. It was designed for use in a mobile
unit rather than at a fixed location. At the time of the Scud
attack on Dhahran, the Patriot battery had been running continuously
for four days--almost 100 hours. This fact alone probably explains
why the Patriot failed to intercept the Scud that hit the American
barracks, but some more discussion is required to understand why
extended operation caused the Patriot to fail.
When the Patriot system is in operation, it must have a way of
determining whether "targets" it finds in the air are actually
incoming missiles rather than false alarms. The Patriot makes this
determination by tracking the target to determine whether it is
following the expected path of a ballistic missile. Ballistic
missiles travel at extremely high speeds, so that the time interval
between radar "sightings" of the target must be very small. The
Patriot tracks a target by first noting the location of the original
radar sighting, then by using knowledge of the characteristics of a
ballistic missile in flight to anticipate where the target should be
at the next radar sighting--a fraction of a second later. If, at
the second radar sighting, the target does not appear in the "range
gate," the calculated zone in which the target will appear if it is
a ballistic missile, then it is classified a false alarm and
subsequently ignored by the Patriot.
In order to make this path calculation, the Patriot depends on its
internal clock. Because the memory available to the program was
limited, the clock value was truncated slightly when stored. Prof.
Arnold writes insightfully, "It turns out that the cause was an
inaccurate calculation of the time since boot due to computer
arithmetic errors. Specifically, the time in tenths of second as
measured by the system's internal clock was multiplied by 1/10 to
produce the time in seconds. This calculation was performed using a
24 bit fixed point register. In particular, the value 1/10, which
has a non-terminating binary expansion, was chopped at 24 bits after
the radix point. The small chopping error, when multiplied by the
large number giving the time in tenths of a second, led to a
significant error. Indeed, the Patriot battery had been up around
100 hours, and an easy calculation shows that the resulting time
error due to the magnified chopping error was about 0.34 seconds A
Scud travels at about 1,676 meters per second, and so travels more
than half a kilometer in this time. This was far enough that the
incoming Scud was outside the "range gate" that the Patriot tracked.
Ironically, the fact that the bad time calculation had been improved
in some parts of the code, but not all, contributed to the problem,
since it meant that the inaccuracies did not cancel."
The Israeli military, analyzing data from Patriot batteries
operating in Israel, found the clock drift error. They calculated
that after only 8 hours of continuous operation, the Patriot's
stored clock value would be off by 0.0275 seconds, causing an error
in range gate calculation of approximately 55 meters. At the time
of the Dhahran attack, the Patriot battery in that area had been
operating continuously for approximately 100 hours--its stored clock
value was 0.3433 seconds off, causing the range gate to be shifted
687 meters, a large enough distance that the Patriot was looking for
the target in the wrong place.
Consequently, the target did not appear where the software expected
it. Therefore the Patriot classified the incoming Scud as a false
alarm and ignored it, with disastrous results. Thanks to Douglas A
Arnold, Professor of Mathematics and IMA Director, Inst. for Math.
and its Applications, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
(email: arnold@ima.umn.edu) for this analysis.
On February 11, 1991, after determining the effect of the error over
time, the Israelis notified the U.S. Patriot project office of the
problem. Once they were notified, the programming team set to work
solving the problem. Within a few days, the Patriot project office
made a software fix correcting the timing error, and sent it out to
the troops on February 16, 1991. At the time of the Dhahran attack,
the software update had yet to arrive in Dhahran. That update,
which arrived in Dhahran the day after the attack, might have saved
the lives of those in the barracks. In the meantime, they had sent
out a warning that very long run times could affect the targeting
accuracy. On the day of the Dhahran attack, two Patriot batteries
were deployed to cover the Dhahran area. The Bravo battery was
having trouble with its radar, a problem unrelated to the clock
drift error. For this reason, Alpha battery had been running
continuously for four days in order to provide uninterrupted
coverage over Dhahran. Additionally, the phrase "very long run
times" was not specific, so the Patriot operators could not know
that they were operating under dangerous conditions when the attack
occurred.
Conclusion
There are several lessons to be learned from analyzing the Patriot
failure. Software fault tolerance techniques that reset the system
periodically could have prevented the problem. Testing in
computer-controlled systems is never sufficient. Reliability must be
designed into the software. In this case an automatic restart every
eight hours would have avoided the problem. Nevertheless testing
must be robust, especially when safety is at stake. If the Patriot
had been tested under varying conditions, including very long
periods of continuous operation with no targets, the clock drift
error would likely have been discovered long before the Patriot was
used in the Gulf.
Also, special care must be taken when adapting a system for a new
use; when the uses seem very similar, as an anti-aircraft versus
anti-missile weapon, there are usually unintended consequences
Lastly, communication among the designers, programmers, and
operators of a safety-critical system is imperative. The designers
need to visit the battlefield to see how the system is being used.
Once the fix was known, expedited change management could have had
it installed before it was needed. Even if the other suggestions
were not implemented, better communication might have saved lives in
Dhahran both by informing users of specific limits (reboot every 8
hours) and by expediting the software upgrade.
========================================================================
eValid: Latest News, New Features, Updates
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
eValid is the premier WebSite Quality Testing & Analysis Suite.
eValid solutions help organizations maintain e-Business presence,
improve WebSite quality and performance, reduce down time, prevent
customer loss, and control costs.
eValid's Web Analysis and Testing Suite is comprehensive, yet
scalable and easy to use, and applies to a wide range of web
applications. Built entirely inside an IE-compatible full-featured
browser, 100% realistic user experience results are guaranteed.
New Playback Startup Sequence
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
To minimize playback de-synchronization as much as possible, the
latest eValid builds have a revised, more-powerful recording startup
sequence. This new recording startup sequence helps you manage
cache and cookie dispositions. See the detailed description at:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Testing/start.recording.html
Enhanced Playback Synchronization
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A common form of script playback failure is that the eValid playback
engine becomes de-synchronized with the pages being tested. This
kind of failure happens for a many reasons, and it is known that
some of the most-modern web pages involve the most difficult-to-sync
implementation styles.
Recent eValid versions have incorporated a series of technical
advances to enhance playback synchronization in a wide range of
situations If you have had trouble obtaining clean eValid playback
synchronization we believe there is a good chance that the new
release will overcome your difficulties.
New LoadTest Scenario Editor Available
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The latest revisions of eValid V5 include a new feature that
simplifies composition and management of a LoadTest scenario. This
new feature includes:
* Ability to create a server loading scenario that focuses
attention on how users and user types are allocated.
* Ability edit and re-edit existing or new loadtest scenarios.
* Capability to automatically generate the underlying *evl page.
Complete details on the scenario editor can be found at:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Loading/scenario.edit.html
Log Filtering Option Supports Monitoring
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The latest builds of the eValid website test engine include two
capabilities that will be of interest to users who are using eValid
in monitoring mode:
* Selectable options via a new Message Log Filter that will let
you select which messages are put in the Message Log. For
details see:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Settings/project.log.filters.html
* A capability to create a Custom Log as a subset of the Event
Log, based on a set of string matches that are user specified.
For details see:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Settings/project.log.filters.html
HTTP Detailed Reporting
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
An enhanced capability for monitoring detailed HTTP download times
and download errors has been added to the eValid playback engine.
Users can select to have HTTP errors reported as WARNINGs or ERRORs.
In addition, detailed timing logs generated by eValid now include
the specific byte size and download time of each page component
separately. For complete details see:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Settings/project.log.filters.html
Product Download Details
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Here is the URL for downloading eValid if you want to start [or re-
start] your evaluation:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Download.5/down.evalid.5.phtml?status=FORM
Contact Us With Your Questions
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
We welcome your questions about eValid and its applications. We
promise a response to every question in ONE BUSINESS DAY if you use
the WebSite request form:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Information/info.request.html
========================================================================
Rex Black's Reply
>QTN wrote: >Special Issue on Software Reliability >The SRE special
issue of the Department of Defense's software magazine >"Software
Tech News" is out...Topics include...SRE application to the
>ultrareliable Space Shuttle...
I must say that "ultrareliable" is the last phrase I would choose to
describe the Space Shuttle, though I would admit that the problems
with it have not arisen from *software* reliability issues, which
perhaps was the point you were trying to make. Given that *both*
catastrophic failures were foreseeable *and* preventable through
straightforward hardware reliability tests--a thermal test of O-ring
behavior under conditions of cold and an impact test simulating a
foam strike on the wing surface, both of which were performed
*after* the failures--I would hardly hold out the Space Shuttle as a
paragon of reliability. In fact, I frequently use those incidents
as cautionary tales about tests that seem too expensive or unlikely
or schedule-impacting to run, until after tragedy has struck.
Regards,
Rex Black
rexblack@ix.netcom.com
========================================================================
Prof. Vic Basili Honored
On Monday, May 16, 2005, the international software engineering
community will honor Vic by hosting an all day symposium entitled,
"Foundations of Empirical Software Engineering - The Legacy of
Victor R. Basili" as one of the events preceding the International
Conference on Software Engineering that will take place that week in
St. Louis, MO.
See details at
http://www.cs.wustl.edu/icse05/ConferenceProgram/Tracks/VicBasiliSymposium.shtml
A series of talks are being arranged and a commemorative book
reprinting 20 of Vic's more important papers will be given to all
attendees. We hope that you are able to come to St. Louis to help
celebrate Vic's 65th birthday and be a part of this celebration.
Please register today and we hope to see you in May.
Barry Boehm
Dieter Rombach
Marv Zelkowitz
Symposium Organizers
========================================================================
"Interest in CS as a Major Drops Among Incoming Freshmen"
Forwarded by
Dr. Alan Salisbury, Chairman of the CNSS
www.cnsoftware.org
Computing Research News (05/05) Vol. 17, No. 3; Vegso, Jay The
results of a survey from the Higher Education Research Institute at
the University of California at Los Angeles (HERI/UCLA) estimate a
more than 60 percent decline in the number of incoming freshmen
thinking they would major in
computer science (CS) between the fall of 2000 and 2004. The
popularity of CS as a major among female undergraduates dropped 80
percent in the last seven years, and 93 percent since its all-time
high in 1982. The Computing Research Association's Taulbee Survey
of Ph.D.-granting CS departments confirms a four-year, 39 percent
decline in the number of newly declared CS majors, while the last
two years have each experienced a 7 percent annual drop in
enrollments. A gap has always existed between newly-enrolled female
undergrads indicating CS as a possible major and their male
counterparts, but that gap has widened dramatically in the last few
decades, doubling in the 1980s and tripling in the 1990s. CS
appears to have lost its allure to incoming women freshmen, and this
led to a fall-off in women earning CS degrees in the 1980s. The next
expected fall in degree production, stemming from the dwindling
popularity of CS as a major as indicated in the HERI/UCLA survey,
has made it difficult to perceive how CS can fulfill projected
future needs for IT professionals without boosting female
undergrads' participation.
The full article:
http://www.cra.org/CRN/articles/may05/vegso
========================================================================
DACS Introduces "Gold Practice" Document
The DACS is pleased to announce the release of its latest Gold
Practice document "Assess Reuse Risks and Costs", located on our
website at
http://r.vresp.com/?TheDACS/2aa2aa91fe/317585/a8e9570c94/79227cd
The Software Engineering Body of Knowledge [SWEBOK, 2004] describes
software reuse as being a key factor in maintaining and improving
productivity and competitiveness in the acquisition and development
of software. It goes on to say that effective software reuse
requires a strategic vision that reflects the unique power and
requirements of reuse techniques. The implementation of software
reuse embodies more than just the creation and use of asset
libraries. The successful implementation of reuse requires that its
techniques be formalized by integrating reuse processes and
activities into the overall software life cycle. By necessity, then,
effective software acquisition and development strategies must
consider the influence of reuse on overall project and organization
risks and costs.
If you have relevant experience in this area that you're able to
share, we invite you to become a member of the DACS Gold Practice
Initiative by registering at:
http://r.vresp.com/?TheDACS/d5e896c314/317585/a8e9570c94/79227cd
Registered members can participate in our "Assess Reuse Risks and
Costs" Discussion Forum
http://r.vresp.com/?TheDACS/7823dd16d1/317585/a8e9570c94/79227cd
or they can participate in our "Assess Reuse Risks and Costs"
survey, located at:
http://r.vresp.com/?TheDACS/70d7b73f37/317585/a8e9570c94/79227cd
or submit a case study on their personal experience with assessing
reuse risks and costs practices:
http://r.vresp.com/?TheDACS/47b7864b2a/317585/a8e9570c94/79227cd
The DACS Gold Practice Initiative (www.goldpractices.com) strives to
identify, analyze and disseminate value-added data and information
on software acquisition and development practices that may be "worth
their weight in gold" to an organization through demonstrated cost
savings, risk reduction, improved delivery times and higher software
process and performance quality and reliability. Come see what we're
doing in our Gold Practice Initiative, or stop by to see all that we
have to offer at our DACS Home Page
(http://r.vresp.com/?TheDACS/6cf7dea8d5/317585/a8e9570c94/79227cd).
The DACS
775 Daedalian Drive
Rome, New York 13441
========================================================================
eValid V5 Feature Summary
Summary: eValid Version 5 (V5) includes many changes
and additions relative to the prior eValid release. In
V5 the product suite has been expanded to include a
variety of new commands, new features for access and
processing of the current page, bidirectional interfaces
to JavaScript, additional metrics, and a range of other
analytic support features. Here are recent additions to
eValid V5 along with description of important new
features in V5 compared with V4.
Record/Play Features
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The basic architecture of eValid, nearly automatic recording
amplified by a rich collection of extrinsic (edit only) commands.
Processing of parent-child relationships, modal dialogs, and other
kinds of user interaction are compact and efficient. The
InBrowser(tm) approach continues to lead the technology for website
testing because of the natural advantage eValid has as an actual
browser. Enhancements and additions include:
o PageMap Display (Recording Advisor). The powerful PageMap
feature shows what's where an helps in setting up advanced test
scripts. It shows the structure of the current page or frame or
iframe and identifies elements for reference or script editing
convenience. Two way feedback to/form the page and the pagemap.
Recording advisor signals type of recording mode to use.
o Revised Dashboard. The eValid dashboard now has additional
displays, better control, and more details.
o Mouse-Event Recording. There is now complete support for all
JavaScript mouse events. This support includes a number of new
commands and options. It is now possible to record excursion
actions with mouseover events with complete fidelity. Complete
iframes Support. The new release includes complete support for
iframes and also includes a new frame naming and/or numbering
system.
o Data Synthesis Feature. Operating from a user-supplied file of
$NAME=value pairs, eValid now can rerun a single script multiple
times with different value substitutions in each run.
o JavaScript Interface. A built-in 2-direction interface -- to
and from the eValid script file to the internal JavaScript
interpreter -- offers a powerful new option to give commands to
the JavaScript interpreter from a playback script and to issue
commands from within the eValid browser via a special JavaScript
method.
o Interactive Mode Enhancements. This eValid release includes new
C/C++ and Java interface versions, and provides exposure of the
current page, frame, iframe source files for secondary analysis
through and from the DOM (Document Object Model).
o New Data Saving Commands. These commands allow a user to save
the current contents of the original HTML page, the complete
HTML page, or the visible text of the page, to a local file for
detailed processing.
o Other New Script Commands. A variety of new editable playback
commands to permit manipulation of browser behavior during
playback, control of cursor and screen, manipulation of files,
and setting playback-time parameters.
LoadTest Features
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The architecture of eValid's server loading capability uses multiple
coordinated playbacks of scripts from multiple instances of eValid.
This is a superior solution in terms of accuracy and general
flexibility. Enhancements and additions include: Test
Synchronization. There are several new LoadTest methods for
synchronizing tests among multiple machine playbacks. These methods
include the WaitMod... commands.
o Report Consolidation. There are new procedures for integrating
Load Test reports from multiple machines into a single,
consolidated multi-machine report.
o Browser Re-Spawn Capability. In long eValid LoadTest runs that
involve long playbacks the footprint of each eValid instance can
grow substantially. There is now an option to automatically
re-spawn [restart] eValid after a specified number of playbacks.
Using this option has the effect of minimizing the total RAM
requirements for a given total number of simulated users.
o New Playback Delay Commands. There is a new Delay msec command
that holds the playback in a frozen state for a specified time.
The wait time multiplier does not affect the Delay command.
Site Analysis
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The built-in site analysis engine (the eValid "spider") is the basis
for powerful methods of detailed quality assurance of websites.
Enhancements and additions include: Enhanced 3D-SiteMap. Changes
and extensions to the 3D-SiteMap include more display choices,
more-flexible choice of displays, more powerful access to page
details.
o Simplified Reporting. New site analysis results menus permit
choosing site analysis reports easily, quickly.
o Simplified Report Format. The formats for site analysis reports
have been improved through use of a special structure that lets
the site analysis reports be fully expandable and contractable.
o Report Selection Face Lift. Here is the newly formatted Multi
Report Selection Page that makes it easy to see all of the
reports after they are done.
o Complete Scan Data Table. This new report tracks a complete
scan. The complete scan data table is available in HTML and in
spread sheet or SQL-ready CSV format.
Monitoring
^^^^^^^^^^
New support for eValid in monitoring mode includes these additions
and improvements: Enhanced Modal/Popup Control. Recording and
playback of modal dialogs and popups has been enhanced, and there
are new methods in place that can be used to suppress unwanted
popups during playback.
o Expanded Command Line Options. New command line (batch mode)
switches have been added to provide batch mode control of log
files, preferences, profiles, and other important options.
o New Error Codes. New error codes have been added to eValid and
to eV.Manager to simplify batch mode operation.
o New Timer Controls. New timer controls including Pause and
Resume allow more accurate timing of events. Also, optional
messages are now allowed on the ResetTimer and Elapsed Time
commands.
o Improved Standard Test Report (STR). The information in the
standard test report has been revised and reordered for greater
convenience. There is a new batch-mode only option to record
STR records in CSV format for direct use by SQL.
o Script Validity Checking. New commands have been added to
permit a script to confirm version number and operational dates
(date ranges). These commands help prevent scripts that are out
of date from being applied by mistake.
Additional Changes
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Major rework and reorganization of the ~300-page on-line User Manual
has improved access and readability.
o Simplified Version Numbering. Beginning with V5 eValid build
numbers will be used to show the current revision number. Build
sequence numbers will continue from V4 for which the final
released build is #115.
o New QuickStart Manual. The quickstart manual -- the material
intended for first time eValid users -- has been revised and
simplified.
o New Quick Step Solution Descriptions. There are now several
"quick step" solution descriptions for some of the most-common
testing situations. These descriptions help user to learn
eValid operation in an orderly and didactically efficient way.
o Script Catalog Introduced. Sample scripts, including the
training material that is implemented as AUTOPLAY scripts, are
now available in a script catalog.
o Completely Revised Settings Descriptions. The material
describing all of the eValid settings and preferences has been
completely revised.
o Worked Examples. There are many revised and simplified,
completely worked examples of eValid usages.
o Screenshots. All images and screenshots in the documentation
and other material have been redone in a uniform modern style.
Licensing and Other Matters
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Other changes to eValid include:
o Product Licensing Changes of several kinds have been made to the
licensing structure available with eValid.
o Regular Product Licenses. Prices for basic licenses have been
adjusted to reflect certain product changes. Some new special-
price feature bundles are available.
o Enterprise Floating Licenses. HostName based multiple-user
enterprise licenses (EPRISEnn) are now available.
o "Pay Per Play" Licensing. A new "pay-per-play" commercial
pricing option is now available for limited-capacity record/play
applications or for commercial monitoring applications.
o AUTOPLAY Script Creation. This option provides an AUTOPLAY
version of a script for a moderate fee based on script length.
eValid AUTOPLAY scripts play back on any eValid browser anywhere
and at any time without further licensing required.
o Required OS/Browser Alert V5 of eValid relies on certain
properties of the IE DLLs that are only available in IE Ver.
5.50 or IE Ver. 6.0+. Similarly, certain features of the
technology require use of Windows operating system features that
are only present in Windows NT 4.0 SP6a, Windows 2000/SP4, or
Windows XP. At launch eValid provides an advisory notice in
case the minimum required operating capabilities are not
present.
o Revised Pricing. To simplify licensing and provide the greatest
flexibility in selecting eValid features, we have made revisions
to the V5 Suggested Retail Price List. V5 is available to
customers with a current maintenance subscription.
o Supported Platforms. eValid V5 is build on .NET 2003 (or later)
and supports .NET operation. eValid V5 is aimed for use on
Windows NT/2000/XP platforms. For NT at least SP6 is required.
eValid does not formally support Windows 95, 98 or ME. In some
cases scripts that work perfectly well on the supported
platforms may have problems if you are running Windows 98 or ME
(even when including the latest SP's) and will very likely have
severe problems or complete failure, if you are running Windows
95.
o Required Software. Even though eValid is a free-standing
browser, its operation is based on and is standardized to
interoperate correctly with a co-installed Internet Explorer.
We highly recommend you have IE 5.50, IE 6.0 or later on your
machine (Download Internet Explorer).
Complete Information:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Get complete information about eValid using this simple form:
http://www.soft.com/eValid/Information/question.request.html
========================================================================
Networking and Electronic Commerce Research Conference (NAEC 2005)
Riva Del Garda, Italy, October 6-9, 2005
http://atsma.org/NAEC2005/
Networking has been the fundamental technology fostering the
development of the web and electronic commerce. Over the past few
years, electronic commerce has emerged as a dramatic new model of
conducting business. Advances in networking, automated processes,
decision technologies, economics, and management are already forcing
dramatic changes in a variety of industries, ranging from banking
and finance to music and entertainment. Yet, the electronic business
space is still in a relatively early state of evolution, and many of
the significant advances in understanding the interaction between
the two fields and their impact on the implementation of e-commerce
are occurring in academia and industry. Thus, a dialogue on the
interaction between the two fields and between academia and industry
is important. As electronic business spans a wide range of reference
disciplines, forums focusing on networking and e-commerce research
are vital to stimulate the necessary interactions and knowledge
sharing across this broad community.
The 2005 Networking and Electronic Commerce Research Conference
(NAEC 2005) addresses these needs. The new series of NAEC
conferences aims to bring together academic and industrial
researchers from various fields on an ongoing, annual basis to
discuss developments and challenges of networking and electronic
business understood in the largest possible sense of the term. The
aim of the conference is to provide a high quality forum for the
presentation of results, exchange of ideas, and scientific
discussions on challenges, methodologies, new technologies and their
impact, computational and deployment issues, policies and advanced
applications in the area of networking and e-business. Our goal is
to open the conference to participants from all fields, in
particular, telecommunications, computer science, management
sciences, and operations research, economy, legal and policy
studies. The conference will combine technical presentations grouped
in research sessions, with industry and research plenary speakers,
as well as industry-lead panels.
Papers submitted for presentation at the conference will be refereed
and selected based on the full paper (15 to 35 pages) or an extended
abstract (2 to 4 pages). The papers or abstracts have to be
submitted through E-mail, by May 15, 2005 to Professor
Bezalel Gavish. All papers selected
for presentation will be published in the conference proceedings.
Refereed full papers will be considered for publication in the
<http://www.wkap.nl/journalhome.htm/1389-5753>
Electronic Commerce Research Journal or the
<http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/1018-4864/> Telecommunication
Systems Journal. Further information and instructions will be
announced later and will be posted on the conference web site.
Contact: Professor Bezalel Gavish,
<http://tecom.cox.smu.edu/gavishb/vita.html> Tel: +1 (214) 750-8474,
FAX +1 (775) 860-7130.
========================================================================
European Conference on Web Services (ECOWS 2005)
http://wscc.info/ecows2005/research/
Vaxjo, Sweden, 14-16 November 2005
Sponsored by IEEE Computer Society
Technical Committee on Services Computing
The design of distributed applications and users' expectations for
software evolution have changed dramatically in the last 15 years.
An important milestone was set when distributed object environments
(e.g., CORBA) made it possible to program distributed applications
as if remote objects were local. This gave birth to a thriving
middleware market and popularized the use of open APIs in the
software industry. This approach led to object-oriented software
components, whereby a group of objects that collectively fulfill a
given task provide a single interface to remote applications;
examples include CCM and J2EE.
Over a decade of experience has taught the community (researchers
and practitioners alike) that distributed object computing has
inherent problems, because of the tight coupling that is requires
between distant systems. First, guaranteeing interoperability and
openness among all objects and components in a distributed
application is difficult when these objects are developed by
competing commercial entities. Software vendors prefer to segment
markets, because niche markets are more lucrative than commodity
markets. Second, most customers need to integrate large application
chunks (as opposed to fine-grained objects) written by different
vendors, so having object-level interoperability is often
unnecessary in practice.
The success encountered by the Web has convinced most of the
community that tightly coupled software systems are only good for
niche markets, whereas loosely coupled software systems can be more
flexible, more adaptive and often more appropriate in practice.
Loose coupling makes it easier for a given system to interact with
other systems (be they legacy or not) that share very little with
it.
At the crossing of distributed computing and loosely coupled systems
lies service-oriented computing, which appears to many as the next
important step in distributed computing. When applications adopt
service-oriented architectures, they can evolve during their
lifespans more easily and better adapt to changing or unpredictable
environments. When properly implemented, services can be discovered
and invoked dynamically using non-proprietary mechanisms, while each
service can still be implemented in a black-box manner. This is
important from a business perspective: there is no need for
customers to "choose their sides" anymore. Each service can be
implemented using any technology, independently of the others. What
matters is that everybody agrees on the integration technology, and
there is a consensus about this in today's middleware market:
customers want to use Web technologies, notably XML.
ECOWS 2005 will cover all aspects of Web Services, which constitute
the main technology available to date for implementing service-
oriented architectures and computing. The main objectives of this
conference are to facilitate exchanges between researchers and
practitioners and foster future collaborations in Europe and beyond.
Topics of interest to the Research Track include, but are not
limited to, the following:
- Modeling of Web Services
- Design of Web Services
- Software Architectures for Web Services
- Testing of Web Services
- Composition of Web Services
- Orchestration and Choreography of Web Services
- Management of Web Services
- Scalability and Performance of Web Services
- Security Aspects of Web Services
- Trusting and Negotiating with Web Services
- Web Service Discovery and Selection: Beyond UDDI
- Business Process Integration and Management using Web Services
- Web Services for e-Business
- Web Services for Workflow Systems
- Web Services and Mobility
- Web Services for Grids
- Web Services for P2P
- Economics of Web Services, Pricing Models
- Frameworks for Building Web Service-Based Applications
- Comparison of Web Services and Grid Services
- Formal Methods for Web Services
- Semantic Web Services
- Ontology Languages for Web Services
- Quality of Service-Aware Web Services
- Service-Oriented Architectures
- Service-Oriented Computing
- Life Cycle of Web Services
- Integration of Web Services and Legacy Systems
General Chairs:
Welf Loewe, Vaxjo University, Sweden
Jean-Philippe Martin-Flatin, Consultant, Switzerland
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