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+===================================================+
+======= Quality Techniques Newsletter =======+
+======= October 2003 =======+
+===================================================+
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 by recipients of QTN, provided that the
entire 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 2003 by
Software Research, Inc.
========================================================================
Contents of This Issue
o The International Journal of Web Services Research,
o SQRL Reports Available
o eValid: A Quick Summary
o Larry Bernstein Write New Chapter in Software Fault Tolerance
o SQRL Distinguished Lecture Series
o Fifth International Conference on eXtreme Programming and
Agile Processes in Software Engineering
o Journal of Digital Libraries (JDL): Special Issue on Security
o Fourth International Conference on Web Engineering
o QTN Article Submittal, Subscription Information
========================================================================
The International Journal of Web Services Research (IJWSR)
A Publication of
Idea Group Publishing/Information Science Publishing, USA
ISSN: 1545-7362
(http://www.idea-group.com/JOURNALS/details.asp?id=4138)
Inaugural issue will be published in January-March 2004.
Editor-in-Chief:
Liang-Jie (LJ) Zhang, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA
"Providing leading technologies, development, ideas,
trends, and data sets to an international readership of
researchers and engineers in the field of Web services."
The International Journal of Web Services Research (JWSR) is a
high-quality refereed journal on Web services research and
engineering that serves as an outlet for individuals in the field to
publish their research as well as interested readers. As a research
and engineering journal, the International Journal of Web Services
Research, will facilitate communication and networking among Web
services/e-Business researchers and engineers in a period where
considerable changes are taking place in Web services technologies
innovation, and stimulate production of high-quality Web services
solutions and architectures.
Web services are network-based application components with
services-oriented architecture using standard interface description
languages and uniform communication protocols. Due to the importance
of the field, standardization organizations such as WS-I, W3C, OASIS
and Liberty Alliance are actively developing standards for Web
services. The International Journal of Web Services Research (JWSR)
is the first refereed, international publication featuring only the
latest research findings and industry solutions dealing with all
aspects of Web services technology. The overall scope of this
journal will cover the advancements in the state of the art,
standards, and practice of Web services, as well as to identify the
emerging research topics and define the future of Services
computing, including Web services on Grid computing, Web services on
multimedia, Web services on communication, Web services on e-
Business, etc. In conclusions, the JWSR provides an open, formal
publication for high quality articles developed by theoreticians,
educators, developers, researchers and practitioners for
professionals to stay abreast of challenges in Web services
technologies.
SCOPE: Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the
following:
* Mathematic foundations for service oriented computing
* Web services architecture
* Web services security and privacy
* Frameworks for building Web services applications
* Composite Web services creation and enabling infrastructures
* Web services discovery, negotiation and agreement
* Resource management for Web services
* Solution management for Web services
* Dynamic invocation mechanisms for Web services
* Quality of service for Web services
* Cost of service for Web services
* Web services modeling
* Web services performance
* UDDI enhancements
* SOAP enhancements
* Case studies for Web services
* e-Business applications using Web services
* Grid based Web services applications (e.g. OGSA)
* Business process integration and management using Web services
* Multimedia applications using Web services
* Communication applications using Web services
* Interactive TV applications using Web services
* Semantic services computing
* Business Grid
Liang-Jie (LJ) Zhang, Ph.D.
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
P.O. Box 218, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
e-mail: zhanglj@us.ibm.com
Fax: + 1-914-945-4527
Phone: + 1-914-945-3976
========================================================================
SQRL Report No. 14
A Basic Extended Simple Type Theory
William M. Farmer
Abstract: This paper presents an extended version of Church's
simple type theory called Basic Extended Simple Type Theory (BESTT).
By adding type variables and support for reasoning with tuples,
lists, and sets to simple type theory, it is intended to be a
practical logic for formalized mathematics.
SQRL Report No. 15
Compositional Syntax and Semantics of Tables
Wolfram Kahl
Abstract: Parnas together with a number of colleagues established
the systematic use of certain kinds of tables as a useful tool in
software documentation and inspection with an accessible, multi-
dimensional syntax and intuitive semantics.
Previous approaches to formalisation of table semantics based their
definitions on the multi-dimensional array structure of tables and
thus achieved close correspondence with the intuitive understanding
of tables.
In this paper, we argue that a different view, supporting a
compositional semantics, is more advantageous for tool support and
for reasoning about tables. For this purpose, we also need a
compositional table syntax, and we perform an analysis of table
syntax that leads us to a particular compositional view of table
structure.
This simple, inductive view of the structure of tables allows us to
provide highly flexible tools for defining the semantics of tabular
expressions. The straight-forward compositional formalisation of
table semantics on the one hand yields very general table
transformation theorems and enables us to perform fully formal
proofs for these theorems in a mechanised theorem prover, and on the
other hand also may serve as basis for the implementation of
semantics-aware table support tools.
SQRL Report No. 16
Basic Pattern Matching Calculi
Wolfram Kahl
Abstract: The pattern matching calculus is a refinement of lambda-
calculus that integrates mechanisms appropriate for fine-grained
modelling of non-strict pattern matching.
In comparison with the functional rewriting strategy that is usually
employed to define the operational semantics of pattern-matching in
non-strict functional programming languages like Haskell or Clean,
the pattern matching calculus allows simpler and more local
definitions to achieve the same effects.
The main device of the calculus is to further emphasise the clear
distinction between matching failure and undefinedness already
discussed in the literature by embedding into expressions the
separate syntactic category of matchings. This separation is also
important to properly restrain the possible effects of the non-
monotonicity that a naove treatment of matching alternatives would
exhibit. The language arising from that distinction turns out to
naturally encompass the pattern guards of Peyton Jones and Erwig and
conventional Boolean guards as special cases of the intermediate
stages of matching reduction.
By allowing a confluent reduction system and a normalising strategy,
the pattern matching calculus provides a new basis for operational
semantics of non-strict programming languages and also for
implementations.
========================================================================
eValid: A Quick Summary
http://www.e-valid.com
Readers of QTN probably are aware of SR's eValid technology offering
that addresses website quality issues.
Here is a summary of eValid's benefits and advantages.
o InBrowser(tm) Technology. All the test functions are built into
the eValid browser. eValid offers total accuracy and natural
access to "all things web." If you can browse it, you can test
it. And, eValid's unique capabilities are used by a growing
number of firms as the basis for their active services
monitoring offerings.
o Functional Testing, Regression Testing. Easy to use GUI based
record and playback with full spectrum of validation functions.
The eVmanage component provides complete, natural test suite
management.
o LoadTest Server Loading. Multiple eValid's play back multiple
independent user sessions -- unparalleled accuracy and
efficiency. Plus: No Virtual Users! Single and multiple
machine usages with consolidated reporting.
o Mapping and Site Analysis. The built-in WebSite spider travels
through your website and applies a variety of checks and filters
to every accessible page. All done entirely from the users'
perspective -- from a browser -- just as your users will see
your website.
o Desktop, Enterprise Products. eValid test and analysis engines
are delivered at moderate costs for desktop use, and at very
competitive prices for use throughout your enterprise.
o Performance Tuning Services. Outsourcing your server loading
activity can surely save your budget and might even save your
neck! Realistic scenarios, applied from multiple driver
machines, impose totally realistic -- no virtual user! -- loads
on your server.
o Web Services Testing/Validation. eValid tests of web services
start begin by analyzing the WSDL file and creating a custom
HTML testbed page for the candidate service. Special data
generation and analysis commands thoroughly test the web service
and automatically identify a range of failures.
o HealthCheck Subscription. For websites up to 1000 pages, eValid
HealthCheck services provide basic detailed analyses of smaller
websites in a very economical, very efficient way.
o eValidation Managed Service. Being introduced this Fall, the
eValidation Managed WebSite Quality Service offers comprehensive
user-oriented detailed quality analysis for any size website,
including those with 10,000 or more pages.
Resellers, Consultants, Contractors, OEMers Take Note
We have an active program for product and service resellers. We'd
like to hear from you if you are interested in joining the growing
eValid "quality website" delivery team. We also provide OEM
solutions for internal and/or external monitoring, custom-faced
testing browsers, and a range of other possibilities. Let us hear
from you!
========================================================================
Larry Bernstein Writes New Chapter in Software Fault Tolerance
A Stevens Institute of Technology Industry Research Professor of
Computer Science, Lawrence Bernstein, is the author of a major
chapter on software fault tolerance in a book just published by the
Academic Press. Titled Advances in Computers Volume 58, Highly
Dependable Software, the book is edited by Marvin Zelkowitz.
Professor Bernstein's chapter, encompassing pp. 240-285, is titled
"Software Fault Tolerance Forestalls Crashes: To Err is Human; to
Forgive is Fault Tolerant." Based on Bernstein's 35 years of
experience in industry, the chapter includes detailed exegeses and
analyses of the history of software development and architecture, in
the never-ending campaign to safeguard computer software and
perishable data against crashes and other systems failure.
"Software fault tolerance prevents ever-present defects in the
software from hanging or crashing a system," said Bernstein. "The
problem of preventing latent software faults from becoming system
failures is the subject of this chapter. Software architectures,
design techniques, static checks, dynamic tests, special libraries,
and run-time routines help software engineers create fault tolerant
software. The nature of software execution is chaotic because there
are few ways to find singularities, and even those are rarely
practiced. This leads to complex and untrustworthy software
products.
"The 1990s were to be the decade of fault tolerant computing,"
Bernstein continued. "Fault tolerant hardware was in the works and
software fault tolerance was imminent. But it didn't happen. Only
with the rash of server failures, denial-of-service episodes, web
outages and the Sept. 11th attacks did software developers begin to
take an interest again. I explain the reasons behind this in my
chapter."
Bernstein is a recognized expert in software technology, network
architecture, network management software, software project
management, and technology conversion. He teaches graduate courses
on Computer Networks and undergraduate courses on Software
Engineering in Stevens' Imperatore School of Sciences and Arts,
where he holds the title of Industry Research Professor. He is a
member-at-large of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Communications
Society, among many other affiliations. Bernstein had a 35-year
distinguished career at Bell Laboratories in managing large software
projects. Since retirement, he heads his own consulting firm.
Established in 1870, Stevens offers baccalaureate, master's and
doctoral degrees in engineering, science, computer science,
management and technology management, as well as a baccalaureate in
business and technology, and in the humanities and liberal arts.
The university, located across the Hudson from New York City, has a
total enrollment of about 1,740 undergraduates and 2,600 graduate
students. Additional information may be obtained from its web page
at http://www.stevens.edu/.
========================================================================
SQRL Distinguished Lecture Series
Supported by
Materials and Manufacturing Ontario (MMO)
(www.mmo.on.ca)
SPEAKER: Dr. Tom Maibaum
Department of Computer Science
King's College London
London, England
TITLE: A Logical Basis for the Specification of
Reconfigurable Component Based Systems
DATE: Wednesday, November 5, 2003
TIME: 3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
PLACE: McMaster University
Software Quality Research Laboratory
Information Technology Building
Room 225
Hamilton ON L8S 4K1
Abstract: The problem of specifying reconfigurable systems in a
declarative way is still an open one in the software architecture
world. Almost all languages for specifying reconfiguration are
operational (graph grammars, process algebras, etc) and thus
reasoning about reconfiguration must be done in an, often informal,
metalanguage. We use temporal logic to specify the behaviours of
components and extend the language with a formalisation of
connectors. The simplest connector is like an association in OO
languages. Using component specifications and connector
specifications, we build a coarse grained structural unit called a
'subsystem', which incorporates reconfiguration operations and their
properties.
BIO: Prof. Dr. Tom Maibaum (tom@maibaum.org) is the Professor of
the Foundations of Software Engineering in the Department of
Computer Science, King's College London (KCL). Until 1999 he was a
Professor in the Department of Computing, Imperial College (IC). He
was Head of Department for many years at IC and has recently served
as Head at KCL. He has served as Principal Investigator or co-
investigator on numerous EPSRC, EUREKA and EU projects over the past
20 years. He has served on many programme committees and steering
committees of international conferences and chaired several PCs. He
serves as editor for several international journals and is co-editor
(with Dov Gabbay and Samson Abramsky) of the highly regarded
Handbook of Logic in Computer Science (published by OUP), now on its
6th volume and negotiating the publication of an updated and revised
edition of earlier volumes. Since moving to KCL in 1999, he has
built a large Software Engineering Group, whose members include
Kevin Lano, Tony Clark, David Clark, Ian Mackie, Maribel Fernandez,
Alessio Lomuscio, Steve Barker and Andrew Jones. Work is focused on
e-commerce and multi-agent systems, electronic contract formation
and execution, models of trust and security, access control,
semantics of UML, the development of reactive systems, specification
theory, software architecture, and the theory and pragmatics of
model-oriented specification languages. The Department itself has
been completely transformed over the past 3 years and now has
substantive and world class Groups in Software Engineering,
Algorithm Design and Logic, Language and Computation. The last of
these offers direct support for the proposed research because of
their focus on logic, automated reasoning, knowledge representation
and belief revision. Prof. Maibaum is the Chairman of the Steering
Committee of the EU funded CUE Initiative, bringing together
academics and industrial people from The US, China and Europe with
the purpose of making Software Engineering more of an engineering
discipline.
========================================================================
Fifth International Conference on eXtreme Programming
and Agile Processes in Software Engineering
(XP2004)
June 6-10, 2004, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany
http://www.xp2004.org/
The "Fifth International Conference on eXtreme Programming and Agile
Processes in Software Engineering" is a unique forum for industry
and academic professionals to discuss their needs and ideas for
incorporating eXtreme Programming and agile methodologies into their
professional life under consideration of the human factor.
We will celebrate this year's conference by reflecting on what we
have achieved in the last half decade and also focus on the
challenges we are facing in the near future.
XP 2004 facilitates to swap ideas in a number of ways, including
featured talks by professionals on the cutting edge of eXtreme
Programming and agile processes, technical presentations, activity
sessions, panels, posters, code camps, workshops, tutorials, and
other opportunities to exchange and elaborate on new findings. XP
2004 features additionally a PhD Symposium for PhD students, and an
Educational Symposium for everybody with a vested interest in
training and education.
The conference will stress practical applications and implications
of XP and other agile methodologies (AM). Conference topics include,
but are not limited to:
* Foundations and rationale of XP and AM
* Case studies, experiments and practioner's reports
* XP, AM, and "Lean Management"
* Organizational change
* Other management and organizational issues
* Scalability issues
* Education and training
* Introducing XP and AM into an organization
* New insights into XP practices and their interrelations
* Refactoring and continuous integration
* XP, AM, and process/product certifications (CMM, ISO 9001, ...)
* Unit and acceptance testing: practices and experiences
* Use of software development tools and environments
* Merging of agile processes
General Chair: Martin Fowler, ThoughtWorks, USA
Program Chair: Jutta Eckstein, Objects in Action, Germany
Academic Chair: Hubert Baumeister, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universiteit Munich, Germany
========================================================================
Journal of Digital Libraries (JDL):
Special Issue on Security
http://cimic.rutgers.edu/~jdlsi/cfp/security.pdf
Recent technological advancements have resulted in a phenomenal
growth in digital libraries. Often, professionals in the government,
military, and commercial sectors make critical decisions based on
data obtained from digital libraries, These users rely on the
correctness, availability, and secrecy of the data stored in digital
libraries. Consequently, security issues are of great concern to
both researchers and practitioners involved with digital libraries.
A complicating factor is that the technologies that facilitate data
management and access introduce new vulnerabilities that can be
exploited to damage the system. As a result, the technologies on
which digital libraries are based pose new security challenges that
must be addressed.
Reacting to this increasing need for security, researchers and
developers have contributed significantly to advancements in the
theory, design, implementation, analysis, and application of secure
digital libraries. However, there are yet many open problems that
need solution.
Recognizing the importance of the research in this area, ``The
International Journal on Digital Libraries'' is organizing a special
issue on security. The primary focus of this special issue will be
on high-quality original unpublished research, case studies, as well
as implementation experiences in the area pertaining to security
issues in digital libraries.
Suggested topics include but are not limited to:
Authorization and Access Control
Authentication
Encryption technologies for digital libraries
Key management in digital libries
Computer Security and Public Policy
Copy Protection and Prevention
Data/System Availability
Data/System Integrity
Digital Watermarking
Electronic Payment
Intellectual Property Protection
Multimedia Security
Privacy and Anonymity
Security Management
Steganography
Usage Accounting
========================================================================
Fourth International Conference on Web Engineering ICWE'04
July 28-30, 2004
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit=E4t
Munich, Germany
http://www.icwe2004.org
The Fourth International Conference on Web Engineering will be
organised and hosted by the Institute for Informatics of the
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit=E4t M=FCnchen. The ICWE'04 Conference
continues the tradition of ICWE'03 in Oviedo, Spain, ICWE'02 in
Santa F=E9, Argentina and ICWE'01 in C=E1ceres, Spain.
The ICWE'04 conference aims at bringing together the international
community of experts in Web Engineering research, practice and
education, to share their experiences and to foster discussion on
the present status of and future trends in this rapidly growing
field.
The conference focuses on the methodologies, techniques and tools
that are the foundation of Web Engineering and support the
development, use, and evaluation of complex Web applications.
The scope of the conference includes, but is not limited to, the
following areas:
* Business Processes for Applications on the Web
* CASE Tools for Web Applications
* Code Generation for Web Applications
* Collaborative Web Development
* Conceptual Modelling of Web Applications
* Data Models for Web Information Systems
* Development Process and Process Improvement of Web Applications
* Empirical Web Engineering
* Integrated Web Application Development Environments
* Multimedia Authoring Tools and Software
* Performance of Web-based Applications
* Personalisation and Adaptation of Web Applications
* Process Modelling of Web Applications
* Prototyping Methods and Tools
* Quality Control and Testing
* Requirements Engineering for Web Applications
* Semantic Web Applications
* Software Factories for/on the Web
* Testing Automation, Methods and Tools for Web Applications
* Ubiquitous and Mobile Web Applications
* UML and the Web
* Usability of Web Applications
* Web Accessibility
* Web Design Methods
* Web Engineering Education
* Web Interface Design
* Web Metrics, Cost Estimation, and Measurement
* Web Project Management and Risk Management
* Web Services Development and Deployment
ORGANISING COMMITTEE
Nora Koch, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit=E4t M=FCnchen, Germany
(kochn@informatik.uni-muenchen.de)
Piero Fraternali, Politecnico Milano, Italy
(piero.fraternali@polimi.it)
Martin Wirsing, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit=E4t M=FCnchen, Germany
(wirsing@informatik.uni-muenchen.de)
========================================================================
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