A comprehensive collection of influential articles from one of IEEE Computer magazine’s most popular columns

This book is a compendium of extended and revised publications that have appeared in the “Software Technologies” column of IEEE Computer magazine, which covers key topics in software engineering such as software development, software correctness and related techniques, cloud computing, self-managing software and self-aware systems. Emerging properties of software technology are also discussed in this book, which will help refine the developing framework for creating the next generation of software technologies and help readers predict future developments and challenges in the field.

Software Technology provides guidance on the challenges of developing software today and points readers to where the best advances are being made. Filled with one insightful article after another, the book serves to inform the conversation about the next wave of software technology advances and applications. In addition, the book:

Informative and thought-provoking throughout, Software Technology is a valuable book for everyone in the software engineering community that will inspire as much as it will teach all who flip through its pages.

A comprehensive collection of influential articles from one of IEEE Computer magazine’s most popular columns

This book is a compendium of extended and revised publications that have appeared in the “Software Technologies” column of IEEE Computer magazine, which covers key topics in software engineering such as software development, software correctness and related techniques, cloud computing, self-managing software and self-aware systems. Emerging properties of software technology are also discussed in this book, which will help refine the developing framework for creating the next generation of software technologies and help readers predict future developments and challenges in the field.

Software Technology provides guidance on the challenges of developing software today and points readers to where the best advances are being made. Filled with one insightful article after another, the book serves to inform the conversation about the next wave of software technology advances and applications. In addition, the book:

Informative and thought-provoking throughout, Software Technology is a valuable book for everyone in the software engineering community that will inspire as much as it will teach all who flip through its pages.

Software has long been perceived as complex, at least within Software Engineering circles. We have been living in a recognised state of crisis since the first NATO Software Engineering conference in 1968. Time and again we have been proven unable to engineer reliable software as easily/cheaply as we imagined. Cost overruns and expensive failures are the norm. The problem is fundamentally one of complexity: software is fundamentally complex because it must be precise. Problems that appear to be specified quite easily in plain language become far more complex when written in a more formal notation, such as computer code. Comparisons with other engineering disciplines are deceptive. One cannot easily increase the factor of safety of software in the same way that one could in building a steel structure, for example. Software is typically built assuming perfection, often without adequate safety nets in case the unthinkable happens. In such circumstances it should not be surprising to find out that (seemingly) minor errors have the potential to cause entire software systems to collapse. The goal of this book is to uncover techniques that will aid in overcoming complexity and enable us to produce reliable, dependable computer systems that will operate as intended, and yet are produced on-time, in budget, and are evolvable, both over time and at run time. We hope that the contributions in this book will aid in understanding the nature of software complexity and provide guidance for the control or avoidance of complexity in the engineering of complex software systems.

Starting with a Laurea in Ingegneria Elettronica and a PhD in Computer and Systems Engineering at the Politecnico di Torino, Tiziana has stayed faithful to her love of organized management of composable functionalities in software and systems, with building blocks and MDD, and she strives for coherence and alignment in complex systems through verification, model checking and workflow synthesis. Her quest for simplicity spans technologies (low-code/no-code; ITSy project), business (Business Model Canvas; tools for innovative business models) and disciplines with her concept of the Digital Thread, a metaphor for IT-mediated interoperation of reusable and ideally verified tools and systems in new platforms where reuse, repurposing and evolution are supported by design. Her most recent initiative, R@ISE, aims at opening the world of IT production and adaptation to a wider range of users and professions. Tiziana is a cofounder and managing editor of the International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer, she cofounded the ISoLA conference, and cofounded METAFrame Technologies serving as CEO. She is a Fellow of the Society for Design and Process Science and a Fellow and President of the Irish Computer Society.

Throughout her career Tiziana’s successes have been motivated by how best to advance science and engineering through the implementation of techniques in challenging applications, and the contributions in this volume by leading researchers are representative of a community that shares this drive.

Advanced space exploration is performed by unmanned missions with integrated autonomy in both flight and ground systems. Risk and feasibility are major factors supporting the use of unmanned craft and the use of automation and robotic technologies where possible. Autonomy in space helps to increase the amount of science data returned from missions, perform new science, and reduce mission costs.

Elicitation and expression of autonomy requirements is one of the most significant challenges the autonomous spacecraft engineers need to overcome today. This book discusses the Autonomy Requirements Engineering (ARE) approach, intended to help software engineers properly elicit, express, verify, and validate autonomy requirements. Moreover, a comprehensive state-of-the-art of software engineering for aerospace is presented to outline the problems handled by ARE along with a proof-of-concept case study on the ESA''s BepiColombo Mission demonstrating the ARE’s ability to handle autonomy requirements.

As computers increasingly control the systems and services we depend upon within our daily lives like transport, communications, and the media, ensuring these systems function correctly is of utmost importance. This book consists of twelve chapters and one historical account that were presented at a workshop in London in 2015, marking the 25th anniversary of the European ESPRIT Basic Research project ‘ProCoS’ (Provably Correct Systems). 

The ProCoS I and II projects pioneered and accelerated the automation of verification techniques, resulting in a wide range of applications within many trades and sectors such as aerospace, electronics, communications, and retail.

The following topics are covered:

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science, SOFSEM 2017, held in Limerick, Ireland, in January 2017. The 34 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 41 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: foundations in computer science; semantics, specification and compositionality; theory of mobile and distributed systems; verification and automated system analysis; petri nets, games and relaxed data structures; graph theory and scheduling algorithms; quantum and matrix algorithms; planar and molecular graphs; coloring and vertex covers; algorithms for strings and formal languages; data, information and knowledge engineering; and software engineering: methods, tools, applications.

A comprehensive collection of influential articles from one of IEEE Computer magazine’s most popular columns

This book is a compendium of extended and revised publications that have appeared in the “Software Technologies” column of IEEE Computer magazine, which covers key topics in software engineering such as software development, software correctness and related techniques, cloud computing, self-managing software and self-aware systems. Emerging properties of software technology are also discussed in this book, which will help refine the developing framework for creating the next generation of software technologies and help readers predict future developments and challenges in the field.

Software Technology provides guidance on the challenges of developing software today and points readers to where the best advances are being made. Filled with one insightful article after another, the book serves to inform the conversation about the next wave of software technology advances and applications. In addition, the book:

Informative and thought-provoking throughout, Software Technology is a valuable book for everyone in the software engineering community that will inspire as much as it will teach all who flip through its pages.

A comprehensive collection of influential articles from one of IEEE Computer magazine’s most popular columns

This book is a compendium of extended and revised publications that have appeared in the “Software Technologies” column of IEEE Computer magazine, which covers key topics in software engineering such as software development, software correctness and related techniques, cloud computing, self-managing software and self-aware systems. Emerging properties of software technology are also discussed in this book, which will help refine the developing framework for creating the next generation of software technologies and help readers predict future developments and challenges in the field.

Software Technology provides guidance on the challenges of developing software today and points readers to where the best advances are being made. Filled with one insightful article after another, the book serves to inform the conversation about the next wave of software technology advances and applications. In addition, the book:

Informative and thought-provoking throughout, Software Technology is a valuable book for everyone in the software engineering community that will inspire as much as it will teach all who flip through its pages.

Software has long been perceived as complex, at least within Software Engineering circles. We have been living in a recognised state of crisis since the first NATO Software Engineering conference in 1968. Time and again we have been proven unable to engineer reliable software as easily/cheaply as we imagined. Cost overruns and expensive failures are the norm. The problem is fundamentally one of complexity: software is fundamentally complex because it must be precise. Problems that appear to be specified quite easily in plain language become far more complex when written in a more formal notation, such as computer code. Comparisons with other engineering disciplines are deceptive. One cannot easily increase the factor of safety of software in the same way that one could in building a steel structure, for example. Software is typically built assuming perfection, often without adequate safety nets in case the unthinkable happens. In such circumstances it should not be surprising to find out that (seemingly) minor errors have the potential to cause entire software systems to collapse. The goal of this book is to uncover techniques that will aid in overcoming complexity and enable us to produce reliable, dependable computer systems that will operate as intended, and yet are produced on-time, in budget, and are evolvable, both over time and at run time. We hope that the contributions in this book will aid in understanding the nature of software complexity and provide guidance for the control or avoidance of complexity in the engineering of complex software systems.

Starting with a Laurea in Ingegneria Elettronica and a PhD in Computer and Systems Engineering at the Politecnico di Torino, Tiziana has stayed faithful to her love of organized management of composable functionalities in software and systems, with building blocks and MDD, and she strives for coherence and alignment in complex systems through verification, model checking and workflow synthesis. Her quest for simplicity spans technologies (low-code/no-code; ITSy project), business (Business Model Canvas; tools for innovative business models) and disciplines with her concept of the Digital Thread, a metaphor for IT-mediated interoperation of reusable and ideally verified tools and systems in new platforms where reuse, repurposing and evolution are supported by design. Her most recent initiative, R@ISE, aims at opening the world of IT production and adaptation to a wider range of users and professions. Tiziana is a cofounder and managing editor of the International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer, she cofounded the ISoLA conference, and cofounded METAFrame Technologies serving as CEO. She is a Fellow of the Society for Design and Process Science and a Fellow and President of the Irish Computer Society.

Throughout her career Tiziana’s successes have been motivated by how best to advance science and engineering through the implementation of techniques in challenging applications, and the contributions in this volume by leading researchers are representative of a community that shares this drive.

Advanced space exploration is performed by unmanned missions with integrated autonomy in both flight and ground systems. Risk and feasibility are major factors supporting the use of unmanned craft and the use of automation and robotic technologies where possible. Autonomy in space helps to increase the amount of science data returned from missions, perform new science, and reduce mission costs.

Elicitation and expression of autonomy requirements is one of the most significant challenges the autonomous spacecraft engineers need to overcome today. This book discusses the Autonomy Requirements Engineering (ARE) approach, intended to help software engineers properly elicit, express, verify, and validate autonomy requirements. Moreover, a comprehensive state-of-the-art of software engineering for aerospace is presented to outline the problems handled by ARE along with a proof-of-concept case study on the ESA''s BepiColombo Mission demonstrating the ARE’s ability to handle autonomy requirements.

As computers increasingly control the systems and services we depend upon within our daily lives like transport, communications, and the media, ensuring these systems function correctly is of utmost importance. This book consists of twelve chapters and one historical account that were presented at a workshop in London in 2015, marking the 25th anniversary of the European ESPRIT Basic Research project ‘ProCoS’ (Provably Correct Systems). 

The ProCoS I and II projects pioneered and accelerated the automation of verification techniques, resulting in a wide range of applications within many trades and sectors such as aerospace, electronics, communications, and retail.

The following topics are covered:

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science, SOFSEM 2017, held in Limerick, Ireland, in January 2017. The 34 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 41 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: foundations in computer science; semantics, specification and compositionality; theory of mobile and distributed systems; verification and automated system analysis; petri nets, games and relaxed data structures; graph theory and scheduling algorithms; quantum and matrix algorithms; planar and molecular graphs; coloring and vertex covers; algorithms for strings and formal languages; data, information and knowledge engineering; and software engineering: methods, tools, applications.