Thank you to all the Chair sponsors -- Motorola, Computing Devices, Perigon Solutions, Nortel, the Government of Alberta and the University of Calgary. Thanks also to the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Calgary, all of whom made this possible.
The Software Engineering Research Network (SERN) was formed in June 1996 to provide a vehicle for the university-industry links resulting from the appointment of the Industry Chair in Software Engineering, the launch of a research-based masters degree specializing in software engineering, and the appointment of three new faculty members associated with these new ventures.
SERN is a joint venture with the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Calgary, sponsored by Motorola, Computing Devices, Perigon Solutions, Northern Telecom, the Government of Alberta and the University of Calgary.
There are now 20 graduate students working on SERN projects, and the team also includes an Industry Research Associate and a Post-doctoral Fellow (from Jan 1998). A wide range of new graduate courses in software engineering has been developed and taught, and a number of significant industry and university-based research projects have been initiated.
The overall research activities of SERN have four major themes:
This has been a year of rapid development for SERN. Major additional funding has been raised for equipment and projects. A very close and effective working relationship has developed between the two academic departments involved. The industry and university-based research programs are moving ahead rapidly, additional industrial links have been developed, and plans are being developed to expand both the masters program and the overall research network. In particular, SERN is a major participant in the C4 computational collaboratory project to link university and industry research in Alberta and across Canada through the CANARIE CA*Net II high speed network.
The Software Engineering Research Network is a joint venture of the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Calgary. It is sponsored by Motorola, Computing Devices, Perigon Solutions, Northern Telecom, the Government of Alberta and the University of Calgary.
Membership in SERN is open to industry and research organizations concerned with applied software engineering. In particular, SERN supports its industrial sponsors through joint projects, a database of experience and best practice accessible through the World Wide Web, requirements engineering and software engineering workflow tools, and an industrial software engineering degree specialization at Masters level.
The primary focus of SERN is to treat software development as a manufacturing discipline, and the objectives of SERN are to establish:
SERN has base funding of $1M over 5 years from its industry partners, the Provincial government and the University. It also has some $100K a year from other industry sponsors and NSERC.
Industrial partners:
The primary interests of the industrial partners are software engineering process improvement, requirements engineering and knowledge-level workflow tools through SERN's research program. They also have major interests in workplace training of software engineers through SERN's masters program.
SERN has been supported in other ways by industry:
The MSc degree with a specialization in Software Engineering is offered jointly through the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, with funding provided by the Province of Alberta through the Access Fund.
This Masters program provides one major component of SERN research because it is a thesis-based research program with the research carried out in industry. Students are being encouraged to select topics that address issues relevant to SERN members, and the resultant theses will be published on the web to contribute to a "best practice" database.
The program is fully funded by the Province through its Access 3 envelope with $225,000/year ($112,500 per Dept) plus student fees. This covers teaching assistantships for student support, the cost of out-of-faculty/dept courses, books and equipment.
This degree was started in September 1997 with five new students and two transferred from the existing program. In January 1997, six additional students were admitted.
The learning objectives of the Software Engineering specialization are to enable students to:
There are two entry paths to the Software Engineering MSc. It is expected that students with an undergraduate degree in a science discipline will register in the graduate program of the Department of Computer Science, and those with an undergraduate degree in an engineering discipline will register in the graduate program of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Students will be registered in the Faculty of Graduate Studies in a thesis-based MSc program in Computer Science or Electrical and Computer Engineering with a specialization in Software Engineering. The Faculty entry requirements apply and students must have an undergraduate degree with a GPA of 3.0 or above. In addition, the Departments will assess the suitability of students for entry based on their academic background and industrial experience.
The course component of the MSc consists of 2.5 full course equivalents selected from a specified list of courses. The thesis component consists of an applied software engineering project written up as an MSc thesis and examined by an examination committee as specified in the Faculty regulations.
Students applying for entry to the MSc will be expected to have at least one year of experience in software development in a professional environment. Additional experience will be taken into account when assessing a student's academic background and achievements. Background knowledge in C, C++, object-oriented design, and human-computer interaction is preferred.
A software engineering research project will be carried out, normally in a software development environment in industry. A thesis on this project will be examined according to Faculty of Graduate Studies regulations.
There are no longer any mandatory residency requirements for masters students, and the Department does not have a residency requirement for the S Eng. MSc. Students are required to attend the university to take courses but the majority are being organized as 3 hour sessions once a week in the evening so that there is no disruption of normal working hours.
The project work for the thesis is expected to be based on the ongoing activities in the workplace. It is expected that students will be employed in the software industry, and will work on their projects at the industry sites. For example, it might be an experiment in which a particular approach to process improvement is investigated, and software metrics are kept for a particular development. The final thesis need give no details relating to confidential information but would present the characteristics of the software being developed, the experience with process improvement and the plots of the relevant metrics. A similar approach will be taken for other topics.
Canadian students are liable for fees of about $3,500 for their first year in the program and about $1,000 a year thereafter until they complete. (This may change without notice.) They have a maximum of 4 years in which to complete the degree.
An expected pattern for an industry student would be to take one half course a semester (3 hours contact time per week), and plan the project work from the beginning as part of the research methods course (which will be spread out throughout the project activity). It would be realistic to complete an MSc in 2 years.
There will be a two-way flow of knowledge and personnel in which the Industry Partners introduce new problems, the University researchers introduce new technologies, and the relation between the problems and technologies is investigated through joint projects. The University has a documented Intellectual Property Policy. The results of the research undertaken will come under item 5.2.3, that it be placed in the public domain and be freely available for use. Specific confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements will be drawn up with industrial sponsors for projects involving access to confidential or commercially sensitive material, but the need for such access will be minimized.
There are 6 required quarter courses which form the core of the program. An additional 2 half courses are taken as options from defined lists. Quarter courses are specified by Q(x-y) where the number of class hours per week is x, and the number of lab hours is y.
The core quarter-courses are:
Advanced credit may be given for recent courses taken in core topics. This must be approved as part of the offer of a place in the program.
In addition students can select the equivalent of two half-courses from the following options:
Students are strongly advised to take at least one of the management half courses: MOHR 621, MOHR 691 or ENCI 691.
The equipment purchased in the Computer Science Department during the year, is as follows:
An equivalent lab is being set up in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.
The following advertisement was distributed in early Fall 1997.
"ACADEMIC POSITIONS IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
Applications are invited for 4 academic positions at the Assistant or Associate Professor level in the area of Software Engineering. These positions support both a new Industrial Research Chair program and a new graduate program jointly offered by the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Two of these positions are tenure track and two are specific term appointments.
Candidates for the positions shall have a Ph.D. in a relevant field, an outstanding academic record and an ability to establish a research group and supervise graduate students in the area of software engineering.
The area of expertise is software engineering in relation to industry needs, with emphasis on software development processes, requirements engineering, and user-oriented software design. The new academic staff members will interact with the local software industry and with an industrial research chair position in the Faculty of Science. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.
The University of Calgary is a dynamic, 30-year old institution located in the city of Calgary which is emerging as a centre for software development. It is located in Southern Alberta in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has 19 full-time academic staff and 350 graduate and undergraduate students. The Department of Computer Science has 22 full-time academic staff and 500 graduate and undergraduate students. Both departments receive significant research support from industry and government.
In accordance with Canadian immigration requirements, priority will be given to Canadian citizens and permanent residents of Canada. The University of Calgary has an employment equity program and encourages applications from all qualified candidates including women, aboriginal people, visible minorities, and people with disabilities.
Applications will be accepted until November 1st, 1996 or until the positions are filled."
There were many applications for these positions, but, unfortunately, few in the areas relevant to our requirements. Three of the positions were filled, and took up their appointments in July 1997. The fourth position, the junior position in Electrical and Computer Engineering, is proving difficult to fill, and is due to be re-advertised shortly. The new faculty from Canada, Germany, and Italy are:
In addition, existing members of the University are giving relevant courses and/or supervising students. Among these are: Dr John Kendall, Dr Brian Gaines, Dr Saul Greenberg Dr Brian Unger and Dr Mike Smith.
SENG 621 and SENG 623
It must be noted that in order to educate the personnel required by the software industry in Canada, courses must comprise a theoretical based component, and a sense of how this material can be applied in the workplace. Consequently, it is not sufficient to offer these courses purely from an academic perspective. To accommodate this need, Mr Alfred Hussein from Perigon Solutions Inc. agreed to take part in the required courses, to give some lectures, and to be available to discuss issues arising from attempts to place this material in the day-to-day context of software industry needs.
Such industry needs also encompass the ability to work in and lead teams, to present material concisely and coherently, and to write reports and present findings. The required courses have been designed to provide this experience.
In the Winter term 1997, the courses SENG 621 Software Process and SENG 623 Software Quality Management were taught by the Chairholder, in conjunction with Mr Alfred Hussein from Perigon Solutions Inc.
SENG 621 included the topics:
SENG 623 was based around the following exercise:
Your company has begun their software process improvement (SPI) efforts by adopting the SEI CMM as their software process improvement framework. Your company has been currently assessed at Level 1 and is putting into place the plans to get to Level 2. SPI teams have been created to implement each of the Key Process Areas. In addition, your company has decided that it could benefit from Level 3 Key Process Area Peer Reviews and has decided to implement that as well.
You have been assigned to a team to create a metrics program for a specific Key Process Area (KPA).
Your responsibilities include :
This is not a complete list. There may be other activities that may need to be performed.
All the work involved in these courses &emdash; course notes, student assignments, marking schemes are available on the web at Software Process Management and Software Quality Management .
SENG 691 and SENG 693
SENG 691 Managing the Software Engineering Research Process runs throughout the year. This course is designed to help the students to identify a research area and write a suitable proposal including aim and objectives, a literature review surveying and critiquing the current state of the art relating to the aim, a research design, plan for implementation and evaluation.
SENG 693 Trends in Software Engineering also runs throughout the year. It is made up of invited talks from key people in the software industry on topics not otherwise covered in the courses.
All the work involved in these courses &emdash; thesis proposal, assignments,. will be available on the web as it is completed.
The courses SENG 611, 613, 609.01, 609.02, 609.05, 609.06, are running in the Fall term 1997 together with several of the Management and Project Management courses. All current relevant courses can be found from the MSc Software Engineering Specialization web page.
CPSC 451, the undergraduate course on Practical Software Engineering has been taught by the Chairholder in previous years since 1988, and past material is on the web. During the past year in Winter 1997 Rob Kremer took over this course in the same form. The advantage of its current form is the group projects where the students (150 per class) are divided into groups of 12 and work as a team to produce a piece of software. Each student is assigned to two different teams. In one group she is one of the supplier team, and in the other one of the customer team.
The web was used by the students to support collaboration. The students used their individual computer accounts to put relevant materials on the web, and then linked to one another to develop an integrated site. This generated a very complex web in which, for example, screen dumps in one account were used to illustrate a manual in another, but it allowed the content to be controlled by the individuals who assumed specific roles in the projects.
In the coming year, the first undergraduate software engineering course CPSC 333 An Introduction to Software Engineering will be taught by Dr Frank Maurer, and CPSC 451 again by Dr Rob Kremer.
CPSC 547, the undergraduate course on Advanced Information Systems has also been taught by the Chairholder in previous years since 1986, and past material is on the web. Rob Kremer has also taken over this course, and is planning to move it more into the software process engineering area.
The Chair mandate is available at Software Engineering Research Network (SERN). The research projects are abstracted below and will be started now that most of the infrastructure is in place.
The scientific research program that is part of this mandate addresses the following objectives in the Chair proposal:
The methodology is the standard one of applied science: developing understanding of the fundamental issues underlying the practical problems; formulating models of the significant processes involved; developing methodologies and tools for data collection relevant to the models; assessing the models by determining their applicability to particular situations through data collection and model-building; formulating hypotheses about process improvement from the general and particular models; developing methodologies and tools to effect the improvement; fielding the methodologies and tools in realistic situations to gather further data with which to rebuild the models; using the new models to assess the impact of the attempt at process improvement; and iterating the entire process to improve the models, modeling techniques, data gathering, process improvement strategy, and so on.
The prima facie assumptions based on discussions with the industry partners and the state-of-the-art survey are that the most critical areas of the software life cycle that should be addressed initially are requirements elicitation and tracking, and software manufacturing processes. It is expected that similar knowledge-level workflow tools can be used to elicit and track requirements and to model and monitor processes, and the initial research program is targeted on testing these assumptions in an industrial setting.
Requirements elicitation is treated as a knowledge acquisition problem in which existing system operators are `experts' to various extents, and the wide range of conceptual modeling methodologies and tools that have been developed in the knowledge acquisition research community will be applied to requirements elicitation. It is recognized that, as often occurs in knowledge-based system development, it is rare that exact replication of an existing system is required, and hence a process re-engineering stance as described in Section 6.1 of the mandate will be adopted in which the emphasis in on the fundamental need for the system for which requirements are being defined.
The primary methodology will be that of soft systems as described in Section 6.5.3 of the mandate in which the system to be developed is modeled from several different perspectives defined in terms of different problem owners, actors and customers. This methodology will be used within a framework of joint application design in which those with these different perspectives come together to negotiate a requirements specification that reflects them all.
Modeling techniques developed for knowledge acquisition based on personal construct psychology as described in Section 6.5.2 of the mandate will be used to elicit, model and compare the differing perspectives. The KADS methodology as described in Section 6.5.3 of the mandate will be used to organize and integrate the models and to make them operationally available.
It is recognized that software manufacturing organizations have to deal with full or partial requirements specifications that are already established and over which they have little control, and one research focus will be the reverse engineering of such specifications to model them in a uniform and operational framework that supports their tracking.
The links between requirements and analysis and design will be modeled so that it becomes possible to track the specific design decisions that relate to each requirement.
The overall objective will be to develop a requirements engineering methodology that is psychologically and system-theoretically well-founded but which is also applicable because it is expressed in meaningful terms and has no unnecessary components or activities.
This project will commence with an industry-based feasibility study in which the methodologies and tools that I have already developed will be applied to some prototypical requirements elicitation tasks designated by the industry partners.
From existing experience it is expected that the methodologies and tools will become further refined through the feasibility study and lead to a detailed requirements engineering methodology that can be issued for use by others.
This issued methodology will then be used in some substantial monitored trials with industry partners in combination with conventional requirements engineering approaches. In these trials the emphasis will be on requirements tracking--on monitoring changing requirements, modeling them in structured documentation, and tracing the requirements through analysis, design, implementation, evaluation, application and maintenance.
This will lead to further refinements and case studies resulting in a final deliverable of a detailed methodology, documented so that it can be used by others, with supporting tools, and a set of detailed case studies that can be used in training and to evaluate the applicability of the methodology and tools.
Software manufacturing process modeling will be treated as an enterprise modeling problem encompassing as much of the enterprise as is relevant to the software manufacturing, but with greatest emphasis on the modeling of the specific processes associated with the software life cycle.
In the literature close links have already been established between enterprise modeling and knowledge acquisition, and as described in Section 6.5 of the mandate methodologies and tools developed for knowledge acquisition purposes are being applied to enterprise modeling. Hence, it is expected that much of the research applicable to requirements elicitation and tracking can also be applied to software manufacturing process modeling. The initial approach will be to assume that, instead of eliciting and modeling customer requirements for products, one is eliciting and modeling enterprise requirements for its manufacturing processes.
The initial phase of the research will be concerned with modeling software manufacturing as a series of processes similar to those of electrical and mechanical manufacturing, with a view to determining where the analogy is effective and where it breaks down. In particular, the workflow involved in software manufacturing will be modeled in detail to provide an operational description of the processes involved. This model will then be used to analyze and assess the possibilities for process improvement.
Many attempts have been made to analyze software manufacturing as analogous to hardware manufacturing over the past 30 years, and the focus of the research will be on industry practice that satisfies the SEI level 2 requirement of repeatability. It is hypothesized that lack of repeatability is not only a major problem for the management of software production but that it is also the reason for problems in establishing stable and meaningful models of the processes involved. A major initial objective will be to evaluate this hypothesis.
This project will commence with an industry-based study in which the methodologies and tools described in Section 5 that I have already developed will be applied to develop a complete process model of some software manufacturing activity from requirements through analysis, design, implementation, evaluation, application and maintenance.
Temporal, workload, skill level, knowledge level and quality parameters will be estimated for each process involved. These will initially be based on elicited subjective judgments and the overall resulting model will then itself be evaluated in terms of elicited subjective judgments of cost, likelihood of failures, and other performance parameters.
This study will also be used to assess the feasibility of introducing workflow tools into the software manufacturing processes to support the people involved, to improve the repeatability of the processes, and to monitor the processes for repeatability.
The interim deliverable will be a documented methodology for monitoring, supporting and modeling software manufacturing processes that can be issued for use by others.
In the next phase this methodology will be introduced into some specific software manufacturing activities designated by the industrial partners and studies will be carried out of its industrial application.
This will lead to further refinements and case studies resulting in a final deliverable of a detailed methodology, documented so that it can be used by others, with supporting tools, and a set of detailed case studies that can be used in training and to evaluate the applicability of the methodology and tools.
Experience in knowledge acquisition in an industrial setting shows that it involves the gathering and management of large volumes of data from heterogeneous sources, and that this data gathering and management needs to become integrated with normal work processes if it is not to become such a burden as to undermine the knowledge acquisition activity. However, there is also growing industrial interest in workflow and knowledge management tools that support existing processes and, incidentally, provide much of the data required for knowledge engineering.
It is proposed to conduct the industrially-based research by introducing knowledge-level workflow tools that are seen by their users as supporting their ongoing activities but which, at the same time, can be used as data gathering tools for requirements tracking and software manufacturing process monitoring.
These tools will be based on the existing Mediator developments underway in the Knowledge Science Institute (KSI) and Division of Manufacturing Engineering (DME). Mediator was itself developed as part of the international Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) research program in the consortium concerned with knowledge systematization for manufacturing. Although the partners and projects primarily focused on electrical and mechanical manufacturing, it has one track led by IBM (France) that applies the same methodologies to software manufacturing.
The KSI and DME involvement in Mediator development continues in the ongoing IMS program, and this project will involve collaboration with KSI, DME and in the IMS program to apply the same methodologies and tools to software engineering.
In the first year a Knowledge-Level Workflow (KLWF) system will be developed to provide the basic framework in which all the other tools will operate. It will be designed as a multi-client, multi-server, networked architecture in which distributed client and server agents communicate over local or wide-area networks and provide user services through a uniform and simple interface.
This architecture is a generic re-design of the Mediator prototype system for managing data and knowledge flows in manufacturing throughout the product life cycle 2. The new implementation will use the TCL/TK implementation of GroupKit to provide an open-architecture collaborative system that is readily extended by ourselves and others, and integrates easily with other applications.
In the next phase a KLWF system will be developed specifically for requirements elicitation, modeling and tracking, and this system will be tested in an industrial context as part of the studies documented in Project 1 above.
In the next phase a KLWF system will be developed specifically for process monitoring and support, modeling and tracking, and this system will be tested in an industrial context as part of the studies documented in Project 2 above.
The KLWF technology will be refined and redeveloped in the light of feedback from these trials and the final deliverable will be a documented system for use by the industrial partners and suitable for commercial issue and support.
It is expected that the KLWF development will remain throughout a collaborative development involving a consortium consisting of the SERN, KSI and DME, and that other applications, for example to hardware manufacturing, will be proceeding in parallel and will add to the effort and experience available.
Projects 1 through 3 all involve industrial collaboration in data gathering, modeling, application and evaluation. However, a separate industrial evaluation project is necessary to monitor the overall impact and direction of the research program and to ensure that it remains targeted on the most significant industrial needs.
This project will involve an arms-length elicitation of the aspirations, intentions and expectations of both the researchers and industrial partners, and the development of a quality model for the research based on this assessment. This model will be used to track the research activities against the specific performance parameters identified, with a view to systematically accelerating the progress of the research program.
The overt management of an evaluation project is vital to research in the area of software manufacturing because the field and industrial practice are themselves rapidly changing, and one of the major dangers for any research activity in this area is that its objectives, preconceptions and approaches may become out of date or irrelevant. Research in this area has to practice what it preaches and monitor its underlying requirements and processes.
The industry partners will be interviewed to develop a concise assessment of their expectations of the SERN and the associated research program, and a model will be developed that matches the research program against this assessment.
This model will be used for management, progress reporting and evaluation by the Board of SERN.
In the second phase the model will be used to search and analyze systematically the relevant literature to developed a database of materials relevant to the needs of the industry partners and to those of the research program.
In the third phase the model will be used to evaluate the achievements of SERN in terms of the industry needs and the defined research program.
In the final phase the models of needs and programs will themselves be updated to provide the basis for planning a continuing research program.
Kremer, R. (1997). Constraint Graphs: A "Meta-Language" for Concept Maps. Ph.D. Dissertation, Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Herlea, D.E. (1997). A Groupware System for Negotiating Software Requirements. M.Sc.. Thesis, Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Florez-Mendez, R. (1997).Programming Distributed Collaborative Interaction Through the World Wide Web. M.Sc. Thesis, Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
The graduate students are in process of developing their research proposals and projects. Some of their topics/titles are listed below, and some have not yet decided:
On 6 May 1997, the inauguration for the Chair was held in the University Club, preceded by an Open House for the industry visitors to meet the students and see their work, and followed by a reception. The programme for the event in the University Club was as follows:
Welcome President White
Remarks
There were 124 attendees, 84 of those from industry. A list of attendees is attached.
The first meeting was held on 8 Oct 1996 at the University of Calgary.
Present: Advisory Board: Dr Jane Kelley, representing Dr Cooper Langford; Mr Brian Westcott, ACTC; Mr Monty Ghitter, Nortel; Dr Jim Haslett, ENEL; Dr Ken Loose, CPSC; Dr Mildred Shaw, Chairholder, CPSC.
Invited: Dr John Kendall, Dean of Science; Dr Douglas Norrie, Industrial Research Chair in Manufacturing Engineering, ENME; Dr Brian Gaines, Killam Chair, CPSC.
Apologies For Absence: Dr Jim Mason, CDC; Mr Greg McAvoy, Nortel; Dr Francis Hartman, Chair in Project Management, ENCI
Minutes were distributed to invitees on 9 Oct 1996.
The elected Chairperson was Mr Brian Westcott who will call the next meeting when it is deemed necessary by the sponsors.
Mildred Shaw's research interests are mainly in the area of human and organizational aspects of knowledge and requirements engineering, their modeling and support through advanced information systems. Her research activities include: developments in, and applications of, requirements engineering; software process engineering; personal construct psychology; automation of repertory grid techniques and analysis; the study and improvement of human-computer interaction; knowledge engineering for expert systems; the system-theoretic modelling of the interaction between personal models of the world and social determinants; and applications of knowledge engineering methodologies and tools to requirements engineering and collaborative learning.
Rob Kremer's main research area is visual languages, and concept mapping languages in particular. He is currently developing a concept mapping "meta-language" &endash; a concept mapping language used to describe other concept mapping languages. The meta-language can be used as a very fast development tool for visual-language interfaces to many software applications, such as specification languages, object-oriented design languages, etc. Other interests include object-oriented languages, design patterns, formal methods, and knowledge representation.
Dr. Maurer's research focuses on methods, techniques and tools which support the coordination of globally distributed software development projects using the Internet as the underlying infrastructure. The research follows a process centered approach. One outcome of the research will be a tool which supports process modeling and enactment over the Internet. The tool will use an object-oriented database system as the kernel for storing all relevant process data. The database will be replicated to several servers involved in the process enactment. Java applets are used for the interaction with its users and for implementing "push" notification mechanisms. Multimedia equipment and Smartboards will be used to integrate synchronous collaboration support in the - basically asynchronous - internet-based enactment environment.
The main research area of Dr. Succi is software engineering. He is interested in theoretical and applied research on the effects of integrating a reuse policy inside a software development process, in terms of process maturity, productivity, quality, long term returns of investment, standards, effects on the market structure, relevant accounting techniques, and legal issues. In the field of software reuse, he has implemented a compiler of a logic language for a "generic" parallel architecture, to achieve code reusability for parallel machines and this compiler has been ported to a transputer network and to a CM2; he has designed and developed a reusable software artifact library, this library has been validated in two software firms within the Esprit Project Tarsal; he has developed models to study the effects of reuse on quality and productivity and he had validated the models on real industrial data. Dr. Succi is also interested in tools supporting software engineering over the internet, in object orientation, and in distributed systems. In particular, in 1990 he has developed over the ftp protocol a mechanism to allow mounting of remote file systems on local machines, named Slow File System; he has studied the performances of Unix network environments, and in 1993 he designer a compiler and an abstract machine to allow the execution of a set-base logic language on remote machines using the http protocol.
This has been a year of rapid development for SERN. Major additional funding has been raised for equipment and projects. A very close and effective working relationship has developed between the two academic departments involved. The industry and university-based research programs are moving ahead rapidly, additional industrial links have been developed, and plans are being developed to expand both the masters program and the overall research network. In particular, SERN is a major participant in the C4 computational collaboratory project to link university and industry research in Alberta and across Canada through the CANARIE CA*Net II high speed network.
Thank you to all the Chair sponsors &emdash; Motorola, Computing Devices, Perigon Solutions, Nortel, the Government of Alberta and the University of Calgary. Thanks also to the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Calgary, all of whom made this possible.
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