Application software

About: Application software is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 12185 publications have been published within this topic receiving 219822 citations. The topic is also known as: software application & application software.

Modeling the effects of combining diverse software fault detection techniques

Abstract: Considers what happens when several different fault-finding techniques are used together. The effectiveness of such multi-technique approaches depends upon a quite subtle interplay between their individual efficacies. The modeling tool we use to study this problem is closely related to earlier work on software design diversity which showed that it would be unreasonable even to expect software versions that were developed truly independently to fail independently of one another. The key idea was a "difficulty function" over the input space. Later work extended these ideas to introduce a notion of "forced" diversity. In this paper, we show that many of these results for design diversity have counterparts in diverse fault detection in a single software version. We define measures of fault-finding effectiveness and diversity, and show how these might be used to give guidance for the optimal application of different fault-finding procedures to a particular program. The effects on reliability of repeated applications of a particular fault-finding procedure are not statistically independent; such an incorrect assumption of independence will always give results that are too optimistic. For diverse fault-finding procedures, it is possible for effectiveness to be even greater than it would be under an assumption of statistical independence. Diversity of fault-finding procedures is a good thing and should be applied as widely as possible. The model is illustrated using some data from an experimental investigation into diverse fault-finding on a railway signalling application.

Systems and methods for determining recommended aspects of future content, actions, or behavior

Abstract: A method includes providing, by a processor of a computing device, potential requests. Each of the potential requests include an indication of at least one recommended aspect type for a future content. The method further includes receiving a selection of at least one of the potential requests for the at least one recommended aspect type for the future content. The selection is associated with a unique author in at least one social network, website, application software, or mobile application software (app). The method further includes automatically determining, in response to the selection, the recommended aspect for the future content. The recommended aspect is determined at least in part based on activity data that indicates aspects of other content authored by or interacted with by a plurality of authors in the at least one social network, website, application software, or mobile application software (app) prior to receipt of the selection.

Trade-offs in the Configuration of a Network on Chip for Multiple Use-Cases

Abstract: Systems on chip (SoC) are becoming increasingly complex, with a large number of applications integrated on the same chip. Such a system often supports a large number of use-cases and is dynamically reconfigured when platform conditions or user requirements change. Networks on chip (NoC) offer the designer unsurpassed runtime flexibility. This flexibility stems from the programmability of the individual routers and network interfaces. When a change in use-case occurs, the application task graph and the network connections change. To mitigate the complexity in programming the many registers controlling the NoC, an abstraction in the form of a configuration library is needed. In addition, such a library must leave the modified system in a consistent state, from which normal operation can continue. In this paper we present the facilities for controlling change in a reconfigurable NoC. We show the architectural additions and the many trade-offs in the design of a run-time library for NoC reconfiguration. We qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate the performance, memory requirements, predictability and reusability of the different implementations

A framework for evaluating Internet-of-Things platforms: Application provider viewpoint

Abstract: Widespread adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) applications assumes a sustainable ecosystem of firms creating, distributing, and using these applications. Such an ecosystem often forms around a platform that implements commonly used functionality and offers it to the members of the ecosystem for creating applications and services. In IoT, such a platform may be materialized in a form of a cloud platform that supports the management of connected devices, and the development and use of the applications based on them. A number of cloud platforms targeting IoT applications are available in the market; to prosper, they need to assist the providers of the IoT applications in designing and developing the applications, as well as in deploying and operating the application software. In this paper, a framework for evaluating the IoT platforms from the perspective of how widely they cover the potential needs of the application providers is introduced. Based on the framework, the maturity of the available IoT platforms is evaluated, by using the publicly available information about the platforms' features and supporting services. As the results of this initial analysis suggest, none of the platforms today offers the comprehensive support. This can be seen as a factor contributing to a slow adaption of the IoT platforms, and therefore to the slower-than-expected takeoff of the IoT ecosystem in general.

A realistic network/application model for scheduling divisible loads on large-scale platforms

Abstract: Divisible load applications consist of an amount of data and associated computation that can be divided arbitrarily into any number of independent pieces. This model is a good approximation of many real-world scientific applications, lends itself to a natural master-worker implementation, and has thus received a lot of attention. The issue of divisible load scheduling has been studied extensively. However, only a few authors have explored the simultaneous scheduling of multiple such applications on a distributed computing platform. We focus on this increasingly relevant scenario and make the following contributions. We use a novel and more realistic platform model that captures some of the fundamental network properties of grid platforms. We formulate the steady-state multi-application scheduling problem as a linear program that expresses a notion of fairness between applications. This scheduling problem is NP-complete and we propose several heuristics that we evaluate and compare via extensive simulation experiments. Our main finding is that some of our heuristics can achieve performance close to optimal and we quantify the trade-offs between achieved performance and heuristic complexity.