Software

About: Software is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 130577 publications have been published within this topic receiving 2028987 citations. The topic is also known as: computer software & computational tool.

A strategy for comparing alternative software development life cycle models

Abstract: It is difficult to compare and contrast models of software development because their proponents often use different terminology, and the models often have little in common except their beginnings (marked by a recognition that a problem exists) and ends (marked by the existence of a software solution). A framework is provided that can serve: as a basis for analyzing the similarities and differences among alternate life-cycle models; as a tool for software engineering researchers to help describe the probable impacts of a life-cycle mode; and as a means to help software practitioners decide on an appropriate life-cycle model to utilize on a particular project or in a particular application area. >

System and method for installing software and updating configuration files

Abstract: A process of software installation over a data processing network is described. New pieces of software being installed over a data processing network require changes to the configuration of the workstation upon which they are being installed. The configuration file associated with the use of the new software being installed specifies the changes to the configuration of the workstation upon which the new software is being installed. This configuration build file is combined with configuration build files associated with the software files already upon the workstation to produce the composite build file. The composite build file is then used to reconfigure the workstation. The process allows for clashes between changes required by each piece of software to be resolved on a priority basis. Configuration change statements within each of the configuration build files can be combined into single configuration change statements. Configuration change statements can specify parameters in terms of a variable, the value of which is determined during the combination process.

Integrating heterogeneous data and tools

Abstract: A distributed data processing system may include an interface that receives a data processing request from a requesting entity, a processing server to provide access to local data processing applications, a shadow processing server to provide access to remote data processing applications, and an application server to fulfill the received data processing request by selectively accessing local and remote data processing applications transparently to the requesting entity. Access to data may be facilitated by providing heterogeneous data sources with software wrappers that provide an object representation of the data source, providing outputs of software wrappers to a first accumulator that aggregates data to generate a first aggregate data representation, and using a second accumulator to generate a second aggregate data representation based on the first aggregate data representation from the first accumulator. The software wrappers may hide details (e.g., format, location) of the data source.

Shared information and program plagiarism detection

Abstract: A fundamental question in information theory and in computer science is how to measure similarity or the amount of shared information between two sequences. We have proposed a metric, based on Kolmogorov complexity, to answer this question and have proven it to be universal. We apply this metric in measuring the amount of shared information between two computer programs, to enable plagiarism detection. We have designed and implemented a practical system SID (Software Integrity Diagnosis system) that approximates this metric by a heuristic compression algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate that SID has clear advantages over other plagiarism detection systems. SID system server is online at http://software.bioinformatics.uwaterloo.ca/SID/.