Information Systems Laboratory

/ Luiz F. Capretz / Assistant Professor

The Information Systems Laboratory is concerned with the establishment and use of sound engineering principles and good management practice to produce quality software systems. Our research puts software development into a new perspective by creating new techniques, methodologies and tools to overcome the so-called software crisis.

Presently, we are involved, together with the Software Engineering Laboratory, in the development of a framework for advanced software techniques (FAST Project), spanning the whole software life cycle from requirements to maintenance. In this project, we are concerned with software reusability issues within an object-oriented approach.

As far as education is concerned, we have participated in the preparation of the courses Software Engineering I and II, and proposed innovative courses for the University of Aizu graduate curricula. The research carried out in this laboratory has allowed us to publish five conference papers on object-oriented design, CASE environments and telecommunications systems.

Our research is concerned with object-oriented design methodologies for software systems. A general methodology for object-oriented design, called MOOD, has been refined, used and evaluated. MOOD is unrelated to any programming language, yet is capable of being used to design a variety of object-oriented software systems. In particular, MOOD allows the creation of a design mainly in terms of classes, objects and inheritance, and the representation of a design graphically by a set of class hierarchy diagrams, composition diagrams, object diagrams and operation diagrams.

Object-oriented design is expected to be at the forefront of new approaches to the development of complex software systems. We have investigated some general requirements for CASE tools which support object-oriented software development, taking into account a process model suitable for software reusability. The work carried out in this area has shown how these requirements can be met by a CASE tool set which supports software development within the telecommunications systems application domain.

The laboratory has been equipped with modern computers such as: powerful SUN Sparc 10 Model 51, Mac-Quadra Model 840av, NeXT, Compaq PCs, Pentium Gateway 2000, a network of nine JCC workstations, and several personal computers with accompanying peripherals. Software tools including C++ Designer, Simula and Eiffel compilers have been installed and will be used in research projects and courses taught by members of this laboratory. The library lounge has also been started up with more than a hundred books.

Refereed Proceeding Papers

1. Capretz M. A. M. and Capretz L. F. The object-oriented paradigm for software evolution. In The IEEE 18th International Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC'94), pages 23--28, Taipei, Taiwan, November 1994. IEEE Computer Society.

   In this research work object-oriented concepts are applied to a software maintenance method named COMFORM (COnfiguration Management FORmalization for Maintenance). COMFORM is composed of several phases to provide the necessary guidance to maintain existing software systems. One of the aims of the method is redocumentation by keeping the maintenance history and information related to the software modules being maintained. Redocumentation is obtained by filling in pre-defined forms which go hand in hand with the phases of the method. Each form is mapped by a class definition. The concepts of classes and inheritance are used along software maintenance to help the system manager in the creation and administration of such forms. Version control of the pre-defined forms is carried out either by reusing common parts of these forms or by defining new subclasses from them. As a consequence, a generic implementation of the method is achieved, thus maintenance support for a wide range of existing software systems with various profiles is accomplished.

2. Capretz L. F. and Capretz M. A. M. An object-oriented case environment for the telecommunications application domain. In International Conference on Communication Technology '94, Shanghai, China, June 1994. IEEE Communications Society (IEEE COMSOC).

   The object-oriented paradigm has promised to revolutionise the software development process. This paper discusses some general requirements for CASE tools which support object-oriented software development, taking into account a process model suitable for service engineering. It shows how these requirements can be met by a CASE tool set which supports software development within the telecommunications application domain.

3. Capretz L. F. An integrated case for telecom software production in europe. In Third International Conference on Systems Integration (ICSI'94), pages 1050--1055, Sao Paulo, Brazil, August 1994. IEEE Computer Society.

   This paper presents some research projects on advanced communication technology being carried out in Europe. Such projects usually involve cooperative work among companies, research centers and universities from several European countries, sponsored by the Commission of the European Communities.

4. Capretz L. F. Telecoms no tame case kankyou. In Japanese Conference on Electrical Engineering, Sapporo, Japan, March 1995. Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.

   In Japanese

   
   

5. Capretz L. F. Soft computing in object-oriented design. In VI International Fuzzy Systems Association World Congress, Sao Paulo, Brazil, July 1995. IFSA.

   Soft computing can have an impact on software engineering. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how different levels of knowledge that a software designer has about the application domain can affect software development. Software life cycle issues which arise during the design of object-oriented software systems are discussed, related to the topic of application domain, and placed in the context of a general methodology for object-oriented design called MOOD.

1. Capretz L. F. An integrated case for telecom software production in europe. Technical Report 94-1-022, University of Aizu, April 1994.

2. Capretz L. F. Soft computing in object-oriented design. Technical Report 95-1-012, University of Aizu, March 1995.

1. Luiz Fernando Capretz. Grant from computer and communication promotion. NEC Foundation 0693, Overseas Presentation Scholarship, April 1994.

1. Luiz Fernando Capretz, ACM, 1994. Member.

2. Luiz Fernando Capretz, Software Engineers Association of Japan, 1994. Member.

3. Luiz Fernando Capretz, IEEE Computer Society, 1995. Member of the Program Committee of the 19th IEEE Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC'95), Dallas, USA, 1995.

4. Luiz Fernando Capretz, IEEE Computer Society, September 1994. Reviewer for the IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, Victoria, Canada, September 1994.

5. Luiz Fernando Capretz, SBC, August 1994. Session Chair on ISDN Applications for the Third International Conference on Systems Integration, Sao Paulo, Brazil, August 1994.

6. Luiz Fernando Capretz, IFSA, July 1995.

   Session Chair on Knowledge Acquisition and Expert Systems I for The VI International Fuzzy Systems Association World Congress, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

7. Luiz Fernando Capretz, The IEEE Computer Society, August 1995.

   Session Chair on Reengineering, Reverse Engineering, Reuse and Customization for the 19th IEEE Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC'95), Dallas, USA, 1995.

8. Luiz Fernando Capretz, IEEE, 1994. Senior Member of IEEE.