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 seven conference papers and one journal article on object-oriented design, CASE environments and telecommunications systems. I also co-authored a book on software engineering ({\bf Object-Oriented Software: Design and Maintenance}).

Our research is concerned with object-oriented design methodologies for software systems. A general methodology for object-oriented design, called {\bf 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 Journal Papers

1. L. F. Capretz. A Case of Reusability. Journal of Object-Oriented Programming, to appear, 1997. No abstract

1. Kunii T. L., Saito S., Capretz M. A. M, and Capretz L. F. Beyond the next generation multimedia network: Crossovernet/G2. In Computer Graphics and Applications (Pacific Graphics'95), pages 43--62, Seoul, Korea, August 1995. World Scientific.

2. Capretz M. A. M. and Capretz L. F. Conceptual modelling for a software maintenance case environment. In International CASE Symposium (CICS'95), pages 240--244, Changsha, China, October 1995. IEEE Computer Society.

3. Capretz L. F. Implementing an object-oriented database for a case environment. In East-West International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (EWHCI'96), Moscow, Russia, August 1996. ACM SIGCHI.

4. Capretz L. F. and Capretz M. A. M. Reusing software to produce broadband services. In AFRICON'96, Stellenbosch, South Africa, September 1996. IEEE.

5. Capretz L. F. and Capretz M. A. M. Soft software engineering. In International Discourse on Fuzzy Logic and Management of Complexity (FLAMOC'96), pages 256--259, Sydney, Australia, January 1996. University of Technology.

6. Capretz L. F. Soft computing in object-oriented design. In VI International Fuzzy Systems Association World Congress (IFSA'95), pages 357--360, Sao Paulo, Brazil, July 1995. International Fuzzy Systems Association.

7. Capretz L. F. Software reuse in the aviation industry. In International Airline Industry Conference (IAIC'95), pages 1--8, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, November 1996. Saudia Airlines.

1. Capretz L.F. and Capretz M.A.M. Object-Oriented Software: Design and Implementation. World Scientific, Singapore, 1996.

1. Luiz Fernando Capretz. Soft computing in object-oriented design. Technical Report, 95-1-012, March 24, 4pgs, The University of Aizu, Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan, 1995.

2. Luiz Fernando Capretz. The x model for software reuse. Technical Report, 95-1-036, Oct. 23, 5pgs, The University of Aizu, Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan, 1995.

1. Luiz Fernando Capretz, IEEE, 1995. Senior member of IEEE.

2. Luiz Fernando Capretz, ACM, 1995. Member of ACM.

3. Luiz Fernando Capretz, SEA, 1995. Member of Software Engineers Association of Japan.

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

5. Luiz Fernando Capretz, Journal, 1995. Reviewer for the Journal Information Systems.

6. Luiz Fernando Capretz, CISMOD, 1995. Referee for the 6th IEEE Conference on Information Systems and Management of Data (CISMOD'95), Bombay, India.