Fault-Based Test Case Generation for Software. This research explores ways to generate fault based test cases from specifications to verify software applications. This will help to enhance knowledge and skills on frontier software technologies for building and transforming Australian IT industries. The results provide knowledge, methodologies and technologies to software industry in Australia on building better quality software faster. In addition, it will help to reveal faults earlier in the de ....Fault-Based Test Case Generation for Software. This research explores ways to generate fault based test cases from specifications to verify software applications. This will help to enhance knowledge and skills on frontier software technologies for building and transforming Australian IT industries. The results provide knowledge, methodologies and technologies to software industry in Australia on building better quality software faster. In addition, it will help to reveal faults earlier in the development phase. Software companies in Australia can apply these techniques to improve their software development process and, hence, enhance the quality of their product. They can also adapt the knowledge to manage and enhance the quality of their outsourcing projects.Read moreRead less
Data-driven Approach to Resilient Online Service Systems. This project aims to develop a data-driven approach to improving the resilience of online service systems. Many software systems are now provided as online services via the Internet on a 24/7 basis. Although a lot of effort has been devoted to service quality assurance, in reality, online service systems still encounter many incidents and fail to satisfy user requests. This project expects to develop innovative data-driven methods for eff ....Data-driven Approach to Resilient Online Service Systems. This project aims to develop a data-driven approach to improving the resilience of online service systems. Many software systems are now provided as online services via the Internet on a 24/7 basis. Although a lot of effort has been devoted to service quality assurance, in reality, online service systems still encounter many incidents and fail to satisfy user requests. This project expects to develop innovative data-driven methods for effective fault identification, fault localization, and failure prediction. Expected outcomes of this project include novel techniques and tools for maintaining online service systems. This project will provide significant benefits, such as improving the resilience and reliability of our cyber infrastructure.Read moreRead less
Virtual Environments for Improved Enterprise Software Deployment. This project aims to improve quality assurance for enterprise IT. Enterprise IT systems are highly interconnected and interdependent — a failure in one system can cause a cascade of failures across multiple systems, bringing business to a standstill. The project aims to create new technologies to automate the provisioning of virtual deployment environments to test the enterprise systems. In particular, it aims to develop new metho ....Virtual Environments for Improved Enterprise Software Deployment. This project aims to improve quality assurance for enterprise IT. Enterprise IT systems are highly interconnected and interdependent — a failure in one system can cause a cascade of failures across multiple systems, bringing business to a standstill. The project aims to create new technologies to automate the provisioning of virtual deployment environments to test the enterprise systems. In particular, it aims to develop new methods for the automatic analysis of service interaction traces and the generation of accurate executable service models, without requiring explicit knowledge of them. The automatic analysis and generation should reduce development cost for enterprise IT systems and increase system quality and reliability. The new software deployment technologies from this project aim to significantly reduce the time, effort and cost of system quality assurance activities in software development organisations, and yet produce higher-quality software leading to uninterrupted business operation in end-user organisations across all sectors.Read moreRead less
Agent-based coordination and negotiation technologies for decentralised service workflow management. This project will enhance the nation's expertise in ICT in general and smart information use in particular. In the real world, process management is a key issue in any workplace organisation which needs to be supported by workflow systems, particularly in this Internet and Web services era. This project will develop an innovative framework and the corresponding technologies for service workflow m ....Agent-based coordination and negotiation technologies for decentralised service workflow management. This project will enhance the nation's expertise in ICT in general and smart information use in particular. In the real world, process management is a key issue in any workplace organisation which needs to be supported by workflow systems, particularly in this Internet and Web services era. This project will develop an innovative framework and the corresponding technologies for service workflow management. The research will assist many organisations to effectively develop and deliver more efficient, reliable, flexible and adaptive business applications. Consequently, this will enhance the ability of many Australian organisations to run more productively and more competitively.Read moreRead less
e-Hermes: Context-rich mobile agent technologies to support information needs of financial institutions. How do we achieve flexibility and efficiency of financial services in electronic commerce environment using mobile software agents? To address this question the project will extend a system architecture based on mobile agents, which retrieve, pre-process and deliver relevant information to potentially mobile users. Two major components - information processor and agent mission processor - wil ....e-Hermes: Context-rich mobile agent technologies to support information needs of financial institutions. How do we achieve flexibility and efficiency of financial services in electronic commerce environment using mobile software agents? To address this question the project will extend a system architecture based on mobile agents, which retrieve, pre-process and deliver relevant information to potentially mobile users. Two major components - information processor and agent mission processor - will be researched and developed by two PhD scholars to be supported by this application. The project results could be commercialised by the industry partner. The project is innovative in that it considers the emerging agent paradigm as an integrated distributed system in the e-commerce environment.Read moreRead less
Achieving Tailored Industrial Software Process Improvement with Experience Repositories and Electronic Process Guides. There is a well-recognised need for organisations to improve their software development processes in order to achieve higher software quality and greater efficiencies in development. The use of electronic process guides and experience repositories have been two technologies independently proposed to achieve these aims. This research will develop a framework, methods and tools ....Achieving Tailored Industrial Software Process Improvement with Experience Repositories and Electronic Process Guides. There is a well-recognised need for organisations to improve their software development processes in order to achieve higher software quality and greater efficiencies in development. The use of electronic process guides and experience repositories have been two technologies independently proposed to achieve these aims. This research will develop a framework, methods and tools to allow integration of experience repositories and electronic process guides to facilitate process tailoring, process improvement, and project management. The result will be significant improvements in software development productivity and quality.Read moreRead less
Design-Driven Requirements for Internet-Enabled System Development. The nature of Web system development is significantly different from conventional, software and IT development. Amongst other factors, there is substantial uncertainty in both clients' understanding of their needs and developers' understanding of the systems domain. We will develop an uncertainty model relevant to the development model relevant to the development of internet-enabled systems, and then use this model to adapt th ....Design-Driven Requirements for Internet-Enabled System Development. The nature of Web system development is significantly different from conventional, software and IT development. Amongst other factors, there is substantial uncertainty in both clients' understanding of their needs and developers' understanding of the systems domain. We will develop an uncertainty model relevant to the development model relevant to the development of internet-enabled systems, and then use this model to adapt the design process to support elicitation of requirements, as well as developing support for this adapted process. This will facilitate the development of systems that more accurately reflect clients' needs, and result in an understanding of what would be involved in reducing development costs.Read moreRead less
Ontology-based agent-oriented development methodologies. Establishing an industry strength unified agent-oriented methodology which focuses on interoperability and reusability will create stronger commitment to the new technology and stability in the commercial sector in Australia. Our methodology will create significant potential for Australian software companies, due to the added productivity and long term customer satisfaction through reusability, interoperability and pay-off of the developed ....Ontology-based agent-oriented development methodologies. Establishing an industry strength unified agent-oriented methodology which focuses on interoperability and reusability will create stronger commitment to the new technology and stability in the commercial sector in Australia. Our methodology will create significant potential for Australian software companies, due to the added productivity and long term customer satisfaction through reusability, interoperability and pay-off of the developed systems. This not only brings profits to Australian companies through the exploitation of this frontier technology, but also enhances the standard of living through increased satisfaction of the Australian public in their increasing use of software as they interact with today's computer-controlled world.Read moreRead less
Formal Context Analysis in Rapidly Evolving Knowledge Webs (4CARE-K). On-the-fly personalised assembly of complex objects (learning
materials, contracts, plans, designs, software configurations, etc)
is increasingly expected in knowledge processing and decision
making. This requires the discovery of discrete underlying models and
taxonomies of subject domains and statistical matching in dynamically
varying contexts defined by changing personal preferences, tasks,
objectives and other chara ....Formal Context Analysis in Rapidly Evolving Knowledge Webs (4CARE-K). On-the-fly personalised assembly of complex objects (learning
materials, contracts, plans, designs, software configurations, etc)
is increasingly expected in knowledge processing and decision
making. This requires the discovery of discrete underlying models and
taxonomies of subject domains and statistical matching in dynamically
varying contexts defined by changing personal preferences, tasks,
objectives and other characteristics. This project addresses formal
models of context and similarity based in applied lattice theory
(formal concepts), feature logic and statistical retrieval. Parallel
algorithms will be developed, analysed and benchmarked to enable
high-performance processing of vast numbers of heterogeneous objects
in a distributed knowledge web.Read moreRead less
Supporting co-evolution of business processes and Web systems. This research will provide significant benefit to the Australian Internet and e-commerce industries (valued by the ABS as in excess of $11b/year). It will result in improved products that better satisfy specific business needs (and hence improved competitiveness in a global market). Development cycles will shorten (as the likelihood of redevelopment decreases) and costs of development will fall. Finally, the models and tools to be ....Supporting co-evolution of business processes and Web systems. This research will provide significant benefit to the Australian Internet and e-commerce industries (valued by the ABS as in excess of $11b/year). It will result in improved products that better satisfy specific business needs (and hence improved competitiveness in a global market). Development cycles will shorten (as the likelihood of redevelopment decreases) and costs of development will fall. Finally, the models and tools to be developed will facilitate the transition of traditional organisations into the new economy, as the outcomes of this research will provide a transparent cost-effective approach for identifying and clarifying the evolving business domain and the requirements of companies.Read moreRead less