Precise specification of the architecture and design of software is a good practice. Such specifications contain a lot of information about the software that can potentially be exploited by tools, to reduce redundancy in software writing by automating routine tasks, as well as giving valuable feedback on the software. We first broadly classify such tools based on their application, and look at some of the issues involved in writing them. Most of these tools are built using conventional programming languages that do not provide primitives that are routinely required by such tools. We identify some patterns that are seen while writing such tools and abstract them out into a language specially designed for the purpose. Our effort is a language called LEADS, where we attempt to make writing such tools a lot easier, modular, organized and portable. LEADS is based on the Pattern-Action approach, where one specifies the pattern of information of interest and the actions to be taken when it is found. The patterns are specified using a custom declarative language that is enriched with special primitives for routinely occurring constructs. LEADS also decouples itself from the specification environments and formats thereby ensuring wide applicability. This enables LEADS scripts to be ported across design environments with minimal effort.

The precision of formal specifications allows us to prove program correctness. Even if formal methods are not used throughout the software project, formalisation improves our understanding of the problem. Formal specifications are amenable to automated analysis and consistency checking. However using them is challenging. Customers do not understand formal notations. Specifiers have difficulty tackling large problems. Once systems are built, formal specifications quickly become outdated during software maintenance. A method of developing formal specifications using concrete scenarios is proposed to tackle the disadvantages just mentioned. A concrete scenario describes system behaviour with successive steps. The pre- and post-states of scenario steps are expressed with actual data rather than variables. Concrete scenarios are expressed in a natural language or formal notation. They increase customer involvement in the creation of formal specifications. Scenarios may be ranked by priorities allowing specifiers to focus on a small part of the system. Formal specifications are constructed incrementally. New requirements are also captured in concrete scenarios which guide the modification of formal specifications. On one hand, concrete scenarios assist the creation and maintenance of formal specifications. On the other hand, they facilitate program correctness proofs without using conventional formal specifications. This is achieved by adding implementation details to customer scenarios. The resulting developer scenarios, encapsulating decisions of data structures and algorithms, are generalised to operation schemas. With the implementation details, the schemas written in formal notations are programs rather than specifications.

Submitted in fulfillment of the academic requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Information Technology, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2016. / Motivated by the literature regarding the need for further research on client participation in software development, a systemic framework for the understanding of client requirements in Information System development projects is developed. This systemic framework is particularly relevant for project contexts characterized by diversity of stakeholder values and complexity. To address this complexity, research led to the selection of methods from three systems methodologies and the conclusion for the need to mix them in the process of requirements understanding by clients. The mixing of methods from various methodologies is justified through the principles of Critical Systems Practice, and the process of their use is guided by Action Design Research. In spite of the strong research tradition associated with Soft Systems Methodology and the growing interest in the Work System Method, the level of use of these by practitioners is not high because complex project situations require harnessing of the strengths of more than one methodology. The proposed framework also includes a third system methodology Critical Systems Heuristics. This study demonstrated how the meta-methodology Critical Systems Practice is applied in justifying the selection and the mix of methods from the above three methodologies in the proposed framework. The principles of design science were applied, where the framework is the design artifact that is developed. Action Research was used to guide evaluation of the framework in the pilot study. The framework was applied in a pilot study to the understanding of the management of a Wellness Centre which operates within the Kenneth Gardens Housing Estate, through action research. As a result of the pilot study some modifications were made to the framework and the process of its implementation. The modified framework was applied in a further main study concerning the management of the Kenneth Gardens Housing Estate which has a broader context than the pilot study. The contribution of this research to the field of Information Systems is both theoretical and practical. One theoretical contribution is provision of a framework for clearer understanding of software requirements by clients. The second theoretical contribution is that Action Design Research is enhanced by adding proper justification for the methods included in the framework through the application of Critical Systems Thinking and Critical Systems Practice. The practical contribution is through the demonstration of Action Design Research being applied to a real-world problem in both the pilot and the main study. / D

The introduction of Web Services as a platform upon which applications can communicate has contributed a great deal towards the expansion of World Wide Web technologies. The Internet and computing technologies have been some of the factors that have contributed to the socio-economic improvement of urban and industrial areas. This research focuses on the application of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web Services technologies in Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) contexts. SOA is a style used to design distributed systems, and Web Services are some of the common realizations of the SOA. Web Services allow the exchange of data between two or more machines in a simple and standardized manner over the network. This has resulted in the augmentation of ways in which individuals in a society and in the world communicate. This research aims to develop a SOA-based system with services that are implemented as Web Services. The system is intended to support communication activities of Dwesa community members. The communication methods identified as the most commonly used in the Dwesa community are Short Message Services (SMSs) and voice calls. In this research we have identified further methods (i.e. Multimedia Message Service, Electronic mail and Instant Messaging) to augment communication activities in Dwesa. The developed system, therefore, exposes SMS Web Service, MMS Web Service, Email Web Service and IM Web Service that are consumed in machine-to-machine, machine-to-person and person-to-person types of communication. We have also implemented a one-stop communication shop, through a web portal which provides interfaces to the different communication modules. Elaborate functional and usability testing have also been undertaken to establish the viability and end-user acceptance of the system respectively. This research has provided the initial validation of the effectiveness of the SOA-based system in ICT4D contexts

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The contribution of this thesis focuses on addressing the challenges of improving and integrating the UniFrame Discovery Service (URDS) and Multi-level Matching (MLM) concepts. The objective was to find enhancements for both URDS and MLM and address the need of a comprehensive discovery service which goes beyond simple attribute based matching. It presents a detailed discussion on developing an enhanced version of URDS with MLM (proURDS). After implementing proURDS, the thesis includes details of experiments with different deployments of URDS components and different configurations of MLM. The experiments and analysis were carried out using proURDS produced MLM contracts. The proURDS referred to a public dataset called QWS dataset. This dataset includes actual information of software components (i.e., web services), which were harvested from the Internet. The proURDS implements the different matching operations as independent operators at each level of matching (i.e., General, Syntactic, Semantic, Synchronization, and QoS). Finally, a case study was carried out with the deployed proURDS. The case study addresses real world component discovery requirements from the earth science domain. It uses the contracts collected from public portals which provide geographical and weather related data.