In the world of commercial computing, consumers are being inundated with baroque, bloated, and difficult-to-use computing applications, tools that use computational methods and technologies to perform tasks. Market forces demand that new versions of these applications implement more features, the user-accessible behaviors and services implemented by the application, than their predecessors or competitors. Ensuring that planned features required for market competitiveness enhance a computing application without these side effects first requires that we understand how these features contribute to the overall design and conceptual integrity of the application While conceptual integrity affects all aspect of the application, we are primarily interested in how an applications user-accessible features have been designed and implemented. To this end, we have developed a research framework, methodologies, and artifacts for measuring the conceptual integrity of a computing artifact from its theory of the world or its ontology. We use conceptual coherence, which we define as the degree to which an applications concepts are tightly related, as a first approximation for conceptual integrity. We claim the following: any computing application has a central or core set of concepts that are essential to that applications ontology and can be identified through analytical means; and concepts that are not essential to an applications ontology either exist to support core concepts or are peripheral to the ontology. Peripheral concepts reduce an applications conceptual coherence. We have developed the method of ontological excavation to identify the concepts in a computing application and model them as an ontology expressed as a semantic network. To identify core and peripheral concepts and to measure an ontologys conceptual coherence, we developed methodologies for ontological analysis. If usefulness depends on the conceptual integrity of an applications ontology such that it ensures high fitness to a problem domain, then we would expect that users solving problems in that domain will invoke the concepts integral to the solution more often than those concepts that do not. Thus, to validate our structural measures, we claim the following: the probable use of the application will invoke core concepts more frequently than peripheral concepts in the ontology.

Summary Subject of this paper is workplace of employee of municipal department of economy. Main product of this paper is informational system (IS) intended for long term control of property of municipality and is related to preparation of documents concerning use of that property. Analysis and specifications concerning informational needs of municipal department of economy has been carried out. Similar systems (Sistema “BIUDŽETAS”, “Turtas”, “DEBETAS”, “ForFUND/Gov”) and methods of creating IS (creation of IS using cycle of existence of “waterfall”, method of prothotypes, JAD method, creating of IS using means of CASE) were analysed. Product was designed and realized using the following means: 1. MS Visio 2003 – designing 2. ProVision Workbench TM V 3.1 – designing 3. MS Access 2000 – DBMS for keeping data of property and use Product was introduced to employees of municipal department of economy.

The purpose of this thesis is to assess the characteristics and aspects that make B&Bs, particularly historic B&Bs, successful. This thesis also briefly demonstrates how historic B&Bs can contribute to communities and to the field of historic preservation through public awareness and adaptive reuse projects. Background information on the B&B industry is presented. Sources for the research include B&B owners, professionals in the B&B industry and historic preservation fields, written sources, and studies conducted on B&B owners and their businesses. Six B&Bs and their owners were selected as case studies in Indiana. Four of these six B&Bs were included in a previous Ball State thesis, The Role of Bed and Breakfasts in Heritage Tourism, prepared by Terri Ash in 1996.Additionally, three case studies in Georgia were chosen to increase diversity in the types of B&Bs evaluated. A profile of each B&B is presented; it includes information on the history of the B&B, why the owners decided to open up the B&B, the type of rehabilitation work that was needed, and how, if applicable, the B&B has changed over the last ten years. All of the information gathered from primary and secondary sources is combined to form conclusions regarding the primary aspects and common characteristics that contribute to a successful B&B. Primary conclusions drawn from this study include how the location, the number of rooms, the amenities, and the hospitality of the owners contribute to a successful B&B. Additionally, conclusions are drawn that compare the likelihood of success between historic B&Bs to non-historic B&Bs, and the benefits of locating a B&B in a historic building. / Department of Architecture

Τα τελευταία χρόνια γίνονται πολλές έρευνες οι οποίες δείχνουν πως οι Οντολογίες και οι τεχνολογίες βασισμένες σε οντολογίες, βρίσκουν ευρεία εφαρμογή στην εκπαίδευση και αποτελούν έναν από τους πιο σημαντικούς τομείς έρευνας της εκπαιδευτικής τεχνολογίας. Μια οντολογία αποτελεί την τυπική προδιαγραφή κάποιας περιοχής γνώσης (Gruber, 1993). Παρέχει τις βασικές έννοιες του πεδίου γνώσης που περιγράφεται και τις μεταξύ τους σχέσεις, καθώς και την ορολογία με την οποία αναφερόμαστε στις έννοιες και τις σχέσεις αυτές. Δηλαδή, μια οντολογία παρέχει τόσο λεξιλόγια και όσο και σχήματα οργάνωσης της γνώσης, τα οποία μπορούν να αξιοποιηθούν ως κοινά πλαίσια επικοινωνίας μεταξύ ανθρώπων, συστημάτων και οργανισμών, διευκολύνοντας το διαμοιρασμό, την διαλειτουργικότητα και την επαναχρησιμοποίηση πόρων (Uschold & Gruninger, 1996). Οι Οντολογίες συνδέονται στενά με το λεγόμενο Σημασιολογικό Ιστό, που αναφέρεται στη σημασιολογική διασύνδεση των πληροφοριών που υπάρχουν στον Παγκόσμιο Ιστό με τρόπο κατανοητό από μηχανές (Berners Lee et al., 2001). Μια τέτοια διασύνδεση θα έδινε πολύ μεγάλες προοπτικές όσον αφορά στο διαμοιρασμό, ανάκληση και επαναχρησιμοποίηση της πληροφορίας τόσο στην εκπαίδευση όσο σε όλο το φάσμα των δραστηριοτήτων μας. Η εργασία μας συνίσταται στη δημιουργία μιας εκπαιδευτικής εφαρμογής για τη διαχείριση μαθησιακού υλικού και μαθησιακών στόχων σχετικών με το αντικείμενο της Αντικειμενοστρεφούς Ανάλυσης και συγκεκριμένα με το γνωστικό πεδίο των Διαγραμμάτων Περιπτώσεων Χρήσης, η οποία βασίζεται σε οντολογίες. Χρησιμοποιούμε οντολογίες για να περιγράψουμε με τυπικό τρόπο τρεις βασικές συνιστώσες της μαθησιακής διαδικασίας: το γνωστικό πεδίο, τα μαθησιακά αντικείμενα και τους μαθησιακούς στόχους, με σκοπό να γίνει δυνατή η αυτόματη επεξεργασία των παραπάνω συνιστωσών από εφαρμογές ηλεκτρονικής μάθησης και να προωθείται η επικοινωνία, η διαλειτουργικότητα και ο διαμοιρασμός πόρων. Ακόμα, ζητούμενο της εφαρμογής μας αποτελεί η ενσωμάτωση σε αυτήν δυνατοτήτων παροχής προσωποποιημένων υπηρεσιών. Αφού κάνουμε μια σύντομη επισκόπηση της βιβλιογραφίας σχετικά με τη χρήση οντολογιών στην Εκπαίδευση αναφερόμαστε στις Οντολογίες που δημιουργήσαμε και στον τρόπο που είναι δυνατόν να χρησιμοποιηθούν για να επιτευχθούν οι προαναφερθέντες στόχοι. Σημειώνουμε ότι στην παρούσα εργασία δεν περιλαμβάνεται η εκπαιδευτική αξιολόγηση του συστήματος (μετά από πιλοτική χρήση), αλλά μόνο η επαλήθευση της λειτουργίας του. / An ontology is a formal specification of a conceptualization (Gruber, 1993). It provides terminology and conceptual schemas concerning a domain, and can be used as a communication framework between humans, software systems and organizations, promoting interoperability and reusability of resources. Our work concerns the creation of an ontology-based educational application that aims at the management of educational resources and instructional goals related to the field of Object-Orient Analysis and specifically the field of Use Case Diagrams. As part of our work, we have used ontologies to formally describe three basic components of the educational process: the learning material, the knowledge domain and the learning goals. We created three ontologies: the use case diagram ontology (domain ontology), the competency ontology (to model the learning goals) and the learning object ontology (to describe the learning material), which we ultimately combined in one application. The inclusion of components like learning objects and competencies in our application, as well as the use of ontologies to formally describe them, are features that can promote interoperability and resource reuse and can be used to provide personalised services. In this paper, we first describe ontologies and their current uses in the education field according to recent research and then we proceed with the analytic description of our ontologies and our application.

A presente tese de doutorado está inserida dentro do contexto da área de AOSE – Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, uma área surgida recentemente voltada para a engenharia de software de sistemas multi-agentes que mescla conceitos tanto da Inteligência Artificial como da Engenharia de Software. Esta nova área surgiu devido aos novos desafios enfrentados pelos engenheiros de software ao projetar sistemas multi-agentes, uma vez que este tipo de sistema apresenta características que os diferenciam de outros tipos de software, precisamente o fato de possuírem agentes de software, entidades autônomas e pró-ativas que executam funções no sistema, possuidoras de objetivos próprios e capazes de perceber e agir sobre o ambiente que os cerca sem a intervenção de usuários externos. Este trabalho descreve um metamodelo UML desenvolvido para a modelagem de requisitos funcionais específicos para projetos de sistemas multi-agentes. O seu desenvolvimento baseou-se na constatação de que, apesar de já existirem linguagens derivadas da UML para o projeto de sistemas multi-agentes, nenhuma das linguagens estudadas desenvolveu mecanismos para a modelagem dos requisitos deste tipo de software, o que levou-nos a criar um metamodelo UML para este propósito. No decorrer desta tese serão descritas as linguagens estudadas derivadas da UML para ser aplicadas no projeto de sistemas multi-agentes, o metamodelo desenvolvido, sua adaptação aos princípios de projeto de Vicari (2007), três estudos de caso onde o metamodelo foi aplicado, além de uma proposta de mapeamento dos conceitos definidos no metamodelo para os conceitos das linguagens MAS-ML e AML, bem como uma proposta para a validação do metamodelo e dos diagramas criados por meio dele. / This PhD thesis is inserted within the context of the AOSE (Agent-Oriented Software Engineering) area, a recently-emerged field dealing with the software engineering of multi-agent systems which mixes concepts of Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering together. This new area emerged from new challenges faced by the software engineers when designing multi-agent systems, since this kind of system presents characteristics that set them apart from other types of software, precisely for including software agents, autonomous and proactive entities that execute functions in the system, owning their own goals and able to perceive and act upon the surrounding environment without the intervention of external users. This work describes a UML metamodel developed for the modeling of the specific functional requirements for multi-agent systems projects. Its development was based on the perception that among the studied UML-derived languages for the multi-agent systems project, none of them had developed mechanisms for requirements modeling on this kind of software, leading us to create a UML metamodel for this purpose. Along this thesis we shall describe the UML-derived languages we studied to be applied in the multi-agent systems project, the developed metamodel, its adaptation to the Vicari (2007) design principles, three case studies on which the metamodel was applied, plus a mapping proposal for the concepts defined in the metamodel into MASML and AML languages concepts, as well as a validation proposal for the metamodel and the diagrams created by means of it.

Orientador: Prof. Dr. Francisco de Assis Zampirolli / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do ABC, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Computação, 2014. / Métodos e Processos de Engenharia de Software têm se tornado foco de pesquisas científicas, onde a qualidade, estimativa de custos e prazos são trabalhadas como boas práticas em desenvolvimento. A construção de um produto de software envolve algumas etapas, e a mais complexa saber precisamente o que construir. A precisão nesta etapa do projeto é essencial, pois se houver falha na especificação, haverá maior prejuíz ao final doprojeto do sistema de software. A principal razão para as falhas de projeto de software é o gerenciamento inadequado dos requisitos do sistema, gerando custos elevados para serem corrigidos nas fases seguintes ao levantamento de requisitos e insatisfac~ao para todos os envolvidos. Deste modo, produzir software com qualidade é uma tarefa complexa, que demanda entender, planejar e atender, provendo soluc~oes necessárias. Este trabalho tem como objetivo, apresentar uma metodologia para o desenvolvimento de especifícação de requisitos, com uma abordagem orientada ao alinhamento entre TI e Negócio, por meio de um processo de engenharia de requisitos, [integrando diagramas de Caso de Uso como Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). Por meio de estudos de caso aplicados a uma empresa operadora de planos privados de assistência a saúde. A metodologia se mostrou ecaz, com melhoria de 69,68% na redução dos custos no orcamento acordado. Alem disso, este trabalho de pesquisa encontra-se em funcionamento na empresa citada,otimizando recursos e atingindo melhores resultados para a organização. / Requirement Engineering Methods and Processes have become a focus point for scientic research, in which quality, cost estimates and time frames are elaborated as good practices in development. Building a software product includes several phases, and the most complex is to know exactly what to build. Precision is essential during this phase of the project, because if the specication fails, there will be greater loss at the end of the software system project. The main reason for software project failures is inept management of system requirements, generating high costs that have to be corrected in the phases following requirement survey, and creating dissatisfaction for all those involved. Thus, producing quality software is a complex task, which demands understanding, planning, and compliance to provide the necessary solutions. This paper presents a methodology for developing requirement specifications, with an approach directed towards aligning IT and Business through a requirement engineering process integrating Use Case with Business Process Modeling Notation. Through case studies presented and applied at a private health care insurance company, the methodology proved to be eective, by reducing exceeding the agreed-upon budget by 69.68%. Additionally, this study is still on-going at the abovementioned company, optimizing resources and reaching better results for the organization.

A presente tese de doutorado está inserida dentro do contexto da área de AOSE – Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, uma área surgida recentemente voltada para a engenharia de software de sistemas multi-agentes que mescla conceitos tanto da Inteligência Artificial como da Engenharia de Software. Esta nova área surgiu devido aos novos desafios enfrentados pelos engenheiros de software ao projetar sistemas multi-agentes, uma vez que este tipo de sistema apresenta características que os diferenciam de outros tipos de software, precisamente o fato de possuírem agentes de software, entidades autônomas e pró-ativas que executam funções no sistema, possuidoras de objetivos próprios e capazes de perceber e agir sobre o ambiente que os cerca sem a intervenção de usuários externos. Este trabalho descreve um metamodelo UML desenvolvido para a modelagem de requisitos funcionais específicos para projetos de sistemas multi-agentes. O seu desenvolvimento baseou-se na constatação de que, apesar de já existirem linguagens derivadas da UML para o projeto de sistemas multi-agentes, nenhuma das linguagens estudadas desenvolveu mecanismos para a modelagem dos requisitos deste tipo de software, o que levou-nos a criar um metamodelo UML para este propósito. No decorrer desta tese serão descritas as linguagens estudadas derivadas da UML para ser aplicadas no projeto de sistemas multi-agentes, o metamodelo desenvolvido, sua adaptação aos princípios de projeto de Vicari (2007), três estudos de caso onde o metamodelo foi aplicado, além de uma proposta de mapeamento dos conceitos definidos no metamodelo para os conceitos das linguagens MAS-ML e AML, bem como uma proposta para a validação do metamodelo e dos diagramas criados por meio dele. / This PhD thesis is inserted within the context of the AOSE (Agent-Oriented Software Engineering) area, a recently-emerged field dealing with the software engineering of multi-agent systems which mixes concepts of Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering together. This new area emerged from new challenges faced by the software engineers when designing multi-agent systems, since this kind of system presents characteristics that set them apart from other types of software, precisely for including software agents, autonomous and proactive entities that execute functions in the system, owning their own goals and able to perceive and act upon the surrounding environment without the intervention of external users. This work describes a UML metamodel developed for the modeling of the specific functional requirements for multi-agent systems projects. Its development was based on the perception that among the studied UML-derived languages for the multi-agent systems project, none of them had developed mechanisms for requirements modeling on this kind of software, leading us to create a UML metamodel for this purpose. Along this thesis we shall describe the UML-derived languages we studied to be applied in the multi-agent systems project, the developed metamodel, its adaptation to the Vicari (2007) design principles, three case studies on which the metamodel was applied, plus a mapping proposal for the concepts defined in the metamodel into MASML and AML languages concepts, as well as a validation proposal for the metamodel and the diagrams created by means of it.

A presente tese de doutorado está inserida dentro do contexto da área de AOSE – Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, uma área surgida recentemente voltada para a engenharia de software de sistemas multi-agentes que mescla conceitos tanto da Inteligência Artificial como da Engenharia de Software. Esta nova área surgiu devido aos novos desafios enfrentados pelos engenheiros de software ao projetar sistemas multi-agentes, uma vez que este tipo de sistema apresenta características que os diferenciam de outros tipos de software, precisamente o fato de possuírem agentes de software, entidades autônomas e pró-ativas que executam funções no sistema, possuidoras de objetivos próprios e capazes de perceber e agir sobre o ambiente que os cerca sem a intervenção de usuários externos. Este trabalho descreve um metamodelo UML desenvolvido para a modelagem de requisitos funcionais específicos para projetos de sistemas multi-agentes. O seu desenvolvimento baseou-se na constatação de que, apesar de já existirem linguagens derivadas da UML para o projeto de sistemas multi-agentes, nenhuma das linguagens estudadas desenvolveu mecanismos para a modelagem dos requisitos deste tipo de software, o que levou-nos a criar um metamodelo UML para este propósito. No decorrer desta tese serão descritas as linguagens estudadas derivadas da UML para ser aplicadas no projeto de sistemas multi-agentes, o metamodelo desenvolvido, sua adaptação aos princípios de projeto de Vicari (2007), três estudos de caso onde o metamodelo foi aplicado, além de uma proposta de mapeamento dos conceitos definidos no metamodelo para os conceitos das linguagens MAS-ML e AML, bem como uma proposta para a validação do metamodelo e dos diagramas criados por meio dele. / This PhD thesis is inserted within the context of the AOSE (Agent-Oriented Software Engineering) area, a recently-emerged field dealing with the software engineering of multi-agent systems which mixes concepts of Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering together. This new area emerged from new challenges faced by the software engineers when designing multi-agent systems, since this kind of system presents characteristics that set them apart from other types of software, precisely for including software agents, autonomous and proactive entities that execute functions in the system, owning their own goals and able to perceive and act upon the surrounding environment without the intervention of external users. This work describes a UML metamodel developed for the modeling of the specific functional requirements for multi-agent systems projects. Its development was based on the perception that among the studied UML-derived languages for the multi-agent systems project, none of them had developed mechanisms for requirements modeling on this kind of software, leading us to create a UML metamodel for this purpose. Along this thesis we shall describe the UML-derived languages we studied to be applied in the multi-agent systems project, the developed metamodel, its adaptation to the Vicari (2007) design principles, three case studies on which the metamodel was applied, plus a mapping proposal for the concepts defined in the metamodel into MASML and AML languages concepts, as well as a validation proposal for the metamodel and the diagrams created by means of it.

Orientador: Evandro Ziggiatti Monteiro / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Civil, Arquitetura e Urbanismo / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-26T02:06:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Freire_RodrigoArgenton_M.pdf: 29226603 bytes, checksum: ac62b4b0b434410de07161e36ee4d9be (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: O processo de desenvolvimento urbano compacto é associado à sustentabilidade e tem como aspectos principais o uso eficiente do solo e a vitalidade urbana em diferentes períodos do dia. Essas características relacionam-se a duas dimensões: densidade e diversidade. No entanto, existe uma tendência de dispersão e fragmentação do tecido urbano evidenciada nas cidades latino-americanas. Essa evidência é, no entanto, geral, e portanto deve-se compreender como os diferentes níveis de compacidade existem no território e como se traduzem em termos de forma urbana. Parte-se do pressuposto que diferentes áreas apresentam diferentes níveis de densidade e formas de ocupação do solo. O objetivo da pesquisa é relacionar as dimensões de compacidade e forma urbana de três municípios que compõem a Região Metropolitana de Campinas (Hortolândia, Valinhos e Campinas). A pesquisa, de caráter exploratório, é estruturada por meio do estudo de caso dos três municípios. A caracterização é realizada por meio da identificação dos níveis de densidade e diversidade dos setores censitários, utilizados pelo Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE), e consequente agrupamento desses para composição de recortes espaciais. Em seguida, é proposta a leitura morfológica de cada recorte buscando-se associar os níveis de densidade e diversidade com os aspectos morfológicos. Os resultados encontrados permitem identificar que não existe uma relação direta entre os níveis de densidade e diversidade, mas permitem o estabelecimento de relações entre ambas as dimensões e os aspectos morfológicos, sendo que a forma urbana acaba por representar alto grau significância na caracterização dos níveis de compacidade e impacta, diretamente, na sustentabilidade urbana / Abstract: Compact urban development is constantly associated to sustainability and has as main characteristics, land use efficiency and urban vitality in different periods of the day. Both aspects are related to two dimensions: density and diversity. Meanwhile, there is a tendency for urban dispersion and fragmentation that can be noticed on Latin American cities. This evidence is, indeed general. It is necessary that the different levels of compactness are understood in an intra-urban context, i.e., how they are distributed within a metropolitan region and what it means in morphological terms. We depart from the assumption that different areas will present different aspects of density and diversity. Therefore, the aim to the research is to relate both compactness dimensions: density and diversity, the urban form from three cities of Campinas Metropolitan Region (RMC) ¿ Brazil, (Hortolândia, Valinhos e Campinas). The characterization is realized by identifying the levels of density in the census tract used by the Brazilian census bureau (IBGE), and consequently grouping of those areas in order to determine spatial areas of analysis. Afterwards, these intraurban areas are read in terms of its morphological aspects. The results show that there is not direct relation between the levels of density and diversity within the cities. However, urban form seems to be closely related to both dimensions, as they present specific characteristics depending on the level of compactness. In addition to that, both dimensions are closely related to urban sustainability / Mestrado / Arquitetura, Tecnologia e Cidade / Mestre em Arquitetura, Tecnologia e Cidade

To produce high quality software both software developers and testers need continuous improvement in their work methodologies and processes. So, far much work has been done in the effective ways of eliciting and documenting the requirements. However important aspect is to make sure that whatever is documented in specifications actually works correctly in the developed software. Software testing is done to ensure this phenomenon. Aim of this thesis is to develop a software test case work flow strategy that helps in identification and selection of suitable test paths that can be used as an input to acceptance testing and as a pre-requisite to start actual testing of the system. This thesis focuses on organizing system test artifacts by closely specifying them with system requirements and use cases. In this perspective focus of this thesis is on requirement writing by use cases, requirements traceability, test case prioritization and application acceptance criteria. A structured way to design test cases is proposed with the help of use cases. Some work is done to trace user needs to system requirements and use cases and benefits of using use case modeling approach in structuring the relationships among test cases is analyzed. As test cases are subject to changes in future so, challenges imposed due to traceability among requirements, use cases and test cases are main subjects of this work along with the challenges faced by software testers to perform application acceptance testing. A green path scheme is proposed to help testers define application acceptance criteria and weight assignment approach is used to prioritize the test cases and to determine the percentage of application running successfully.