This research investigated the use of web-centric collaborative techniques and methods for the software industry new product development (NPD) process. After carefully reviewing previous literature, a questionnaire was designed targeting individuals who currently work on or previously participated in the software new product development (NPD) process for the past six months. The survey was launched through the third-party web researching company, InsightExpress, where 200 completed surveys were collected. As the observation from the results of this research indicates, the web-based level of collaborative tools does increase the level of integration between different departments in the NPD process. However, the impact of web-based collaborative tools on either overall performance or performance elements (technical success, financial success, budgetary, time-to market or schedule) is not evident. Moreover, the level of adapting web-based collaborative tools in the software industry is still not as popular as it was anticipated to be.

There are many software visualization tools available today to help software engineers to explore software systems. However, when a system is huge, some of these tools do not satisfy the exploration requirements. The big problem is that the techniques the tools use do not provide an effective display and access mechanism to handle huge information spaces within the limitations imposed by available screen space. To alleviate the problem, this thesis describes methods that help users to explore huge software systems. In particular, we apply dynamic browsing incorporating such details as an extra result box mechanism, plus pattern based searching to help users to handle large query results. Then the thesis introduces the algorithms we apply to generate the layouts. We propose the radial angle model to visualize the internal structures of rooted trees. Also we apply the spring model to visualize the external structures among rooted trees. Next, the thesis describes various animation methods we use to smooth the transitions, track the focus of exploration, clarify unexpected results, and illustrate complex operations. In addition, we modify traditional camera animation, and propose an animation timing scheme 'slow-in fast-out' to exaggerate the reality. Next, the thesis describes a series of experiments we conducted to assess the effectiveness of the browsing, layout algorithm and animation techniques we implemented. Finally the thesis describes how we use the analysis of the experiment results to guide our future research.

Since bottlenecks and congestion often happen with the phenomenal growth in the use of the network, the demand for improving network delivered performance is very necessary. Deploying Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) technology to improve delivery performance has caused more and more people's attention. Content Delivery Networks employ many geographically distributed sites to improve the scalability and improves network performance by reducing the client's response time. In this thesis, we initially present the background knowledge on CDNs, which includes CDNs concept, function, methodology, components and market analysis. The thesis emphasizes analyzing, comparing and evaluating various aspects of CDNs. We divide the whole comparison and evaluation into three parts. Firstly, we analyze and compare CDNs to other methods for improving performance and congestion control. Secondly, we overview different technologies that can be used within CDNs, then compare and analyze various CDNs components and implementations. Thirdly, we select current representative CDNs companies or providers to compare and evaluate their products and services. In this thesis, we also describe some main applications of CDNs and do a case study of Cisco ECDN and Volera Velocity CDN for E-learning. Finally, we conclude this thesis by summarizing our analysis and giving recommended trends for CDNs development.

In this thesis, we develop two distinct traffic models: one based on Brownian motion and the other based on fractional Brownian motion. The later model captures the self-similarity and the long-range dependence (LRD) properties. The aggregate model is composed of a drift part and of a fluctuation (diffusion) part. With this model, traffic from several seconds to 24 hours can be simulated. Applying the Token Bucket (TB) mechanism, a continuous time (state-space) dynamic system model is developed based on the ideas of recent papers [1,2]. Incoming traffic from each user is policed at the TBs and one multiplexor buffer, linked to all the TBs, multiplexes the conforming traffic. We propose two feedback control strategies, one is a simple feedback control law and the other is a feedback control based on neural network, to control the traffic flow into the link of the backbone network. We also use the simulated annealing algorithm to optimize the parameters of control laws. Several network performance related issues are studied systemically. The results show that the proposed control laws can improve the network performance, by improving throughput, reducing multiplexor and TB losses, and relaxing, not avoiding, congestion.

Web applications are becoming more and more popular in the past few years. Ensuring the quality of web applications is a critical issue in the development process. Testing web application is different from testing traditional software for the characteristics of web applications. While some traditional testing methods are still applicable, a few novel methods are proposed by researchers to deal with specific issues of web application testing. In this thesis, we propose a life-cycle testing approach with Object-Oriented TTCN-3 for web applications. First of all, the life-cycle testing approach is a systematic, model-based engineering process. In this process, testing activities take place from the analysis phase of software development process, to the implementation phase. That is, the testing process parallels the development process. The testing is based on multiple models at the analysis and design levels, as well as on implementations, by applying multiple testing methods . Secondly, this life-cycle process is integrated by specifying test cases at an abstract level in 00-TTCN-3, an object-oriented extension to TTCN-3 which is a standard test language. The integration brings the following benefits: (i) Facilitate the reuse of Abstract Test Suites (ATS) from one testing stage to another. (ii) Provide a standard ATS interface which is language-independent and platform-independent. This helps to utilize multiple testing tools in software projects. Furthermore, a standard interface is expected to get more support from IT industry. Finally, in this life-cycle process, several well-proven, commonly used cost-effective testing strategies and techniques are used to reduce the cost of life-cycle testing. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Today's e-commerce systems have evolved from traditional middleware technologies such as CORBA and DCOM to a multi-tiered infrastructure. Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and Microsoft .NET are two main competitors building on such architecture. Usually a multi-tiered architecture involves distinct architecture layers, components, distributed applications and enterprise resources. This complexity poses considerable risks to e-commerce systems building on such infrastructure. To address the current problems of high testing cost and non-formal test specification, we propose a new process called FTEXT (Functional Testing of E-commerce systems with eXtreme programming and TTCN-3). FTEXT combines an agile software development process, cost-effective test tools and a formal test specification language that serve a common purpose and work together to support a cost-effective approach to test J2EE based e-commerce systems. To facilitate TTCN-3 test execution, we have designed and implemented a parser that translates TTCN-3 test script to Java source code that conforms to the selected open source test tool. The source code is then compiled into executable test code. In the context of J2EE based system development and testing, this thesis offers the following contributions: (1) Methodology: Proposed a new cost-effective model (FTEXT) for testing J2EE based e-commerce systems. (2) Parser: Designed and implemented a parser to translate TTCN-3 test script and generate Java test code that conforms to the selected open source test tool for functional testing of Web-based applications. (3) Case Study: Implemented our approach in a case study that tests a typical J2EE ecommerce application. The case study demonstrates the working mechanism of the FTEXT method, relevant open source tools (e.g. HttpUnit and Apache Ant) and the capability of our TTCN-3 to Java parser.

In today's competitive business world, it is important for decision makers to have access to decision support tools. One of these decision making areas is supplier selection in e-procurement. Supplier selection is a multi-criteria decision making process that deals with the optimization of conflicting objectives. If it is not supported by a system, this would be a complex and time consuming process. In spite of the fact that the term "supplier selection" is commonly used in the literature, few efforts have been dedicated to develop a system based on any of these methods. In this thesis, we propose a web based supplier selection decision support system based on the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method. To validate our choice of the Fuzzy AHP model and also to validate the conceptual design of our supplier selection decision support system, we conducted a case study in a local hospital.

The Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway is a very big and important project in China. Whether it can succeed or not will have a direct impact on the construction of future high-speed railway network system in China and even affect China's economic development. In this thesis, an analysis of some main possible solutions and a deep research on the recommended solution were provided through using system engineering theory and Monte Carlo simulation. First the thesis introduces the background and current status of the Beijing-Shanghai railway and indicates the need for improving its traffic capacity. Analysis of the data generated as part of this thesis research has resulted in the conclusion that high-speed wheel-on-track (HSWOT) technology should be applied to the Beijing-Shanghai corridor. The thesis concludes that HSWOT technology is the best choice for the new Beijing-Shanghai railway, and it is also financially feasible. In addition, some suggestions are provided in relation to the effective implementation of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Web services refer to a family of technologies that can universally standardize the communication of applications in order to connect systems, business partners, and customers cost-effectively through the World Wide Web. Web services will ease the constraints of time, cost, and space for discovering, negotiating, and conducting e-business transactions. As a result, they dramatically changed the way businesses design their applications as services, integrate with other business entities, manage business process workflows, and conduct e-business transactions. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the current state of Web services technology and to evaluate the potential effectiveness of this technology for financial industry. By conducting several case studies, the advantages of Web services implementation are discussed, including financial areas and other related E-businesses. Non-technical aspects of Web services such as the value added, cost reduction, implementation contraction, project reusability, and business expanding are discussed as well. To demonstrate the use of Web services for financial industry, three Web service application prototypes were built within different domains relevant to international trading procedure. This simulation project is judged to be a successful demonstration of the potential applications of Web services for financial industry.

Manufacturers have to balance the desire for high productivity and the need for rapid responsiveness. These two interrelated problems can be solved by arranging the production of a family of modular products in Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS). The potential benefits of RMS can be achieved by reconfiguring its structure in such a way that each configuration corresponds to one product variant in the same family. The successful implementation of this strategy lies in efficient scheduling of the system. However, little research has been done in addressing the scheduling issues in RMS. This study presents a modeling methodology to simultaneously determine the processing sequence of a family of modular products and select the optimal system configuration for producing each product variant. Due to the combinatorial nature of this problem, a genetic algorithm (GA) with parallel chromosome coding scheme is proposed to provide quick and near-optimal solutions to large problems. The efficiency of the proposed approach is demonstrated by comparing the computational results with that achieved using LINGO and by applying it to both small size and large size models.