Abstract

Software Engineering Researchers in India from both academia and industry are widely contributing to various research problems. In this report, we briefly summarize the key insights from 1st Software Engineering Research in India Update Meeting (SERI 2019), which provides a platform for all the researchers to present and discuss their research work. The essence of this research meeting is to examine the current\ research areas within the software engineering research community and discover the scope of collaboration. Specifically, the first SERI update meeting had a series of invited research talks presented by researchers from academia and industry representing various software engineering labs across India. These talks unveiled notable views through presentations and group discussions, and cogitation of topics that can lead to fruitful collaborations between software engineering researchers and industry practitioners. The main objective of this update meeting is the exchange of research areas that promotes successful short-term and long-term collaborations.

Abstract

Community Question and Answer (CQA) platforms are expected to provide relevant content that is not readily available through search engines. With an increase in the number of users and growth of internet, CQA platforms have transitioned from generic to domain specific systems. Expert rating, machine learning and statistical methods are being used for assessing the quality of answers. However, the research on importance of consistency as a quality parameter in the form of text cohesion in CQAs is limited. We extracted 109,113 CQAs from StackExchange related to Information Security of the last 8 years to evaluate text cohesion in answers. An empirical study conducted with 246 participants (Information Security Experts, Software Engineers and Computational Linguists) on the extracted answers stated that lack of text cohesion impacts the rating of answers in CQA. Software Engineers are seekers and viewers of answers, they responded to a survey that lack of text cohesion leads to difficulty in reading and remembering. Information Security Experts providing answers to CQA stated that they need text cohesion for understandability.

Abstract

Big-data application processing is increasingly geo-distributed, a paradigm shift from the traditional cluster-based processing frameworks. As the communication time for data movement across geo-distributed data centers is not a design criterion for traditional cluster-based processing approaches, there are research gaps in the algorithms used for staging and scheduling big-data applications for geo-distributed clusters. We address these gaps by proposing Harmony, an approach consisting of both staging and scheduling strategies to minimize an application's total execution time. The staging strategy of Harmony exploits the intra-stage parallelism by having concurrent operators within a stage in contrast to the traditional Apache spark which uses fine-grained stages, thus reducing the computation time within each stage. Secondly, the scheduling strategy of Harmony reduces data transfers between geo-distributed data centers by exploiting data locality and thus reducing communication time and total execution time. The proposed approach Harmony achieves a speedup of two times with respect to geo-distributed Apache Spark. In addition, Harmony achieves a speedup of 1.6 times and 2.1 times when compared with the state-of-the-art framework Iridium for geo-distributed analytics over five locations with uniform and non-uniform network link bandwidths respectively.

Abstract

VR development practices have a diverse set of practices compared to traditional software development. Tasks like scene design, acoustic design, vergence manipulation, image depth, etc. are specific to VR apps and hence require evaluation processes that may be different from the traditional means. Usability Evaluation is one such process which is being executed in an unconventional way by Industrial Practitioners today. In this paper, the researchers detail a Systematic Literature Review of the Usability Evaluation Methods practised by Industrial researchers while building VR Products. The researchers found that VR Product teams follow unique methods to improve usability in their products. Further, the researchers consolidate these methods and provide insights into choosing the best to build a real-world VR Product based on the defined product constraints

Abstract

Virtual Labs allow performance of experiments without real world instrumentation needs. Most of these virtual experiments are simulation based and developed using proprietary or Open Source simulation, Adobe Flash, and other client side software. The procedural steps involved in conducting these experiments are hardwired and require software modification for enhancements or alignment to the course structure. We propose a model based approach that eases development of virtual experiments without dependency on software programmers for any changes. We demonstrate our model driven based approach on Chemical Sciences labs of Virtual Labs, a Government of India initiative. With our model driven based approach, the effort for new experiment development or FOSS conversion of existing experiments that were using outdated technologies is less than a person day as compared to more than a person …

Abstract

The focus of the ongoing Digital and Industry 4.0 revolution is on re-engineering business operations to take advantage of various technologies, including robotics. Conceptualizing, say, a robotics solution to automate aspects of warehouse operations involves multiple activities: understanding the problem space in sufficient detail to identify the right automation opportunities; working through the space of possible solution options and developing the solution design; and building a prototype solution with sufficient functional detail to enable customer experts to assess its suitability with respect to multiple concerns, and its impact on the business processes and environment. Only after that can a project be initiated to engineer and deploy the production solution, while making the necessary changes to the business system.

Abstract

Most financial institutions, NGOs, and self help groups (SHG) are now using web technology to create outreach. However, for non-mainstream users, like those in rural India, the web application’s non vernacular language, unfamiliar terminology, complex financial models, and user’s own poor digital exposure, together creates a mistrust in the web applications, which tends to result in poor adoption. This inhibits financial literacy initiatives and slows down Financial Inclusion, which is a Millennium Goal. We treat this as a web accessibility problem, and look for prior work on transforming published web content for making it suitable for easy consumption by non-mainstream users. To this end we present a systematic literature review, which forages through 1068 records related to page transformation, to RQ1) uncover existing motivators for transforming an existing web page, RQ2) surface the approaches taken, and …

Abstract

In this paper, the optimal transistor sizing of the digital cells has been obtained using Simulated Annealing algorithm and an Artificial Bee Colony algorithm and their results have been compared with nominal results for various nanoscale CMOS digital circuits. The goal is to minimize the leakage power keeping the other performance parameters such as propagation delays and the area in the bound. The simulations are done using HSPICE tool for 45nm and below using Metal gate High k Predictive Technology Model cards. To make sure of the unaffected working of all cells in the automotive applications, the temperature range and supply voltage has been taken between −55oC to 125oC and 0.95V to 1.05V respectively. The Overall reduction in leakage power achieved in the logic cells is up to 70% without any penalty in the critical path delay.

Abstract

In this paper, a highly stable all CMOS current reference against temperature and supply variation is proposed. Current reference of 5µA and 50nA has been designed for low power and ultra-low power applications respectively. The reference architecture is based on ratio between the PTAT voltage and the PTAT resistance. The process insensitive temperature compensation is accomplished by dividing TC of voltage with process insensitive TC of resistor. A high PSRR, process independent voltage reference is designed for PTAT voltage. N-poly on chip resistor is used for PTAT resistance. The proposed current reference is implemented in 0.18-µm TSMC technology. The architecture achieved PSRR of 74dB and line sensitivity of 0.05% works at supply voltage variation from 1.4V to 3.6V. The current reference of 5µA and 50nA attain temperature coefficient of 11.6 ppm/oC and 12.2 ppm/oC respectively for the temperature variation of -55oC to 125oC.

Abstract

Domain Specific Modeling Languages (DSML) significantly improve productivity in designing Computer Based System (CBS), by enabling them to be modeled at higher levels of abstraction. It is common for large and complex systems with distributed teams, to use DSMLs, to express and communicate designs of such systems uniformly, using a common language. DSMLs enable domain experts, with no or minimal software development background, to model solutions, using the language and terminologies used in their respective domains. Although, there are already a number of DSMLs available for modeling CBSs, their need is felt strongly across multiple domains, which still are not well supported with DSMLs. Developing a new DSML, however, is non trivial, as it requires (a) significant knowledge about the domain for which the DSML needs to be developed, as well as (b) skills to create new languages. In the …