Projects of the Experimental Software Engineering Group at the University of Maryland
UMCP

Combining and Analyzing Distributed Data: WebME

Problem

 Measurement collection activities have been emphasized as effective instruments for gaining control and insight into software activities. Because of this, many organizations have incorporated data collection into their software processes. Although the data are being collected, often, the collection process is write-only. That is, the data are not being used easily or effectively. In order to maximize the benefits gained from data collection activities, techniques which are accessible and present the data in intelligible ways are necessary. In addition, these techniques must be flexible and easily incorporated into existing processes.

The SME, Software Management Environment, of NASA's Flight Dynamics Division and the Software Engineering Laboratory attempts to address part of this problem. It allows data from several projects to be graphically displayed in various ways and plots underlying models of the data. The SME system was built in the mid-80's and has some limitations. Among the weaknesses are an antiquated user interface, static data attributes and simple data modeling techniques.

Goal

 To design and implement a data visualization tool in order to utilize collected data more easily and effectively. More specifically, we want to extend the capabilities of SME to make it more flexible and useful for multiple domains and data types.

Keywords

 WebME, WWW interface, data visualization, measurement data, data analysis, data modeling, experimental software engineering

Participants

 Roseanne Tesoriero, Marvin Zelkowitz

References

 R. Tesoriero and M. V. Zelkowitz, WebME: A Web-based tool for Data Analysis and Presentation, IEEE Internet Computing, Sep/Oct 1998.

R. Tesoriero and M. V. Zelkowitz, A model of noisy software engineering data, Proc. of the 20th International Conference on Software Engineering, April 1998.(postscript)

R. Tesoriero and M. V. Zelkowitz, Using the Internet to Combine and Analyze Distributed Software Engineering Data, Presented at the Software Engineering over the Internet Workshop, April 1998.(HTML)

R. Tesoriero and M. V. Zelkowitz, The Web Measurement Environment (WebME): Combining and modeling distributed data, Proc. of the 22nd Annual Software Engineering Workshop, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, December, 1997. (postscript)

Software Management Environment (SME) Concepts and Architecture -- Revision 1, NASA/GSFC Code 551, SEL Series Report SEL-89-103, September, 1992.

This presents the concepts and architecture of SME. SME provides an integrated set of experience-based management tools that can assist software development managers in managing and planning flight dynamics software development projects.

Li N. R. and M. V. Zelkowitz, An Information Model for Use in Software Management Estimation and Prediction, Second International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, Washington, DC, November, 1993, 481-489.

This summarizes the clustering capabilities of SME and in the process gives a general overview of SME execution. ( Postscript version of paper).

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Last updated: October 29, 1998 by Roseanne Tesoriero

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