Forum for Advancing Software engineering Education Volume 6 Number 6 March 8, 1996 Contents: WANTED: Information and articles for TCSE Newsletter OO Education and Training Sources New software verification e-mail list (forward) Software Reliability Engineering Bulletin Board Update: Software Engineering at Keele Minutes of the February 22,1996 SPIN DC Training Group CFP: ZUM'97, 10th International Conference of Z Users CFP, Special Issue of INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SYSTEM SCIENCE ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: kpierce@d.umn.edu (Keith Pierce) Subject: WANTED: Information and articles for TCSE Newsletter It's time for my tri-annual request for submissions for the newsletter of the IEEE-CS Technical Council on Software Engineering Education. I edit the "Education News" column, whose objectives are similar to those of FASE. I welcome any submissions that would be of interest to software engineering educators and trainers, and software engineering professionals with an interest in education and training. THe newsletter goes out to over 30,000 TCSE members worldwide, so your article will receive wide exposure. I will byline submissions with your name and affiliation. My deadline for completing the column is March 31, so submissions must get to me in the next couple of weeks to make the spring issue. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: kpierce@d.umn.edu (Keith Pierce) Subject: OO Education and Training Sources The March/April issue of the Journal of Object-Oriented Programming contains a listing of providers of education and training in object orientation. Also in that issue is an article "Teaching Eiffel as a first language. This article describes a design framework and notation that integrates procedural and object-oriented design, and shows how the framework is used to teach Eiffel as a first language. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jim Alves-Foss Subject: New software verification e-mail list (forward) This is to announce a new software verification e-mail list where people can discuss issues related to proving programs. To join the list, send e-mail to majordomo@lal.cs.byu.edu The body must contain the line subscribe softverf Paul E. Black (p.black@ieee.org) Laboratory for Applied Logic, 3325 TMCB black@cs.byu.edu Brigham Young University voice: +1 801 378 8113 Provo, Utah 84602-6576 KC7PKT Web: http://lal.cs.byu.edu/people/black/black.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: kpierce@d.umn.edu (Keith Pierce) Subject: Software Reliability Engineering Bulletin Board + Interested in keeping up with what's happening in SRE? + Want to learn more about SRE? + Having problems/successes in applying SRE that you want to share with others? The IEEE SRE Committee sponsors an Electronic Bulletin Board that can be accessed via electronic mail (email). To subscribe (or change your email address if already subscribed), please send email to vishwa@hac2arpa.hac.com (Vishwa Hassan). After subscribing, any email posted to sw-rel@gate1.hac.com (IEEE SRE Committee Bulletin Board) will be relayed to you. Planned uses of the bulletin board include: + sharing items regarding upcoming SRE-related conferences/workshops, + providing a forum for discussion of SRE topics and issues, + giving hints and tips for implementing SRE in your organization, + distributing items that will appear in the (paper) IEEE SRE Newsletter DO YOU HAVE IDEAS ON OTHER USAGES, please share with vishwa@hac2arpa.hac.com!! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "David Budgen" Subject: Update: Software Engineering at Keele This message is intended to update our many friends and collaborators about some exciting new developments in the Department of Computer Science. Following the recent decision by the U.K. National Computing Centre (N.C.C.), based in Manchester, that it would restructure its activities in the area of Software Engineering; Dr Barbara Kitchenham and Mr Stephen Linkman, two of the senior researchers from the N.C.C., have joined the Department of Computer Science at Keele University. The N.C.C. have also agreed to make material from previous research available to Keele as well as to help with marketing research and consultancy for the Department. Barbara and Stephen bring with them a range of experience at senior levels in software metrics, evaluation, quality assessment and risk management. They have worked in and with industry on both research and consultancy, and Barbara was formerly a Reader at City University in London. This development has complemented and extended the Department's existing strengths in Software Engineering, centred upon Software Design, Configuration Management and Parallel Systems. An area of research that we expect to be developing more strongly as a result of our combined interests is that of Systems Evaluation, which will also involve contributions from the Department's other research groups (Databases, Cooperating Knowledge Based Systems, Geographic Information Systems, Machine Perception & Neural Networks). David Budgen, Pearl Brereton, Barbara Kitchenham, Stephen Linkman ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Claire Lohr <75021.3410@compuserve.com> Subject: Minutes of the February 22,1996 SPIN DC Training Group The meeting topic was " Five Minute Madness"; anyone could bring a lesson learned, a current challenge, or any topic for presentation and a brief group discussion. Claire Lohr of Lohr Systems explained how she develops pocket summary guides for individual courses. They are either a bifold or a trifold presenting all of the main points of the training. They have been very well received by clients, but they do need to be tailored to the individual organization. For more information, contact Claire Lohr at 75021.3410@compuserve.com. Bill Flury of American University presented several key points from his Software Process Improvement course, along with a poem by Ogden Nash: "At last I've found the secret, that guarantees success. To err, and err, and err again, but less, and less, and less." For more information, contact Bill at wflury@american.edu. Kathy Beckman of CDSI reported on the success of their training user's group. Students (who had completed the training) voluntarily came back and gave feedback for future improvements. At a follow-on meeting, the training development staff reported back on which suggestions were implemented and explained what happened to the others. Then the same group developed yet another list of desired improvements for future implementation. For additional information, contact Kathy at sdmce@access.digex.net. Pam Case of System Engineering & Acqusition Services, Inc. (SEAS) shared her experience with a large government project using MIL-STD-498. She discovered that training just a small core of people was not enough. The change in thinking required to transition from the predecessor standards was just too difficult without training. The issues which are particularly challenging are the emphasis on information instead of documents, the reduction in formal reviews, and the increased emphasis on risk management. Also, 498 assumes that a fully complete, documented software development process is already in place, which was not the case with this particular organization. Finally, the QA group had trouble orienting themselves to focusing on the health and success of the process, instead of the individual documents. For more information, contact Pam at 301-261-3805. Rick Gross of DISA quoted Tom Gilb's law that if it is desirable to measure something, there must be a way to do it somehow. Then he expressed his desire as a consumer of training to have measures of the differences in student skill before and after the training occurs. The group did some brainstorming about what those measures could be, and made some plans for future exploration of this concept. To join in this discussion, contact Rick at grossr@ncr.disa.mil. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: hinchey@homer.njit.edu (Michael Hinchey) Subject: CFP: ZUM'97, 10th International Conference of Z Users Notice of Meeting and First Call for Papers 10th International Conference of Z Users Organized by the Z User Group in association with BCS FACS Sponsored by BT and Praxis 3--4th April 1997 University of Reading, England Of special interest to FASE subscribers: An educational issues session is planned to follow the conference, and tutorials may be possible on the days directly preceding and following the main sessions. THE SUBMISSION DEADLINE IS 16 AUGUST 1996 General enquiries about the meeting and the Z User Group may be directed to Jonathan Bowen at J.P.Bowen@reading.ac.uk or URL: http://www.cs.reading.ac.uk/people/jpb/ For the complete text of this call, write to Mike. Also, see the on-line and up-to-date conference information may be found under the following World Wide Web URL: http://www.cs.reading.ac.uk/archive/z/zum97/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Pradip Srimani Subject: CFP, Special Issue of INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SYSTEM SCIENCE CALL FOR PAPERS Special Issue of INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SYSTEMS SCIENCE on Distributed Systems Tentative Publication Date: November 1966 Distributed computing systems have experienced a massive growth in the last few years. Many new frontiers of applications have opened up due to the availability of these distributed and parallel systems. While the foundations and the properties of sequential computing are relatively well understood, theoretical modeling as well as software engineering for distributed systems are still emerging. The purpose of this special issue is to focus on different theoretical and experimental aspects of distributed computing as well as new approaches, algorithms and methodologies that are needed to accommodate the new complexities introduced by the asynchronous operations of distributed systems. Example topics include, but are not limited to, the following: o Distributed Computing Models. o Distributed and Parallel Algorithms o Interconnection Networks o Distributed Operating Systems o Performance Evaluation o Self-Stabilizing Systems o Fault Tolerance in Distributed Systems o Applications to Real Life Problems Papers should emphasize new original contributions of either theoretical or experimental nature. Papers must be written in IJSS style. Please submit five copies of your manuscript to the guest editor by June 15, 1996: Pradip K Srimani, Department of Computer Science, Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, CO 80523 USA, Tel: (970) 491-5862, Fax: (970) 491-2466, Email: srimani@CS.ColoState.Edu. Instructions for submitting papers: Papers should not exceed 30 double spaced pages. Papers should not have been previously published, nor currently submitted to other journals for publication. Papers should include a title page containing title, authors' names and affiliations, postal and email addresses, telephone numbers and Fax numbers. Papers should include a 300-word abstract and 5-10 keywords and be written in general in IJSS style. [Note: If you are willing to referee papers for this special issue, please send a note with research interest to Dr. Srimani.] Publishers: Taylor & Francis, Rankine Road, Basingstoke, Hants. RG24 8PR England E------------------------------------------------------------------- FASE Volume 6 Number 6 Send newsletter articles to one of the editors, preferably by category: Articles pertinent to corporate and government training to Kathy Beckman, sdmce@access.digex.net; Academic education, and all other categories, to Keith Pierce, kpierce@d.umn.edu (Messages routed to fase-submit@d.umn.edu still go to Keith) Send requests to add, delete, or modify a subscription to fase-request@d.umn.edu Send problem reports, returned mail, or other correspondence about this newsletter to fase-owner@d.umn.edu, or kpierce@d.umn.edu You can retrieve back issues by anonymous FTP from from ricis.cl.uh.edu or through WWW at URL http://ricis.cl.uh.edu/FASE/ Keith Pierce -- Academic/Misc Editor and ListMaster University of Minnesota Duluth, Duluth, MN 55812-2496 USA Phone: 218- 726-7194 Fax: 218-726-6360 Email: kpierce@d.umn.edu Kathy Beckman -- Corporate/Government Editor Computer Data Systems One Curie Ct., Rockville MD 20850 USA Phone: 301-921-7027 Fax: 301-921-1004 Email: sdmce@access.digex.net David Eichmann -- FASE Archivist University of Houston - Clear Lake Box 113, 2700 Bay Area Blvd., Houston, TX 77058 USA Web: http://ricis.cl.uh.edu/eichmann/ Phone: 713-283-3875 Fax: 713-283-3810 Email: eichmann@rbse.jsc.nasa.gov or eichmann@cl.uh.edu Laurie Werth -- Advisory Committee Taylor Hall 2.124 University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712 USA Phone: 512-471-9535 Fax: 512-471-8885 Email: lwerth@cs.utexas.edu Nancy Mead -- Advisory Committee Software Engineering Institute 5000 Forbes Ave. Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA Phone: 412-268-5756 Fax: 412-268-5758 Email: nrm@sei.cmu.edu