The structured techniques for systems analysis and design are still the most widely known. One of the alternatives of this technique is the JAD methodology (Joint Application Design). This methodology is an improvement with respect to the existing ones -…

Framework comprehension is a very limiting factor to take full advantage of the benefits that frameworks offer to increase quality and productivity in software development. In this paper, a reverse engineering approach to framework comprehension using the MetaExplorer tool is…

Most of the current hypermedia model life cycles focus in analysis and design issues, ignoring crucial tasks and activities of hypermedia projects. Others do not take care of basic Software Engineering concepts such as planning, physical and logical modeling, validation…

Sharing of behavior is one of the most important features in the Object-Oriented paradigm. The two classical organisations of sharing are classes and prototypes, raising two different models and two families of object oriented languages. It has been largely discussed…

Software tools processing partially common set of data should share an understanding of what these data mean. Since ontologies have been used to express formally a shared understanding of information, we argue that they can be used to improve integration…

The term “Federated Databases” refers to the data integration of distributed, autonomous and heterogeneous databases. However, a federation can also include information systems, not only databases. When integrating data, several issues must be addressed. Here, we focus on the problem…

Product-line architectures, i.e. a software architecture and component set shared by a family of products, represents a promising approach to achieving reuse of software. Several companies are initiating or have recently adopted a product-line architecture. However, little experience is available…

Using COTS software promises faster time-to-market, which can yield substantial advantages over competitors with regards to earlier placement of a new product on a market. At the same time, component-based software introduces risks, such as unknown quality properties of the…

During the last years a lot of projects and lines of research have emerged from different proposals trying to find the best way to reach data integration. Two powerful techniques have appeared separately – ontology and contextual information – in…

The star model, broadly used in data warehouse modeling, is a logical model, so its representation is strongly dependent on the database technology used for its implementation, usually relational. The method recommended for designing a dimensional system would be the…