Orchestrating Agent for Software Development Process Supporting Tools

Transcription

1 Indian Journal of Science and Technology, Vol 8(23), DOI: /ijst/2015/v8i23/79981, September 2015 ISSN (Print) : ISSN (Online) : Orchestrating Agent for Software Development Process Supporting Tools Eun Seung Lee 1 and Young B. Park 2 * 1 Department of Computer, Dankook University, Yongin, Republic of Korea; leeys5214@naver.com 2 Department of Computer Science, Dankook University, Cheonan, Republic of Korea; ybpark@dankook.ac.kr Abstract The interest in quality is increasing as the types of software got diversified and the demand for it increased. Commonly used software and formal methods were used for software quality control management previously. However, the usage of commonly used tools causes extra cost. The quality control management using Open Source Software (OSS) can be proposed as an alternative to cut the extra cost. OSS is a software with its source code disclosed so that anyone can use free of cost. OSS can be used independently without mutual contact or by constructing a tool-chain environment. Using each OSS independently without mutual contact can reduce the cost of constructing tool-chain environment. However, extra cost can occur for managing the output of each tool and this can be larger than the cost for tool-chain environment construction. Quality control management by constructing tool-chain environment all around SDLC is done mostly in SW Visualization activity. The plug-in method is used mainly for tool-chain environment construction. However, this can cause extra cost depending on the Plug-in and flaws can be inherent due to frequent updates and because it is free of charge. This paper proposes tool-chain environment construction between OSS using Agent. Keywords: Agent, Open Source, Software Quality, Software Visualization, Toolchain 1. Introduction As the hardware cost decreased, the distribution rate of computers increased consistently. The PC distribution rate increased from 2.5% (1990 s) to 9% (2001) and is still increasing consistently 1. As the computer distribution rate increased, software application field increased. Not only the decrease of hardware costs, but also the emergence of various platforms was the driving force of the development of software market. Software is now used in all areas including individuals, companies and the government. The competition of the business became fierce as the software productivity increased and cheap application programs were widely applied 2,3. This led to the appearance of many methods to develop highquality software. Previously, software quality enhancement through formal method and commonly used tools was done frequently. However, the usage of commonly used tools can cause extra cost. Also, credibility of the output can lack due to the usage of a single commonly used tool 4. This led to the rise of interest in Open Source Software. OSS is a software with its source code disclosed free of cost so that anyone can use without restriction 5. It can be used selectively according to the user s object and the environment, and as it is free, there is no burden of cost. It has an advantage that it can be used widely through SDLC by tool fusion 6. However, there is a potential problem in OSS usage. Version update may sometimes be delayed or conversely there could be flaws made due to frequent changes. Because it is free to anyone, it is hard to track down the responsibility of a problem occurred due to the flaw of OSS 7. Also, it can be hard to secure the credibility of the output from OSS. *Author for correspondence

2 Orchestrating Agent for Software Development Process Supporting Tools There may be no special support when combining and using OSS. Therefore, construction of an environment to autonomously combine the OSS is required. This means that extra cost is required for tool-chain environment construction aside from the cost of using OSS. If Plug-in is provided, it can be used to constitute tool-chain environment. However, it can malfunction according to the update period and plug-in support version. Therefore the way to compose tool-chain environment with less cost without using Plug-in is needed. This paper used Agent method to construct tool-chain environment of OSS. Supporting tools were developed based on JAVA. The Agent supports tool-chain environment management function through the version management of each OSS and the connection execution and output management of each tools of the Testing Stage in SDLC. Ruleset file is needed to run each tool, and tool-chain environment is composed as the rule stated in the Ruleset file. Output management supports managing the output from each OSS. The formation of this page is as follows. Phase 2 consists of related research considering OSS, SW Visualization, SDLC and Static/Dynamic Testing and Phase 3 consists of analyzation of Orchestrating Agent Composition and whole operation flow. The conclusion is given at the end. 2. Related Works 2.1 Open Source Software (OSS) Source Code Released OSS is a method that emerged reactively while software became commercialized separated from the hardware computer. The name was first presented at 1998, but similar concept was already present in early 1990 s 8,9. Software can be classified according to cost as shown in Table 1. Free software can be classified into OSS and Freeware, Shareware according to whether the source code is disclosed or not. OSS means software whose source code is disclosed for anyone to use. Free software and open software were divided previously, but recently it had been integrated as FOSS (Free & Open Source Software) 10. Data: International Institute of Infonomics and Berlecon Research (2002), Part III, p. 11 Product development using commonly used tool was common previously, but as the advantage of OSS stood out, product development using OSS took the spotlight recently. The disclosure of the source code of OSS made any user to alter and distribute the improvement and flaw of OSS by Table 1. - Cost Software type Free Paid analyzing the code 11. This paper objects Non-commercial Open Source Software, whose source code is disclosed. 2.2 SW Visualization and SDLC SW Visualization helps to comprehend the whole software development process by overcoming software s invisibility and it is a measure to realize SW quality improvement 12. OSS can be used for this and as shown in Table 2, it is able to select a tool for each stage. Each tool operates independently, but it can also be used by mutual contact through tool-chain environment construction. However, each open source tool s update may require mutual environment setting alteration 13. Software Visualization is a method for quality control and maintenance improvement and it intends to manage source code and development process 14,15. Figure 1 is an example opened by Software Engineering Center about the tool usage of each SW Visualization phase. Software Engineering Center suggests tool-chain environment constitution using Plug-in. Environment constitution using Plug-in is feed according to the development language and action against frequent change may not be instant. Orchestrating Agent proposed in this paper was researched to manage tools used in the testing stage of the whole development process. Orchestrating Agent targets the tools only used in the Test stage of the SDLC excluding the stages before the Build stage. However, in the case of Version Control Agent, the version management of tools used in the whole SDLC stage from the Requirement stage to the Test stage can be done. Compatibility Agent and Product Agent were designed to act against only the Test tools. 2.3 Static/Dynamic Testing Source Code Released Yes Non-commercial Open Source Software Commercial Open Source Software No Freeware Shareware Commercial Software Software test is mainly classified into static testing and dynamic testing and it can be classified into white box testing and black box testing according to whether the source code may be browsed. Software testing aims for claim 2 Indian Journal of Science and Technology

3 Eun Seung Lee and Young B. Park Table 2. Software Visualization Open Source Software Requirement Design & Modeling Development Build Testing JFeature JRequisite OSRMT ArgoUML PlantUML StarUML VioletUML Papyrus DB Designer CodeBlock Eclipse BIRT Eclipse CDT Eclipse JDT IntelliJ Jasper Studio MongoDB NetBeans Qt Creator SharpDevelop Tadpole for DB Ant CruiseControl Gradle Jenkins Maven CPPUnit EMMA FitNesses HttpUnit JMeter Jubula JUNIT LoadUI NUnit OProfile Selenium SoapUI SpringTest STAF TestLink fulfilment and the detection and prevention of defect. As defect can lead to future security problems, it should not be exempt from the quality index. Even without security problems due to defect, software testing can be done for the reasons regarding credibility, performance and usability. Software testing aims to find defects, but not all cases of test are sufficient. Therefore, to improve the defect detection rate, testing is done by combining and using each different testing tool. This research has been done for constructing the tool-chain environment to integrate static and dynamic testing tools. 3. Orchestrating Agent 3.1 Orchestrating Agent Configuration Orchestrating Agent is a tool proposed in this paper to support tool-chain environment of OSS. Compatibility problem solving and output management supporting function is imbedded in the tool-chain environment composition. After the build is done according to the source code written by the developer, each OSS is activated according to the Ruleset defined by the developer beforehand. The action result is provided to the user using GUI tool, providing only the eidetic information. The fundamental concept is shown in Figure 2 below. Orchestrating Agent is activated if the Complete Message is occurred after the developer demands the source code of the build. Complete Message is antecedent condition for the activation, and it will not act if the Build is not conducted normally. Source code without error is the precondition. If an error existed in the source code, testing it is considered useless. This is because Testing of source code with an error does not create a file and thus dynamic testing of it is impossible. Also, as the developer needs to edit the source code to remove the error, even Perform Requirement Development Configuration Build Test Verify Black Box Test Case Static Analysis White Box Rule Complexity Unit Test Coverage S Y S T E M C/C++ Java Test Link Mytyn Eclipse C Eclipse Subcli pse SVN MinGW+Script Ant CPP Check PMD NSIQ CPPUnit JUnit gcov Emma Redmine Jenkins Figure 1. Software Visualization (Composition) Software Engineering Center (KOR). Indian Journal of Science and Technology 3

4 Orchestrating Agent for Software Development Process Supporting Tools 1. Development ToolChain Environment Supporting Tool(GUI) 6. Reporting Ⅰ.Ruleset Developer Source Code Configuration 2. Version Control Build 5. Report Ⅱ.Settings(Ruleset) Orchestrating Agent 3. Build Complete Orchestrating Agent Main_Agent Compatibility Product Version Control Open Source #1 4. Testing Open Source #2 Open Source #n Mutual Contact Figure 2. Orchestrating Agent tool chain environment. if dynamic testing is done, it will produce meaningless output. Orchestrating Agent is basically comprised of 2-Layer composition. It is composed using abstraction technology. Top Agent conducts Monitoring role and provides the developer information of the tool-chain environment in GUI environment. 3 Service Agents are composed, which are Version Control Agent, Product Agent and Compatibility Agent. The action result of 3 Service Agents is transferred to Top Agent. Top Agent then provides the developer information based on the data. 3.2 Orchestrating Agent Operating Flow At first, Version Control Agent which received Build Complete Message from the Build Tool verifies the version of each OSS through the Ruleset registered and it conducts comparison analysis it with the registered ruleset. After analyzation, if normal function is impossible due to version alteration, the Fail Message (Log Message) is delivered to the developer. If normal function is able (no version alteration has occurred), Available Operations Message is delivered to the Compatibility Agent. Compatibility Agent functions after receiving Available Operations Message from Version Control Agent. Each OSS is activated consecutively/in parallel after Ruleset of the developer is confirmed. If tool link is not required, it is activated independently. If tool link is needed, each OSS is activated according to the Ruleset of each link mode. For example, Static Testing Tool_y creates A` and B` as the output. A and B are then transferred to Dynamic Testing Tool_X as stated in the Ruleset. Dynamic Testing Tool_X creates X (A`, B`) from A` and B` from Static Testing Tool_Y. In the case of Static Testing_z, A`` and B`` are created as the output. A`` Static Testing Tool_x A B A B Compatibility Static Testing Tool_y A' B' A' B' Dynamic Testing Tool_X X(A',B') Y(A'') Product Z(B'') Static Testing Tool_z A'' B'' A'' Dynamic Testing Tool_Y B'' Dynamic Testing Tool_Z Figure 3. Compatibility Agent testing tool flow (example). 4 Indian Journal of Science and Technology

5 Eun Seung Lee and Young B. Park Figure 4. Orchestrating Agent supporting tool. and B`` are each sent to different Dynamic Testing Tool. Through this, in the case of Dynamic Testing Tool_Y only creates output Y (A``) from the output A`` and B`` as stated in the Ruleset. Dynamic Testing Tool_Y creates output regarding the user s need. Log of each action is transferred to the Top agent and provided to the developer. After the output is generated normally through the OSS action, information of the output is sent to Product Agent. Product Agent manages the output information transmitted from Compatibility Agent to manage the information which is provided to the developer. method can be set through Ruleset and without it, it follows the basic option and manages according to created tool. Developer can, without finding the output storage or without special output management software, get information of each output. Output is stored in the set directory and managed according to creation date and type as the Ruleset states. The developer can manage the whole tool-chain environment through Ruleset settings and can easily set the Ruleset through GUI tools as Figure 4. Information can be provided real-time through Log message depending on the Orchestrating Agent and 3 Service Agents action. Log Message shows the action state of each OSS and the information of the output. Tool-chain environment composition can be done freely because the Orchestrating Agent moves not on a fixed Rule, but on the developer s Ruleset. Also the burden of adding/deleting new tools is exempt. However, to use a new tool, a Ruleset has to be made for the tool. If a version update of an already updated OSS occurs, tool-chain environment can be reconstituted through Ruleset change. 4. Conclusions Using Plug-in is most widely known for tool chain environment composition using OSS. Plug-in can easily be installed from each OSS distributing websites. However it may not be compatible with the latest version of OSS and it is sometimes provided with cost according to the development language. Therefore the proposed method uses Agent method for tool-chain environment composition to minimize Plug-in use. This paper proposes a tool to solve the problem that can be caused while constructing tool-chain environment through OSS using Agent. Based on tool-chain environment construction using Ruleset to minimize the cost of version management, tools to solve credibility problem and output management problem has been proposed. The proposed tool was developed based on JAVA and it can provide only the information useful to the developer by supporting tools of GUI setting. The proposed tool was also developed for software quality enhancement and for the present for targeting the composition of tool-chain environment between Testing tools. However, the proposed method did not improve all sides compared to tool-chain composition using Plug-in. Cost-cutting effect is more sufficient than the method using Plug-in, but the Ruleset has to be registered beforehand. Indian Journal of Science and Technology 5

6 Orchestrating Agent for Software Development Process Supporting Tools The drawback that in the case of Ruleset, if different from the previously defined OSS, the Ruleset has to be defined newly should be solved. Also, as the Agent system, aside from OSS, is operated in the background, extra memory may be needed. Future research will be operated in two ways. Primarily, the research on the development of a tool that can be used on the whole SDLC stage including Build stage before the Testing stage of SDLC will be proceeded. The research for the development of a support tool for Ruleset registration will also be proceeded. 5. Acknowledgement This work was supported by the ICT R&D program of MSIP/IITP. [R , (EXOBRAIN-4)] development of autonomous intelligent collaboration framework for knowledge bases and smart devises] and employment contract based master s degree program for information security supervised by the KISA (KOREA INTERNET SECURITY AGENCY) (H ). 6. References 1. Chinn MD, Fairlie RW. The determinants of the global digital divide: A cross-country analysis of computer and internet penetration. Oxford Economic Papers. 2006; 59(1): Kan SH. Metrics and models in software quality engineering. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co Inc; Boehm BW. Improving software productivity. IEEE Sep; 20(9): Wheeler DA. Free-Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) is commercial software; Available from: dwheeler.com/essays/commercial-floss.html 5. Jaeger T, Metzger A. Open-source-software. Munchen: Verlag C.H. Beck; p Saini M, Kaur K. A review of open source software development life cycle models. International Journal of Software Engineering & its Application. 2014; 8(3): Bruckhaus T, Madhavji NH, Janssen I, Henshaw J. The impact of tools on software productivity. IEEE Software Sep; 13(5): Syamlal M, O Brien TJ, Benyahia S, Gel A, Pannala S. Open-source software in computational research: A case study. Modelling and Simulation in Engineering. 2008; 2008(1): Fuggetta A. Open source software - An evaluation. The Journal of Systems and Software Apr; 66(1): National IT Industry Promotion Agency. Open Source Software White Paper: Korea National IT Industry Promotion Agency; Song W. The innovation characteristics of Open Source Software: A review. Journal of Korea Technology Inovation Society. 2002; 5(2): Software Asset Bank. Software Visualization. Available from: Lee ES, Kim YS, Park BH, Park YB. Compatibility enhancing agent for managing software toolchain. The 5th International Conference on Convergence Technology in 2015; Park BK, Kwon HE, Son HS, Kim YS, Lee SE, Kim YC. A case study on improving SW quality through software visualization. Journal of KIISE Nov; 41(11): NIPA SW engineering center. SW development quality management manual (SW Visualization). NIPA SW Engineering Center; Indian Journal of Science and Technology