Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Commercial-off-the-shelf software'

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2005<br>Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 66 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 61-66).

Thesis (M.S. in Information Technology Management)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2003.<br>Thesis advisor(s): Monique P. Fargues, Russell Gottfried. Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-74). Also available online.

Thesis (M.S. in Modeling, Virtual Environments and Simulations (Moves))--Naval Postgraduate School, Septemeber 2005.<br>Thesis Advisor(s):Rudolph Darken. Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-91). Also available online.

<p>The focus of the study is to identify ERP COTS software where custom made ERPP and COTS software are different in product type and implementation process. The study further intensifies the focus on the factors which are critical for successful ERP COTS product selection and implementation by decision makers and ERP COTS implementers respectively.</p><p>The study involves decision makers, management and organizational actors (end users which are beneficiaries of ERP COTS system). The study tries to identify certain factors, which can lead to the success of the ERP COTS Software implementation and failure to identify those CSFs in selecting and implementing ERP COTS can lead to ERP COTS failure.</p>

Combat arms units (both Marine and Army) often do not have enough people, time and resources to properly train collective tasks at the squad level. Resources are often retained by higher headquarters due to tight deployment schedules, land restrictions, logistics constraints and a myriad of other reasons. Due to the current operational demands of combat arms brigades and regiments, the reality of limited resources is often a contributing factor in poor performance at the squad level. Leaders at all levels will need to look for innovative ways to sustain training levels at the small unit level. The scope of this study examined the collective and leader tasks that are required for successful execution of Infantry squad missions (using the Army Training and Evaluation Plan ARTEP 7-8 Drill), and how those tasks could be trained with the use of commercial off-the-shelf multiplayer gaming software. The end-state of this research study is to provide initial analysis on what collective skills games can be used to train at the Infantry squad level, and develop a training model recommendation for the integration of this tool into existing unit plans.

Thesis (M.S. in Software Engineering) Naval Postgraduate School, March 2000.<br>Thesis advisor(s): Osmundson, John. "March 2000." Includes bibliographical references (p. 153-155). Also available online.

This research study aims to contribute to the discussion around Information Systems, more precisely on Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software Based Systems, as a Business Process and as a Supply-Chain enabler tool, within the construction industry in Portugal. Concerned with efficiency improvement of management theory in the construction arena, central discussions of this study are about developing a methodology for demand-supply selection of COTS-Based Systems for leading contractors in Portugal and analysing market offerings of COTS-Based Systems covering Operations Management functional needs of leading contractors in Portugal. Demand-side and supply-side research is undertaken, eliciting contractors’ needs and analysing market offerings of COTS-Based Systems at Operations Management-level from a functional perspective. A multicompany informing case study approach contributes to a better understanding of COTS-Based Systems selection practice, within the demand-supply context of leading contractors in Portugal. Several other appropriate research methods and techniques are employed to collect rich field data. A specific Demand-Supply Selection (DSS) Methodology of COTS-Based Systems is developed, based on methods and techniques in use by practitioners and on review of literature, considering context/stakeholders interaction of leading contractors in Portugal. A systematised list of functional high-level requirements for COTS-Based Systems evaluation is obtained to produce a comprehensive Requirements Reference (RR) Model, so that the effort to elicit the (functional) needs of leading contractors’ Operations Management through further development of requirements models from scratch is reduced. A benchmarking report of leading contractors systems in use and a demand-supply cross analysis delivered on a COTS-Based Systems Market Offerings (MO) Report, answers the question about 'which are the actual market offerings of COTS-Based Systems supporting Operations Management functional needs of leading contractors in Portugal'. Based on these three perspectives, the research study aims to provide an original contribution to knowledge, developing a comprehensive study covering supply and demand viewpoints. In this respect, the direct and practical purpose of this study is to facilitate the planning phase at the beginning of a project and offer comprehensive information to construction industry players (e.g. consultants, COTS-Based Systems providers) that could lead to better products (e.g. changes in functions of COTS-Based Systems) and services (e.g. Requirements Engineering services, COTS-Based Systems selection services) for leading contractors in Portugal.

<p> Feature selection is one of the most important decisions made by product managers. This three article study investigates the concepts, tools and techniques for making trade-off decisions of introducing new features in evolving Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software products. The first article investigates the efficacy of various feature selection techniques when the trade-off is between comprehensiveness and time-to-market. The second article investigates the impact of current level of product performance when the trade-off is between providing different types of innovative features to the users. The third article investigates the impact on the ability of the COTS product to attract new users and retain existing users when the trade-off is between providing utilitarian and hedonic value through new product features. </p><p> To meet these research goals an extensive multidisciplinary study of Information Systems (IS) and Product Development literatures was conducted followed by experimental research. The experiments were conducted among youth between 19-24 years who were users of Gmail software and produced some key findings. </p><p> In the first study the Kano survey method was found to be effective in identifying those features which added value to the product and those that did not. This finding will facilitate product managers in using appropriate techniques for identifying the critical product features to be built into the COTS product thereby reducing time-to-market without sacrificing product quality. In the second study, current COTS product performance was found to significantly impact the type of innovation to be introduced into the COTS product. Basic or Core product innovations were found to have value for the users when performance is low but not when the performance is high. On the other hand, Expected or product Performance innovations and Augmented or user Excitement innovations were found to have value when the performance is high but not when the performance is low. In the third study, Hedonic value and Utilitarian value of product features were found to have distinctive impact on users. While Hedonic value impacted Word-of-Mouth, a measure of the products' capacity to attract new customers, Utilitarian value impacted User Loyalty, a measure of the products' capacity to retain existing customers.</p>

Thesis (M.S. in Information Technology Management) Naval Postgraduate School, March 1996.<br>"March 1996." Thesis advisor(s): M.P. Fargues, James C. Emery. Includes bibliographical references. Also Available online.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-17T14:52:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Paulino de Almeida Cantanhede Filho.pdf: 1682767 bytes, checksum: a5fce1801fd45fddf7e98305e0e9b053 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005-03-14<br>Guidelines for evaluation and selection of COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) products. Comes a methodology for the Development based on COTS (DBC) in the Requirements Engineering, being approached the evaluation phases and selection of DBC. The method is divided in three phases, that are divided in activities orienting by actions that seek to the quality of the information for a socket of decision in an automated and oriented way for defined evaluation criteria during the Requirements Engineering. This approach divide the requirements in three levels: Fundamental, Contractual and Desirable. The functional and no-functional requirements are treated in an equalitarian way.<br>Este trabalho apresenta diretrizes para avaliação e seleção de produtos COTS (Commercial- Off-The-Shelf). Apresenta-se uma metodologia para o Desenvolvimento Baseado em COTS (DBC) na Engenharia de Requisitos, abordando-se as fases de avaliação e seleção do DBC. O método está dividido em três fases, que por sua vez estão divididas em atividades direcionadas por ações que visam à qualidade das informações para uma tomada de decisão de forma automatizada e orientada por critérios de avaliação definidos durante a Engenharia de Requisitos. Esta abordagem divide os requisitos em três níveis, são eles: Fundamental, Contratual e Desejável. Os requisitos funcionais e não-funcionais são tratados de forma igualitária.

In this thesis, COTS-software requirements elicitation, which is an input for RFP in software intensive automation system&rsquo<br>s acquisition, is examined. Business Process Models are used for COTS-software requirements elicitation. A new method, namely CREB, is developed to meet the requirements of COTS-software. A software intensive system acquisition of a military organization is used to validate the method.

Abstract - Mobile devices in the near future will need to collaborate to fulfill their function. Collaboration will be done by communication. We use a real world example of robotic soccer to come up with the necessary structures required for robotic communication. A review of related work is done and it is found no examples come close to providing a RANET. The robotic ad hoc network (RANET) we suggest uses existing structures pulled from the areas of wireless networks, peer to peer and software life-cycle management. Gaps are found in the existing structures so we describe how to extend some structures to satisfy the design. The RANET design supports robot cooperation by exchanging messages, discovering needed skills that other robots on the network may possess and the transfer of these skills. The network is built on top of a Bluetooth wireless network and uses JXTA to communicate and transfer skills. OSGi bundles form the skills that can be transferred. To test the nal design a reference implementation is done. Deficiencies in some third party software is found, specifically JXTA and JamVM and GNU Classpath. Lastly we look at how to fix the deciencies by porting the JXTA C implementation to the target robotic platform and potentially eliminating the TCP/IP layer, using UDP instead of TCP or using an adaptive TCP/IP stack. We also propose a future areas of investigation; how to seed the configuration for the Personal area network (PAN) Bluetooth protocol extension so a Bluetooth TCP/IP link is more quickly formed and using the STP to allow multi-hop messaging and transfer of skills.

El proceso de construir software a partir del ensamblaje e integración de soluciones de software pre-fabricadas, conocidas como componentes COTS (Comercial-Off-The-Shelf) se ha convertido en una necesidad estratégica en una amplia variedad de áreas de aplicación. En general, los componentes COTS son componentes de software que proveen una funcionalidad específica, que están disponibles en el mercado para ser adquiridos e integrados dentro de otros sistemas de software. Los beneficios potenciales de esta tecnología son principalmente la reducción de costes y el acortamiento del tiempo de desarrollo, a la vez que fomenta la calidad. Sin embargo, numerosos retos que van desde problemas técnicos y legales deben ser afrontados para adaptar las actividades tradicionales de ingeniería de software para explotar los beneficios del uso de COTS para el desarrollo de sistemas.Actualmente, existe un incrementalmente enorme mercado de componentes COTS; así, una de las actividades más críticas en el desarrollo de sistemas basados en COTS es la selección de componentes que deben ser integrados en el sistema a desarrollar. La selección está básicamente compuesta de dos procesos principales: La búsqueda de componentes candidatos en el mercado y su posterior evaluación con respecto a los requisitos del sistema. Desafortunadamente, la mayoría de los métodos existentes para seleccionar COTS, se enfocan en el proceso de evaluación, dejando de lado el problema de buscar los componentes en el mercado. La búsqueda de componentes en el mercado no es una tarea trivial, teniendo que afrontar varias características del mercado de COTS, tales como su naturaleza dispersa y siempre creciente, cambio y evolución constante; en este contexto, la obtención de información de calidad acerca de los componentes no es una tarea fácil. Como consecuencia, el proceso de selección de COTS se ve seriamente dañado. Además, las alternativas tradicionales de reuso también carecen de soluciones apropiadas para reusar componentes COTS y el conocimiento adquirido en cada proceso de selección. Esta carencia de propuestas es un problema muy serio que incrementa los riesgos de los proyectos de selección de COTS, además de hacerlos ineficientes y altamente costosos. Esta disertación presenta el método GOThIC (Goal- Oriented Taxonomy and reuse Infrastructure Construction) enfocado a la construcción de infraestructuras de reuso para facilitar la búsqueda y reuso de componentes COTS. El método está basado en el uso de objetivos para construir taxonomías abstractas, bien fundamentadas y estables para lidiar con las características del mercado de COTS. Los nodos de las taxonomías son caracterizados por objetivos, sus relaciones son declaradas como dependencias y varios artefactos son construidos y gestionados para promover la reusabilidad y lidiar con la evolución constante.El método GOThIC ha sido elaborado a través de un proceso iterativo de investigación-acción para identificar los retos reales relacionados con el proceso de búsqueda de COTS. Posteriormente, las soluciones posibles fueron evaluadas e implementadas en varios casos de estudio en el ámbito industrial y académico en diversos dominios. Los resultados más relevantes fueron registrados y articulados en el método GOThIC. La evaluación industrial preliminar del método se ha llevado a cabo en algunas compañías en Noruega.<br>The process of building software systems by assembling and integrating pre-packaged solutions in the form of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software components has become a strategic need in a wide variety of application areas. In general, COTS components are software components that provide a specific functionality, available in the market to be purchased, interfaced and integrated into other software systems. The potential benefits of this technology are mainly its reduced costs and shorter development time, while maintaining the quality. Nevertheless, many challenges ranging form technical to legal issues must be faced for adapting the traditional software engineering activities in order to exploit these benefits.Nowadays there is an increasingly huge marketplace of COTS components; therefore, one of the most critical activities in COTS-based development is the selection of the components to be integrated into the system under development. Selection is basically composed of two main processes, namely: searching of candidates from the marketplace and their evaluation with respect to the system requirements. Unfortunately, most of the different existing methods for COTS selection focus their efforts on evaluation, letting aside the problem of searching components in the marketplace. Searching candidate COTS is not an easy task, having to cope with some challenging marketplace characteristics related to its widespread, evolvable and growing nature; and the lack of available and well-suited information to obtain a quality-assured search. Indeed, traditional reuse approaches also lack of appropriate solutions to reuse COTS components and the knowledge gained in each selection process. This lack of proposals is a serious drawback that makes the whole selection process highly risky, and often expensive and inefficient. This dissertation introduces the GOThIC (Goal- Oriented Taxonomy and reuse Infrastructure Construction) method aimed at building a domain reuse infrastructure for facilitating COTS components searching and reuse. It is based on goal-oriented approaches for building abstract, well-founded and stable taxonomies capable of dealing with the COTS marketplace characteristics. Thus, the nodes of these taxonomies are characterized by means of goals, their relationships declared as dependencies among them and several artifacts are constructed and managed for reusability and evolution purposes. The GOThIC method has been elaborated following an iterative process based on action research premises to identify the actual challenges related to COTS components searching. Then, possible solutions were envisaged and implemented by several industrial and academic case studies in different domains. Successful results were recorded to articulate the synergic GOThIC method solution, followed by its preliminary industrial evaluation in some Norwegian companies.

El proceso de construir software a partir del ensamblaje e integración de soluciones de software pre-fabricadas, conocidas como componentes COTS (Comercial-Off-The-Shelf) se ha convertido en una necesidad estratégica en una amplia variedad de áreas de aplicación. En general, los componentes COTS son componentes de software que proveen una funcionalidad específica, que están disponibles en el mercado para ser adquiridos e integrados dentro de otros sistemas de software. Los beneficios potenciales de esta tecnología son principalmente la reducción de costes y el acortamiento del tiempo de desarrollo, a la vez que fomenta la calidad. Sin embargo, numerosos retos que van desde problemas técnicos y legales deben ser afrontados para adaptar las actividades tradicionales de ingeniería de software para explotar los beneficios del uso de COTS para el desarrollo de sistemas.<br/>Actualmente, existe un incrementalmente enorme mercado de componentes COTS; así, una de las actividades más críticas en el desarrollo de sistemas basados en COTS es la selección de componentes que deben ser integrados en el sistema a desarrollar. La selección está básicamente compuesta de dos procesos principales: La búsqueda de componentes candidatos en el mercado y su posterior evaluación con respecto a los requisitos del sistema. Desafortunadamente, la mayoría de los métodos existentes para seleccionar COTS, se enfocan en el proceso de evaluación, dejando de lado el problema de buscar los componentes en el mercado. La búsqueda de componentes en el mercado no es una tarea trivial, teniendo que afrontar varias características del mercado de COTS, tales como su naturaleza dispersa y siempre creciente, cambio y evolución constante; en este contexto, la obtención de información de calidad acerca de los componentes no es una tarea fácil. Como consecuencia, el proceso de selección de COTS se ve seriamente dañado. Además, las alternativas tradicionales de reuso también carecen de soluciones apropiadas para reusar componentes COTS y el conocimiento adquirido en cada proceso de selección. Esta carencia de propuestas es un problema muy serio que incrementa los riesgos de los proyectos de selección de COTS, además de hacerlos ineficientes y altamente costosos. <br/>Esta disertación presenta el método GOThIC (Goal- Oriented Taxonomy and reuse Infrastructure Construction) enfocado a la construcción de infraestructuras de reuso para facilitar la búsqueda y reuso de componentes COTS. El método está basado en el uso de objetivos para construir taxonomías abstractas, bien fundamentadas y estables para lidiar con las características del mercado de COTS. Los nodos de las taxonomías son caracterizados por objetivos, sus relaciones son declaradas como dependencias y varios artefactos son construidos y gestionados para promover la reusabilidad y lidiar con la evolución constante.<br/>El método GOThIC ha sido elaborado a través de un proceso iterativo de investigación-acción para identificar los retos reales relacionados con el proceso de búsqueda de COTS. Posteriormente, las soluciones posibles fueron evaluadas e implementadas en varios casos de estudio en el ámbito industrial y académico en diversos dominios. Los resultados más relevantes fueron registrados y articulados en el método GOThIC. La evaluación industrial preliminar del método se ha llevado a cabo en algunas compañías en Noruega.<br>The process of building software systems by assembling and integrating pre-packaged solutions in the form of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software components has become a strategic need in a wide variety of application areas. In general, COTS components are software components that provide a specific functionality, available in the market to be purchased, interfaced and integrated into other software systems. The potential benefits of this technology are mainly its reduced costs and shorter development time, while maintaining the quality. Nevertheless, many challenges ranging form technical to legal issues must be faced for adapting the traditional software engineering activities in order to exploit these benefits.<br/>Nowadays there is an increasingly huge marketplace of COTS components; therefore, one of the most critical activities in COTS-based development is the selection of the components to be integrated into the system under development. Selection is basically composed of two main processes, namely: searching of candidates from the marketplace and their evaluation with respect to the system requirements. Unfortunately, most of the different existing methods for COTS selection focus their efforts on evaluation, letting aside the problem of searching components in the marketplace. Searching candidate COTS is not an easy task, having to cope with some challenging marketplace characteristics related to its widespread, evolvable and growing nature; and the lack of available and well-suited information to obtain a quality-assured search. Indeed, traditional reuse approaches also lack of appropriate solutions to reuse COTS components and the knowledge gained in each selection process. This lack of proposals is a serious drawback that makes the whole selection process highly risky, and often expensive and inefficient. <br/>This dissertation introduces the GOThIC (Goal- Oriented Taxonomy and reuse Infrastructure Construction) method aimed at building a domain reuse infrastructure for facilitating COTS components searching and reuse. It is based on goal-oriented approaches for building abstract, well-founded and stable taxonomies capable of dealing with the COTS marketplace characteristics. Thus, the nodes of these taxonomies are characterized by means of goals, their relationships declared as dependencies among them and several artifacts are constructed and managed for reusability and evolution purposes. The GOThIC method has been elaborated following an iterative process based on action research premises to identify the actual challenges related to COTS components searching. Then, possible solutions were envisaged and implemented by several industrial and academic case studies in different domains. Successful results were recorded to articulate the synergic GOThIC method solution, followed by its preliminary industrial evaluation in some Norwegian companies.

Thesis (M.S. in Information Systems and Operations)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2004.<br>Thesis advisor(s): Russell Gottfried, Monique P. Fargues. Includes bibliographical references (p. 43-45). Also available online.

A selecção de produtos de software Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) tem vindo a adquirir uma importância crescente na engenharia de software. No processo de desenvolvimento de sistemas baseados em COTS é essencial seleccionar os produtos COTS mais adequados, pois uma boa selecção é crucial para o sucesso do sistema final. Existem muitas propostas para modelar o processo de selecção de COTS, no entanto, ainda há espaço para a optimização de processos e de soluções. A principal contribuição desta dissertação é uma abordagem genérica de selecção de COTS e um Sistema de Apoio à Decisão (SAD) para suportá-la, denominado COTS-3S (COTS Selection Support System). Esta abordagem distingue-se das restantes pela sua capacidade de agilizar e simplificar o processo de selecção, sobretudo através da sua utilização em conjunto com o COTS-3S, ajudando a seleccionar produtos COTS com base na sua adequabilidade. A abordagem proposta integra vários conceitos e técnicas, incluindo o suporte à decisão no âmbito da engenharia de software, a tomada de decisão multicritério e a optimização de resolução de problemas. Para validar a aplicabilidade da abordagem proposta em conjunto com o COTS-3S, é apresentado um caso prático no domínio dos sistemas Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Os seus resultados são utilizados para demonstrar as potenciais vantagens, desvantagens, benefícios e limitações da utilização da abordagem proposta com o COTS-3S. Para finalizar, são apresentados os objectivos concretizados, realizada uma comparação entre a abordagem proposta e as restantes, descritas as limitações encontradas durante a realização deste trabalho e propostos possíveis trabalhos futuros.<br>Selection of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software products has a growing importance in software engineering. In the process of developing COTS-based systems it is essential to select the most suitable COTS products, as a good selection is crucial for the final system’s success. Many proposals are made to model the COTS selection process, however it is still possible to optimize processes and solutions. The main contribution of this dissertation is a generic COTS selection approach and a Decision Support System (DSS) to support it, called COTS-3S (COTS Selection Support System). This approach is distinguished from others by its capability to streamline and simplify the selection process through its use with COTS-3S, helping to select COTS products based on their fitness. The proposed approach integrates several concepts and techniques, including software engineering decision support, multi-criteria decision making, and optimization problem solving. In order to validate the applicability of the proposed approach along with COTS-3S, a practical case in the domain of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems is presented. Thus, its results are used to show the potential advantages, disadvantages, benefits and limitations of using the proposed approach with COTS-3S. Finally, the pursued objectives are presented, a comparison between the proposed approach and the others is made, the constraints found during the elaboration of this work are described and possible future work is proposed.

Component based software engineering has been perceived to have immense reuse potential. This area has evoked wide interest and has led to considerable investment in research and development efforts. Most of these investigations have explored internal characteristics of software components such as correctness, reliability, modularity, interoperability, understandability, maintainability, readability, portability and generality for promoting reuse. But experience over the past decade and a half has demonstrated that the usefulness of a component depends as much on the context into which it fits as it does on the internal characteristics of the component. Software architecture descriptions that take into account the requirements of the domain can be used to serve as this context. While the Perry, Wolf definition of software architecture has been widely acknowledged, a number of architectural description languages (ADL) have emerged that aim to capture various facets of a software, using varying degrees of formalism. There is currently no agreement towards a standard approach for documenting software architectures which would help define the vocabulary for architectural semantics. In spite of lack of any specification standards for components, Software Product Lines (SPL) and Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) components do provide a rich supporting base for creating software architectures and promise significant improvements in the quality of software configurations that can be composed from pre-built components. However, further research is needed for evaluation of architectural merits of such component based configurations. In this research, we identify the key aspects of software that need to be specified to enable useful analysis at an architectural level. We also propose a set of metrics that enable objective evaluation of reusability potential. Architectural research has established that software architectural styles provide a way for achieving a desired coherence for component-based architectures. Different architectural styles enforce different quality attributes for a system. Thus, if the architectural style of an emergent system could be predicted, a person playing the role of a system integrator could make necessary changes to ensure that the quality attributes dictated by the system requirements were satisfied before the actual system is built and deployed, thus somewhat mitigating project risks. As part of this research, we propose a model for predicting architectural styles based on use cases that need to be satisfied by a system configuration and demonstrate how our approach can be used to determine stylistic conformance. We also propose objective methods for assessing architectural divergence, erosion and drift during system evolution and maintenance.<br>text