Posts Tagged ‘ software engineering project ’

Announcing Pomotux, a free Task Manager implementing the Pomodoro Technique

Pomotux is  a C++ activity manager for the Pomodoro Technique created by Francesco Cirillo, a member of the XPlabs crew. The program focuses on the basic features of the technique. It does not focus on advanced techniques, such as the prediction of the number of pomodoros needed for an activity.

Activity Inventory Sheet

Activity Inventory Sheet


About the Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method that can be used for any kind of task. For many people, time is an enemy. The anxiety triggered by “the ticking clock”, especially when a deadline is involved, leads to ineffective work and study habits which in turn lead to procrastination. The aim of the Pomodoro Technique is to use time as a valuable ally in accomplishing what we want to do in the way we want to do it, and to enable us to continually improve the way we work or study.

The Technique is heavily explained on a 60+ pages book published on the website. Please visit the official website for more explanations.

A running Pomodoro

A running Pomodoro

We implemented Pomotux for the Software Engineering Project course, and it currently works under Gnu/Linux. Project page is located here. We are looking for coders to port it under Mac Os X, *BSD and Windows!

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Pomotux

Summary

Pomotux is  a C++ activity manager for the Pomodoro Technique created by Francesco Cirillo, a member of the XPlabs crew. The program focuses on the basic features of the technique. It does not focus on advanced techniques, such as the prediction of the number of pomodoros needed for an activity.

About the Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method that can be used for any kind of task. For many people, time is an enemy. The anxiety triggered by “the ticking clock”, especially when a deadline is involved, leads to ineffective work and study habits which in turn lead to procrastination. The aim of the Pomodoro Technique is to use time as a valuable ally in accomplishing what we want to do in the way we want to do it, and to enable us to continually improve the way we work or study.

The Technique is heavily explained on a 60+ pages book published on the website. Please visit the official website for more explanations.

A running Pomodoro

A running Pomodoro

Get Pomotux

Pomotux has been developed for the Software Engineering Project course at the Free University Of Bolzano by Daniel Graziotin, Riccardo Buttarelli and Massimiliano Pergher. We decided to release it under the GPL 3 license and host the code on Google Code. Everybody is free to contribute and join the project.

Pomotux is hosted on: http://code.google.com/p/pomotux/

Source code is available on: http://code.google.com/p/pomotux/downloads/list

The wiki contains more information and installation instruction, and a better description of the of the system implementation and Software Engineering outcomes

Activity Inventory Sheet

Activity Inventory Sheet

Technology Overview
The System has been developed using

  • C++ programming language (coding standard)
  • QT framework (4.5)
  • SQLite Database library
  • LiteSQL Object Relational Mapper framework

Useful tools used during development:

  • CXXTEST Testing Framework
  • CPPCHECK code analyzer
  • Artistic Style code formatter

Project Status
The project succesfully passed the exam with a maximum degree. It has been developed under Gnu/Linux and has only been tested under Gnu/Linux (various distributions). It should be cross-platform. The only component that brakes cross-platform is LiteSQL, that should work on any *NIX system but not Windows. We are looking for testers and people to port it under Max Os X (and possibly) under Windows

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2009
09/28
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Introduction To Software Testing

Elements and Concepts – A brief overview

Download PDF version of the whole document. You can browse the article online but I encourage the download of the PDF since it is written with accuracy.

Introduction

This document contains some basic concepts and definitions about software testing. It has been written for studying a part of the Software Engineering Project course at my University. It is composed by a summary of the intersection of more than 10 different sources, all of which are cited. If you feel that some contents of this publication belong to your intellectual property and it is not cited, please contact the author who is willing to correct any mistake.

The first part of the paper focuses on the definition of the most important key aspects of software testing. Then some information about input partitioning are given. What follows is a research about code coverage and two useful and famous tools, Control-flow coverage and Data-flow analysis. A complete example on using those tools is then given. The second half of the document also contains the definition of the most important software testing practices.

The goal of this tiny document is to clarify key terms and therefore become a base start for the reader to go in deep with the interested topics. Another goal is to give a simple but clear example about data flow analysis, as I realized that not all the people understand the examples around the Net.

Software Testing

Software Testing is an empirical investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about the quality of the product or service under test, with respect to the context in which it is intended to operate. Software Testing also provides an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to appreciate and understand the risks at implementation of the software. Test techniques include, but are not limited to, the process of executing a program or application with the intent of finding software bugs. It can also be stated as the process of validating and verifying that a software program/application/product meets the business and technical requirements that guided its design and development, so that it works as expected and can be implemented with the same characteristics. 1

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2009
07/19
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What is taking me busy – Pomotux!

I’m currently pressed by my University life, that’s because I don’t post often.
There are 3 big projects for this semester: a C compiler, a dynamic website using Java Servlets and JSP and the most interesting one: a C++ program for Software Engineering Project course.
I’m working with other two collegues on a task manager for people using the Pomodoro Technique by Francesco Cirillo.
The project is called Pomotux and is under development following strong software engineering methodologies (Scrum@Xp). Pomotux is under construction since 2 months and uses technologies such as SQLite to store and play with tasks. The interesting fact regarding our data structure choice is that we are also using a framework for obtaining ORM, called LiteSQL.

LiteSQL is a C++ library that integrates C++ objects tightly to relational database and thus provides an object persistence layer

LiteSQL is still young and immature but powerful enough for our scope. We are also happy to provide feedback to their developers, that are ready to help us. They even wrote a patch for us!
Pomotux is reaching an unexpected stability. Unexpected because it is written by 3 young people that come from a light Java experience and saw C++ 3 months ago. It works under Linux and its graphical interface uses QT 4.5.0. It should work on any *NIX variant that meets dependencies, but also under Windows with some light modifications.
It will support just the basic features of the technique (unfortunately we don’t have the time to fully work on it) but it’s ready for expansions such as team support and statistics.
We will be happy to release the sources as soon as we finish the course, hoping that people will find it useful and that some serious programmers take it and make it the perfect tool for Pomodorians :) I will also contact the author of the Pomodoro Technique when we release it.

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2009
05/12
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Reference vs. Pointer

In Software Engineering Project course we need to learn some C++ to develop the project. A question that some programmers have when passing from Java to C++ (like me) is “Which are the differences between pointers and references?“. You can find a lot of answers around developers forum, but I summarized them in the following table. Glad if you found it useful!

Reference Pointer
is an object which IS AN ALIAS for another object is an object that CONTAINS THE ADRRESS IN MEMORY of another object
the preferred way of undirectly access objects you should use it just if you really need it, as it lets you to work in a lower level than a reference does
keeps your code clear the code is less clear but still understandable
it must be initialized when created you don’t have to initialize it when declared
it references to the one object and only that one, therefore you can not modify the address referenced because it contains an address, it can point to many different objects during lifetime. The address can be manipulated
when used, the address is dereferenced without using any particular operator the address must be dereferenced using the * operator

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2009
03/18
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Object Oriented Memory Management

Major Update on 10th April 2009, inclusion of C++ programming language!
Updated on 18th April 2008, a complete example on stack and heap
Updated on 15th April 2008, new contents and new layout!
Updated on 6th April 2008, new contents!

The paper you can download from here is about a model for memory management during the execution of programs written in Java and C++.

It started on March, 2008 as a summary of the lecture notes of both the “Programming Project” and
“Software Engineering Project” courses held by professors of the CASE (Center for Applied Software Engineering) of the Free University of Bolzano – Bozen.

The first versions of this publication were only about Java memory management.
Subsequent revisions added information found on other sources. Unfortunately, the author forgot to
reference the sources on the document.

On March, 2009 the author began to add the information about C++ programming language. More
information from other sources were added, including their attribution.

The biggest source of this document is still the set of presentations of CASE.
The code snippets and their corresponding stack/heap diagrams are copied in full from those of the
slides.

The next major revision will contain original images (not belonging to CASE slides), as well as other code
snippets that I could find more clear than those of CASE.

If you find that this document contains information taken from one of your publications, please
contact the author, that is willing to either delete them from this document or to add an attribution to
your work.

Download the PDF of the summary

Table of Contents:

  • The model
  • Code load and execution
  • Activation Record (AR)
  • Contents of the Activation Record
  • Abbreviations for
  • Declaration vs. Definition
  • The scope of a variable
  • Extent of a Variable
  • Blocks
  • Scope Activation Record (SAR)
  • Example on SAR
  • Role of SLs
  • Dynamic Memory Allocation And Handling
  • Dynamic Vs. Static memory allocation
  • Dynamic Memory Scope and Extent
  • Accessing dynamic memory
  • Classes
  • Objects
  • Object instantiation
  • Objects in Memory (Java)
  • Objects in Memory (C++)
  • Memory Management issues (Java)
  • Memory Management issues (C++)
  • Methods
  • Methods (Java)
  • Methods (C++)
  • Attributes
  • The null value (Java)
  • The NULL value (C++)
  • Parameter
  • Parameter Passing (Java)
  • Example of parameters passing (Java)
  • Example of parameters passing (Java), continued
  • Parameter Passing (C++)
  • Example of parameters passing by value (C++)
  • Example of parameters passing by reference (C++)
  • Pointers vs. Parameters (C++)
  • Previous example using pointers (C++)
  • Constructor
  • Inline initialization
  • A constructor’s call (Java)
  • Class attributes
  • Example of class attributes (Jav)
  • Example of class attributes (C++)
  • Class Method
  • Example of Stack/Heap Diagrams in Java
  • Code
  • Stack Diagram
  • Heap Diagram
  • Memory portions assigned to a program (code area, heap / dynamic memory area), execution stack
  • How code is loaded in Java
  • The Activation Record (AR) and function calls
  • Abbrevations (AR, RV, RA, SP, N/E, @, ??, arb)
  • Examples on method calls and activation records usage
  • Declaraion vs. Definition of a variable, the scope of a variable, blocks
  • Scope Activation Record (SAR), Static Link (SL), the role of SL
  • The extent/lifetime of a variable
  • Dynamic memory allocation and handling
  • Dynamic vs. Static memory allocation
  • Dynamic memory scope and extent
  • Accessing dynamic memory
  • Classes and Objects in detail, object instantiation
  • Memory Management issues
  • Objects vs. Variables (definitions)
  • Methods of Objects
  • Class Attributes
  • The null value
  • Parameters (formal, actual), parameters passing (by reference, by value)
  • Constructors and Inline Initialization
  • Constructor’s call
  • Class attributes (static variables)
  • Class methods (static methods)
  • Complete Example of Stack/Heap Diagrams

Everything is integrated with simple examples.

Download the PDF of the summary

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