End-User Software Engineering

End-user computing enables non-developers to handle data and applications, boosting collaboration and productivity. Spreadsheets are a key example of end-user programming environments that are extensively utilized in business for data analysis. However, the functionalities of Excel have limitations compared to specialized programming languages. This study aims to address this shortcoming by proposing a prototype that integrates Python's features into Excel via standalone desktop Python-based user-defined functions (UDFs). This method mitigates potential latency concerns linked to cloudbased solutions. This study employs Excel-DNA (dynamic network access) and IronPython; Excel-DNA facilitates the creation of custom Python functions that integrate smoothly with Excel's calculation engine, while IronPython allows these Python UDFs to run directly within Excel. Core components include C# and visual studio tools office (VSTO) add-ins, which enable communication between Python and Excel. This approach grants users the chance to execute Python UDFs for various tasks such as mathematical computations and predictionsall within the familiar Excel environment. The prototype showcases seamless integration, enabling users to invoke Python-based UDFs just like built in Excel functions. This study enhances the capabilities of spreadsheets by harnessing Python's strengths within Excel. Future work may focus on expanding the Python UDF library and examining user experiences with this innovative approach to data analysis.

In this work we present an approach for creating Personal Web applications by reusing existing content that can be extracted even from third-party Web sites. Our approach starts with the harvesting of content from diverse Web sites, by DOM manipulation. Users without programming skills are empowered with tools for transforming DOM elements into meaningful classes of objects that can be reused to build other domain-specific applications, such as mashups, Web augmentations, PIM systems, etc.

Learning tasks from simulated data using reinforcement learning has been proven effective. A major advantage of using simulation data for training is that it reduces the burden of acquiring real data. Specifically when robots are involved, it is important to limit the amount of time a robot is occupied with learning, and can instead be used for its intended (manufacturing) task. A policy learned on simulation data can be transferred and refined for real data. In this paper we propose to learn a robustified policy during reinforcement learning using simulation data. A robustified policy is learned by exploiting the ability to change the simulation parameters (appearance and dynamics) for successive training episodes. We demonstrate that the amount of transfer learning for a robustified policy is reduced for transfer from a simulated to real task. We focus on tasks which involve reasl-time non-linear dynamics, since non-linear dynamics can only be approximately modeled in physics engi...

Sensemaking is simple-it's the way people go about their process of collecting, organizing and creating representations of complex information sets, all centered around some problem they need to understand. While there are a number of tools and systems to support sensemakers, the largest group of users-people who are not highly technical-might be left out of the sensemaking tool space by our field's focus on extremely high-end visualizations and tools. In a series of studies we looked at the effect of tools on different sensemaking processes, finding that for many sensemaking jobs, complex tools and advanced representational constructs don't actually seem to help, but can hinder the process of sensemaking.

This paper defines and evaluates a method that some practitioners are using but has not been formally discussed or defined. The method leads to a high ratio of problems found to fixes made and then empirically verifies the efficacy of the fixes. We call it the Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation method-or RITE method. Application to the tutorial of a popular game, Age of Empires II, shows this method to be highly effective in terms of finding and fixing problems and generating positive industry reviews for the tutorial.

I gained an insight into Prigogine's thought by reading the scientific section of the Zuricher Zeitung, in which I found some very inter-esting articles about Prigogine, written by the cosmologist Eric Iantsch. When I read those articles, I called Prigogine, who was in Brussels at that ...

End-user computing empowers non-developers to manage data and applications, enhancing collaboration and efficiency. Spreadsheets, a prime example of end-user programming environments widely used in business for data analysis. However, Excel functionalities have limits compared to dedicated programming languages. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a prototype for integrating Python's capabilities into Excel through on-premises desktop to build custom spreadsheet functions with Python. This approach overcomes potential latency issues associated with cloud-based solutions. This prototype utilizes Excel-DNA and IronPython. Excel-DNA allows creating custom Python functions that seamlessly integrate with Excel's calculation engine. IronPython enables the execution of these Python (CSFs) directly within Excel. C# and VSTO add-ins form the core components, facilitating communication between Python and Excel. This approach empowers users with a potentially open-ended set of Python (CSFs) for tasks like mathematical calculations, statistical analysis, and even predictive modeling, all within the familiar Excel interface. This prototype demonstrates smooth integration, allowing users to call Python (CSFs) just like standard Excel functions. This research contributes to enhancing spreadsheet capabilities for end-user programmers by leveraging Python's power within Excel. Future research could explore expanding data analysis capabilities by expanding the (CSFs) functions for complex calculations, statistical analysis, data manipulation, and even external library integration. The possibility of integrating machine learning models through the (CSFs) functions within the familiar Excel environment.

End-user computing empowers non-developers to manage data and applications, enhancing collaboration and efficiency. Spreadsheets, a prime example of end-user programming environments widely used in business for data analysis. However, Excel functionalities have limits compared to dedicated programming languages. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a prototype for integrating Python's capabilities into Excel through on-premises desktop to build custom spreadsheet functions with Python. This approach overcomes potential latency issues associated with cloud-based solutions. This prototype utilizes Excel-DNA and IronPython. Excel-DNA allows creating custom Python functions that seamlessly integrate with Excel's calculation engine. IronPython enables the execution of these Python (CSFs) directly within Excel. C# and VSTO add-ins form the core components, facilitating communication between Python and Excel. This approach empowers users with a potentially open-ended set of Python (CSFs) for tasks like mathematical calculations, statistical analysis, and even predictive modeling, all within the familiar Excel interface. This prototype demonstrates smooth integration, allowing users to call Python (CSFs) just like standard Excel functions. This research contributes to enhancing spreadsheet capabilities for end-user programmers by leveraging Python's power within Excel. Future research could explore expanding data analysis capabilities by expanding the (CSFs) functions for complex calculations, statistical analysis, data manipulation, and even external library integration. The possibility of integrating machine learning models through the (CSFs) functions within the familiar Excel environment.

In this paper we outline the issues surrounding live coding which is projected for an audience, and in this context, approaches to code visualisation. This includes natural language parsing techniques, using geometrical properties of space in language semantics, representation of execution flow in live coding environments, code as visual data and computer games as live coding environments. We will also touch on the unifying perceptual basis behind symbols, graphics, movement and sound.

Abstract. Reliability has become a major concern for software-intensive systems. This paper proposes a novel ontology-based method for software reliability modelling, including a software reliability ontology and an ontologybased software reliability modelling system. The software reliability ontology is analysed and developed for software reliability engineering with respect to domains of reliability measurement processes, methods, models, organization, and tools. The ontology-based software reliability modelling system ...

Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author's name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pagination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award.

When attempting to determine how to respond optimally to a large-scale emergency, the ability to predict the consequences of certain courses of actionin silicois of great utility. Agent-based simulations (ABSs) have become the de facto tool for this purpose; however, they may be used and implemented in a variety of ways. This article reviews existing implementations of ABSs for large-scale emergency response, and presents a taxonomy classifying them by usage. Opportunities for improving ABS for large-scale emergency response are identified.

Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author's name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pagination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award.

This study developed and tested a model that posited employability and job performance as intervening variables in the relationship between receipt of mentoring and career success. Participants were 207 Information Technology (IT) professionals employed in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in three European countries. Mentoring receipt was related to both employability and job performance. Employability mediated the relationship of mentoring receipt with objective and subjective career success, as well as its relationship with job performance. The findings indicate that receipt of mentoring is connected to job performance, a link that has hitherto lacked empirical evidence. In addition, they suggest a pivotal role for employability in the relationship of mentoring receipt with job performance and career success. Overall, this study helps unveil the mechanism through which mentoring affects career outcomes. Moreover, it shows that the benefits of mentoring hold outside the context of large corporations.

Prior to end-user computing, information systems professionals used to assume full responsibility for system development. Today advanced end-users contribute to system development and reduce the infamous backlogs; some develop small applications, while others prototype interface requirements for larger systems. As opposed to professional analysts and designers, advanced end-users are usually untrained in data processing techniques and methods. Thus, applications developed by them are commonly deficient in terms of structure and documentation and their potential impact on system development is not fully realized. We propose to enhance the contribution of advanced endusers to system development by training them to employ a structured support framework. Within this framework, advanced end-users conduct functional analysis, design the user interface-including the inputs and the outputs-and produce the interface prototype. Depending on system size and complexity, these user contributions may either lead to a fully structured user-developed application, or be incorporated in structured system development by data processing professionals. The benefits-better systems and a more productive human resource management-are expected to exceed the extra costs of user training and their time expenditures.

Spreadsheets are one of the most commonly used types of programs in the world, and it is important that they be sufficiently dependable. To help end users who create spreadsheets do so more reliably, we have created a testing and debugging methodology and environment for use in spreadsheets, known as the WYSIWYT methodology. Our prior experiments with WYSIWYT show that users can utilize it to ensure that their spreadsheets are more dependable, but these experiments to date have considered only an unfamiliar prototype spreadsheet environment, and have not involved spreadsheet creation tasks. In this work we conducted a controlled experiment that addresses these limitations. The results of this study indicate that the use of WYSIWYT did not affect the correctness of spreadsheets created by users, but it did significantly reduce the amount of effort required to create them. Further, the subjects' evaluation of the help provided by WYSIWYT was very positive. Our results provide several insights into the use of the WYSIWYT methodology by end users.

End-user programming has become the most common form of programming today. However, despite this growth, there has been little investigation into bringing the benefits of software visualization to end-user programmers. Evidence from the spreadsheet paradigm, probably the most widely used end-user environment, reveals that end users' programs often contain faults. We would like to integrate software visualization into these end-user environments to help end users deal with the reliability issues in their programs. Towards this end, we have devised several fault localization visualization techniques for spreadsheets. This paper describes these techniques and reports the results of a formative study-using tests created by end users-to investigate how these fault localization techniques compare. Our results reveal some strengths and weaknesses of each technique, and provide insights into the cost-effectiveness of each technique for the interactive world of end-user spreadsheet development.

Spreadsheet languages are widely used by a variety of end users to perform many important tasks. Despite their perceived simplicity, spreadsheets often contain faults. Fur- thermore, users modify their spreadsheets frequently, which can render previously correct spreadsheets faulty. To ad- dress this problem, we previously introduced a visual ap- proach by which users can systematically test their spread- sheets, see

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder do not just 'grow out of' their early difficulties in understanding the social world. Even for those who are cognitively able, autism-related difficulties continue into adulthood. Atypicalities attending to and interpreting communicative signals from others can provide barriers to success in education, employment and relationships. In the current study, we use eye-tracking during real social interaction to explore attention to social cues (e.g. face, eyes, mouth) and links to social awareness in a group of cognitively able University students with autism spectrum disorder and typically developing students from the same University. During the interaction, students with autism spectrum disorder showed less eye fixation and more mouth fixation than typically developing students. Importantly, while 63% of typically developing participants reported thinking they were deceived about the true nature of the interaction, only 9% of autism spe...

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This article will discriminate between kinds of robot, point to its burgeoning development and application in the home and workplace, and describe its growing use in the classroom as a teacher. It will describe its potential to support, for instance, language development, social, and emotional training [e.g., for children with an autistic spectrum disorder (ASD)], and teaching and assessment, and will review researchers', teachers', students', and parents' responses to this use. Some of these responses recognize the potential usefulness of humanoid robots, but also show an awareness that digital "thought" (AI) is not the same as human thought (HI), and show some caution about using robots as teachers. This disparity generates problems and dilemmas. These stem from, for example, a lack of discretion in decision-making, a lack of emotion (other than by simulation), a limited creative ability (in the foreseeable future), the nature of AI/HI relationships, ethical/legal matters, and culturally unsuitable programming. These matters point to the need for forethought about robot roles and for a code of practice for teachers who work with them. Derived from the discussion, such a code is proposed. The introduction of robot teachers will have significant implications for teachers' roles and their professional identity as human teachers move from being often solitary sources of learning to becoming teaching and learning managers who need to provide learning opportunities creatively. The change in teacher identity and the teacher's roles is described.

Current ecodesign theory supports the belief that industrial designers have a valuable role to play in ecodesign because of their position at the early stages of the product development process 1. Despite this, current literature provides little evidence as to what this role should entail and whether this role is limited to industrial designers working at the strategic end of ecodesign. This paper provides empirical evidence to support the theory that there is a specific and valuable role for core industrial designers working at the operational end of ecodesign and presents the first detailed understanding of what this role involves.

The European directive for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive (WEEE) is currently expected to be translated in to UK law in early 2006. A key aim of this legislation is to reduce the amount of e-waste going to landfill, by requiring companies who manufacture or import electrical and electronic equipment to take responsibility for it at the end of its life. Despite this approaching deadline, research indicates that many companies are still unclear about the implications this legislation will have on the design of their products. Although the Department of Trade and Industry are working at raising general awareness there are currently few practical tools to guide product design decisions so that the financial implications of the legislation are minimised. This paper introduces an ongoing project which aims to create a strategic web based tool to help design teams meet the requirements of the WEEE directive. SortED, which is being developed with input from a wide range of stakeholders throughout the supply chain, is being designed to help companies quickly identify the implications of the new legislation on their products and explore the options available to them. Created to be 'designer friendly', the tool guides the development team through the types of questions that they should be asking to ensure that they meet the requirements of the WEEE directive, whilst minimising costs and maximising any potential revenue.

This paper states the findings and highlights the questions which have arisen from the initial stages of a collaborative research project in ecodesign, between Cranfield University and Electrolux UK. It discusses the initial findings arising from combining a critical analysis of the literature in this area with observations of industrial practice at Electrolux UK. It concludes that ecodesign at industrial design stages has under-utilised business potential. Future research should attempt to determine how ecodesign can be incorporated into industrial ...

The capability to analyze structures under static and dynamic loads is an essential skill for structural engineers. Structural analysis therefore is a key component in civil and architectural engineering education, where analytical methods are traditionally complemented by the use of (commercial) software packages. The latter are often closed source, which may obscure the links to the underlying matrix structural analysis or finite element formulation. To stimulate active, cooperative, and solution‐oriented learning, we developed Stabil, an electronic learning environment implemented as a Matlab toolbox. Stabil has an open structure to elucidate the links between theory and implementation and is presently used throughout the curricula of Civil and Architectural Engineering at KU Leuven. This paper explains the main principles of Stabil and discusses teaching experiences over the past 15 years. Stabil can be downloaded from http://bwk.kuleuven.be/bwm/stabil.

In industrial practice the clone-and-own strategy is often applied when in the pressure of high demand of customized features. The adoption of software product line (SPL) architecture is a large one time investment that aects both technical and organizational issues. The analysis of the feature structure is a crucial point in the SPL adoption process involving domain experts working at a higher level of abstraction and developers working directly on the program code. We propose automatic methods to extract feature-to-program links starting from very high level set of features provided by domain experts. For this purpose we combine call graph information with textual similarity between code and high level features. In addition, in depth understanding of the feature structure is supported by nding communities between programs and relating them to features. As features are originated from domain experts, community analysis reveals discrepancies between expert view and internal code structure. We found that communities correspond well to the high level features, with usually more than half of feature code located in specialized communities. We report experiments at two levels of features and more than 2000 Magic 4GL programs in an industrial SPL adoption project.

There is a disproportionate number of complaints about social workers in England to the Health and Care Professionals Council (HCPC) as compared with the other health care professionals regulated by HCPC. This paper discusses findings from interviews and focus groups that formed part of a mixed methods study that aimed to find out the reasons for complaints and the strategies that may reduce complaints. Four themes were identified: social work as an evolving profession; social work involves challenging practice; social work takes place in a pressurised environment; and public perceptions and expectations of social work are often negative and unrealistic. Findings highlight explanations that focus on organisational culture and public responses to social workers' control functions. We argue that, at a time of change for the profession, there is a need for public education regarding the role and function of social workers and for regulators to have more proactive engagement with registrants and employers.

We discuss an interactive tutorial engine implemented in TouchDevelop [2, 3], a browser-hosted touch-based development environment for creating mobile+cloud applications. The tutorials are written as programs with directions embedded in comments, á la literate programming, and then automatically turned into direct and adaptive guidance to the user. The engine was deployed during the Hour of Code [1] event in December 2013 and used by more than 250,000 people, completing over 3,000,000 steps.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between employee values and knowledge management (KM) in sport organizations. Design/methodology/approach Data (N = 234) were collected online through a structured questionnaire from employees of 33 sport organizations in Iran. To test the hypotheses, Pearson correlation test and a regression analysis was conducted. Findings The results from the study revealed that there were significant relationships between employee values and KM. Both instrumental and terminal values significantly influenced KM. Research limitations/implications One limitation of this study is related to the generalizability of the results. Therefore, the current study is required to be replicated with other sport organizations in various sectors (public or private) to improve external validity of the results. Practical implications Based on this study, employees of sport organizations in developing countries tend to store knowledge more than sh...

Situated at the intersection of markets and development, this commentary aims to promote a cross-fertilization of macromarketing and Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) that directs attention to the sociocultural context and situational embeddedness of consumer experience and well-being, while acknowledging complex, systemic interdependencies between markets, marketing, and society. Based on a critical review of the meaning of development and an interrogation of various developmental discourses, the authors develop a conceptual framework that brings together issues of development, well-being, and social inequalities. We suggest that these issues are better understood and addressed when examined via grounded investigations of the role of markets in shaping the management of resources, consumer agency, power inequalities and ethics. The use of markets as units of analysis may lead to further cross-fertilizations of TCR and macromarketing and to more comprehensive theorizing and tra...

tests of aftermarket nomadic devices in vehicles, early results This item was submitted to Loughborough University's Institutional Repository by the/an author. Citation: MONONEN, P.... et al., 2010. TeleFOT, field operational tests of aftermarket nomadic devices in vehicles, early results. 2010 BEXCO. Proceed-

Willingness to communicate (WTC) used to be studied as a relatively stable, trait-like predisposition; however, recently attention has shifted to the more dynamic, state-like components of WTC. This research investigates variability and stability in state WTC, particularly focusing on within-person variability, which may lead to stable between-person differences, and situational antecedents that can either promote or hinder state WTC in L2 classrooms. To investigate whether, how and why state WTC varies over time, this study used a high-density repeated measurement design and a group of Chinese university students to describe fluctuations in state WTC in English classrooms over one semester. Data related to state WTC and selected situational antecedents were collected through a self-report questionnaire and statistically analysed. It was found that state WTC varied systematically within the person across the semester, and this variability was systematically related to changes in the...

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Governments need to: recognise the critical role played by social workers in providing and supporting social and community-based care during a pandemic; acknowledge social workers as key workers; ensure provision of the necessary hygiene and protective resources; issue clear guidelines on how to maintain social work services during a pandemic, keeping services open while operating as effectively and safely as possible. the ethical dimensions of social workers' everyday practice. It sheds a spotlight on the often invisible labour undertaken by social workers to respect people's rights, weigh up risks, be fair and compassionate, and advocate for socially just change ('ethics work'). Methods An online survey form was used to ask two main questions (see Appendix 2 for more details):

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.

Exploring Design research and Design education that straddles developing and developed world contexts is the aim of this paper. It is a bold ambition to identify the key debates that inform these two significant aspects of Design-much too big to cover in the limited space here. Nevertheless we speculate on some of the issues that emerge from within Architecture, Urbanism, Philosophy, Sociology, Geography, Education and Design. We do this through the idea expressed by Lang that 'affiliation' is the need that links to all other human needs. We hypothesize that affiliation, and our need for belonging not only within our local communities, but also at a global scale, is a central concern that links research and education in developing and developed world contexts. Some design practitioners are shown to be tackling this problem, but too often these are single projects limited in scale. We maintain that these worthwhile and noble efforts must be scaled up to deal with problems of urban planning through first, second, third and fourth order design concerns, recognizing that whilst contemporary design is increasingly occupied with 'interaction' and 'environment', the established preoccupation with 'symbols' and 'things' remains out of reach for millions of urban poor. In fact, urban designers consider 'symbols of affiliation' as central to city dwelling. Design research and design education must therefore aspire to a material democracy that judges the appropriateness of each given situation on its merits, recognizing the need at times for basic material provision. Keywords affiliation; design education; social-actualisation; design for the dispossessed, urban design In his depiction of the kind of design problems tackled by professional designers, Victor Papanek (1984, p. 57) showed us that professional designers are concerned mainly with a very small share of 'real' problems. In the 1960s Papanek indicated that the professional designer's share is at the 'tip of the iceberg', sitting above a world of real problems. Since then, our understanding of design, and the work of professional designers, has moved on. But we might ask what has stopped designer from engaging with the real. The visual coincidence of Papanek's pyramid depiction matches the same diagrammatic representations often seen in Abraham Maslow's (1954 [1987]) ideas about self-actualization. We learn from this visual comparison that if, using Maslow's terminology (1954 [1987], pp. 57-59), 'motivation and personality' is too much predicated on 'one's own needs' and 'individualism' it is clear why so many 'real' problems remain unaddressed. Jon Lang (1994, p. 160) tells us that Maslow expressed dismay at interpretations of the desire to selfactualize, and a disregard for the needs of others. This demonstrates a tension between the self and the social, bringing into question the scale at which this takes place as representation and the notion of social-actualization. Space does not allow for a full critique of Maslow's work here, but apparently he believed that most people strive for esteem, but never self-actualize, and it has been argued that the full implications of this in terms of urban design are as yet unclear (Lang, 1994, p. 161). This paper therefore attempts to explore this by examining the step before esteem and self-actualization. Maslow called it belonging, but it is also named affiliation by Lang (pp. 158-160). Lang argues that affiliation needs are complex and interact with all other needs.

To address the problem of errors in spreadsheets, we have investigated spreadsheet authors' mental models in a hope of finding cognition-based principles for spreadsheet visualization and debugging tools. To this end, we have conducted three empirical studies. The first study explored the nature of mental models of spreadsheet authors during explaining and debugging tasks. It was found that several mental models about spreadsheets are activated in spreadsheet authors' minds. Particularly, when explaining a spreadsheet, the real-world and domain mental models are prominent, and the spreadsheet model is suppressed; however, when locating and fixing an error, one must constantly switch back and forth between the domain model and the spreadsheet model, which requires frequent use of the mapping between problem domain concepts and their spreadsheet model counterparts. The second study examined the effects of replacing traditional spreadsheet formulas with problem domain narratives in the context of a debugging task. Domain narratives were found to be easy to learn and they helped participants to locate more errors in spreadsheets. Furthermore, domain narratives also increased the use of the domain mental model and appeared to improve the mapping between the domain and spreadsheet models. The third study investigated the effects of allowing spreadsheet authors to fix errors by editing domain narratives, thus relieving them from the use of traditional low-level cell references. This scenario was found to promote spreadsheet authors using even more of their domain mental model in a manner that completely overshadowed the use of their spreadsheet mental model. Thus, from a mental model perspective, it is possible to devise a new spreadsheet paradigm that uses domain narratives in place of traditional spreadsheet formulas, thus automatically presenting spreadsheet content so that it prompts spreadsheet authors to think in a manner that closely corresponds to their mental models of the application domain.

In this thesis, we tackled the problem of errors in spreadsheets by studying spreadsheet authors' mental models. It is a common assertion that humans have mental models of the systems they interact with, and it is difficult to explain many aspects of human behaviour without resorting to a construct such as mental models. We therefore argue that it is important to first of all understand what types of mental models spreadsheet authors possess when they are doing different spreadsheet tasks in order to better understand why the spreadsheet process is so error-prone and to be able to devise new tools that better correspond to the way they think. I thank the Almighty God for the gift of life and for the grace to undertake this research work. My profound thanks should also go to Prof. Jorma Sajaniemi, my supervisor. I can not find words enough to express my appreciation for his wonderful supervisory skills. Indeed, I feel honoured to learn under his tutelage. The memories of the past four years, I shall always cherish. Dr. Marja Kuittinen should also receive my special vote of thanks for her help in some aspects of the studies in the course of this work, and particularly, for her help in the validation of the data coding method in the first empirical study conducted in this research work. I also sincerely thank the preliminary examiners of this dissertation, Prof.

Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author's name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pagination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award.

Abstract. The omnipresence of software graphs as useful intermediate representations means that the identification of near-match subgraphs (Error-Correcting Subgraph Isomorphism) has diverse and widespread applications in software engineering, such as querying, clone detection and model checking. Each software engineering subarea has developed specific tailored approaches to subgraph isomorphism, thereby reducing comparability and generality, and potentially yielding sub-optimal results. We introduce a ...

Computer packages are playing an increasingly dominant role in the life of most business organisations, which in turn is reflected in a greater role for packages in education. These packages both presuppose knowledge on the part of the user, and also "contain" knowledge of accounting as well as mathematical and other concepts. This paper suggests that packages function not just as information processing tools, but as "paradigms" which structure the approaches taken to cognitive tasks-although there may be an important distinction between expected and actual paradigms. The change to package-based paradigms represents a substantial shift in cognitive framework. The paper discusses the implications of this for package users and for the educational process. Three important themes are emphasised: first the importance of students learning about packages on a "meta" level rather than simply learning to use them; second the suggestion that treating packages as "black boxes" may sometimes be inevitable and desirable; and third the possibility that computer packages may, to some extent, serve as a substitute for education.