Tag: Publication

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Continuous Integration in Open Source Software Development [OSS 2008]

Authors: Amit Deshpande, Dirk Riehle

Abstract: Commercial software firms are increasingly using and contributing to open source software. Thus, they need to understand and work with open source software development processes. This paper investigates whether the practice of continuous integration of agile software development methods has had an impact on open source software projects. Using fine-granular data from more than 5000 active open source software projects we analyze the size of code contributions over a project’s life-span. Code contribution size has stayed flat. We interpret this to mean that open source software development has not changed its code integration practices. In particular, within the limits of this study, we claim that the practice of continuous integration has not yet significantly influenced the behavior of open source software developers.

Reference: In Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Open Source Systems (OSS 2008). Springer Verlag, 2008. Page 273-280.

Available as a PDF file.

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Towards End-User Programming With Wikis [WEUSE 2008]

Abstract: When business software fails to provide the desired functionality, users typically turn to spreadsheets to perform simple but general computational tasks. However, spreadsheets enforce a view of the world that consists mostly of tables and numbers rather than the domain concepts users have in mind. We are using wikis as a platform for empowering end-users to perform computational tasks of their choice. This paper discusses how core properties of wikis can support end-user programming. We illustrate our approach using wiki prototype software for working with business objects as made available by SAP’s business application suite.

Reference: Craig Anslow, Dirk Riehle. In Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop in End-User Software Engineering (WEUSE IV). IEEE Press, 2008. Page 61-65.

Available as a PDF file.

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An XML Interchange Format for Wiki Creole 1.0 [Technical Report]

Abstract: Wikis have become an important application on the web and in the enterprise, yet there are no interoperability standards between different wiki engines. We present the first complete XML representation format of Wiki Creole 1.0. Wiki Creole is a community standard for wiki markup, the language used to write wiki pages. This report presents the complete XML representation format using a validating XML schema. In addition we present XSLT definitions for transforming the XML representations to XHTML on the one hand and for transforming the XML representations to Wiki Creole markup on the other hand. Our work shows how using XML technologies we can make wiki interchange, wiki upgrading, and wiki conversion independent from a specific wiki engine implementation.

Reference: Martin Junghans, Dirk Riehle, Umit Yalcinalp. In ACM SIGWEB Newsletter, Volume 2007, Issue Winter (Winter 2007), Article No. 5. ACM Press, 2007.

Available as a PDF file.

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An EBNF Grammar for Wiki Creole 1.0 [Technical Report]

Abstract: Today’s wiki engines are not interoperable. This is an unfortunate consequence of the lack of rigorously specified standards. This technical report presents a complete and validated EBNF-based grammar for Wiki Creole, a community standard for wiki markup. Wiki Creole is also the only standard currently available. Wiki Creole is being specified using prose, leading to inconsistencies and ambiguities. Our grammar uncovered those ambiguities which we fed back into the specification process. The Wiki Creole grammar presented in this report makes the creation of Wiki Creole parsers simple using parser generators, ANTLR in our case. Using a precise specification of wiki markup lets us decouple wiki editors from wiki storage from further wiki processing tools. Based on this decoupling layer we expect innovation on these different parts to proceed independently and at a faster pace than before.

Reference: Martin Junghans, Dirk Riehle, Rama Gurram, Matthias Kaiser, Mario Lopes, Umit Yalcinalp. In ACM SIGWEB Newsletter, Volume 2007, Issue Winter (Winter 2007), Article No. 4. ACM Press, 2007.

Available as a PDF file.