The Risk of Generating Technical Debt Interest: A Case Study

Technical Debt (TD) interest refers to the extra maintenance costs incurred by the very existence of TD items in a system. The generation of TD interest can make or break a system: too little interest and the effect of TD is negligible; too much interest and the system becomes unsustainable. In this paper, we consider the generation of interest as a risk and present a metric to quantify this risk. Subsequently, we validate this metric in two ways. First, we explore whether the metric can be effectively used to prioritize TD remediation. Second, we investigate if adding new code reduces the risk of interest generation. The results of the study suggest that: (a) the proposed risk management metric is capable of efficiently prioritizing TD items; and (b) that the new code that is introduced in the system is usually less risky for producing interest, compared to legacy code.

Implementation of Newton’s Algorithm Using FORTRAN

A lot of software today dealing with various domains of engineering and life sciences have to deal with non-linear problems. In order to reduce the problem to a linear problem, a lot of state of the art solutions already exist. This work focus on the implementation of Newton’s Algorithm (also known as Newton’s method), to determine the roots of a given function within a specific user defined interval. The software for this implementation is FORTRAN. Even though FORTRAN is considered to be outdated, it still has a lot of application due to its long history and the existing legacy code. The code is written in such a manner that a user can provide a function and a specific interval and the code should in turn run iterations over the interval and should display all the possible roots within that interval. The results are compared at the end for their accuracy. The program is successful in finding out all the roots within an interval.

Challenges and opportunities in New Zealand seismic hazard and risk modeling using OpenQuake

The corrected 2010 New Zealand National Seismic Hazard Model has been adapted for use in the Global Earthquake Model’s OpenQuake engine through an extensive benchmarking exercise with GNS Science’s legacy Fortran code. Resolution of differences between the legacy code and OpenQuake result in hazard curve output comparisons with discrepancies of less than 3% nationally and remaining discrepancies highlight challenges faced when moving away from in-house legacy code. OpenQuake’s multiple and varied computation options for both hazard and risk and OpenQuake’s consistent, software-friendly output formats allow for exploration and development of innovative approaches to future seismic hazard and risk modeling in New Zealand. The end-to-end seismic hazard-to-risk capabilities already enabled by the inclusion of New Zealand seismic hazard, vulnerability, and building exposure models in OpenQuake have already had significant impact on post-disaster response to the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake.

Diminuendo! Tactics in Support of FaaS Migrations

Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) receives close attention due to highly desirable characteristics, including pay-as-you-go pricing, high elasticity, and its fully managed nature. To leverage these benefits for existing applications, developers face the challenge of migrating legacy code to a FaaS platform (FaaSification). Unfortunately, however, actionable guidance on how to do so for real-world applications does not exist. In this paper, we report on our experience from FaaSifying a data-intensive application, and evaluating different options through extensive experimentation, using approaches such as regression tests and tracing. Based on the obtained results, we present five migration tactics in support of future FaaSification.