Gruppo S.I. and University

Gruppo S.I. was founded with the awareness that to guarantee quality and innovation of the IT solutions to be offered to the customers, it would not have been enough to keep updated on the evolution of the IT technologies. In fact, none technology alone can guarantee the success of a software project that aims at implementing the automation of entire subsystems of a complex production organization. The preliminary requirement is the adoption of a rigorous and formal software development process based on the "best practices" of the Software Engineering domain. To pursue this fundamental objective, the strategic choice of Gruppo S.I. has been that of playing an active role in the scientific research.

Since 2008, Gruppo S.I. has been involved in scientific and technological research with professors from the Department of Industrial Engineering and Information and Economics, of the University of L’Aquila. The collaboration was implemented along three lines. First, by funding scholarships for PhD programs. Second, by allowing engineers present inside our group to acquire the title of PhD in the field of Information Engineering and Modeling of Information Systems. Eventually, by participating in research in the field of methodologies for developing Web applications. The results achieved were presented at international conferences by staff of Gruppo S.I. and their validity has been defended by confronting with experts from academia and industry. The list of the main publications, starting from 2008, is given at the bottom of this page.

An innovative industrial methodology for the development of Web applications in Model-View-Controller architecture and a proprietary source code generator are the synthesis of the research and industrial validation activities carried out by Gruppo S.I. . The methodology rests on four pillars: (a) formal rigor, guaranteed by the adoption of the Unified Modelling Language (UML) [OMG- UML, 2017]; (b) the Rational Unified Process as reference software engineering process [RUP, 2003]; (c) the Model-Driven-Architecture as conceptual framework [OMG-MDA, 2003]; and (d) a proprietary code generator that carries out the automatic transformations across the MDA’s levels. Our methodology shifts the emphasis of the software application development from programming of the source code to the modeling of the business activities of the company, by giving a central role to the Use Case UML’s construct [Armour and Miller, 2000]. The biggest innovation brought by the Use Case construct is that it exists in the business context independently from the automation process: the software designer only needs to discover the use cases in the enterprise system and then reproduce them in the software application. Our methodology has been applied to the development of software in important industrial contexts such as the banking sector, the insurance sector and the transportation.

References
[OMG-UML, 2017] OMG Unified Modeling Language (OMG UML), Version 2.5.1 OMG Document Number: formal/2017-12-05, Dec. 2017 https://www.omg.org/spec/UML/ OMG-MDA, 2003]
Object Management Group, MDA Guide Version 1.0.1, OMG document omg/2003-06-01, Needham, MA, June 12, 2003.
[RUP, 2003] Kruchten, P.: The Rational Unified Process: An Introduction (3rd Edition) Addison-Wesley Professional (2003)
[Armour and Miller, 2000] Armour, F. and Miller, G.: Advanced Use Case Modeling: Software Systems. Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series (2000)

Gruppo S.I.’s pubblications

Pilotti, F.; Paolone, G.; Di Valerio, D.; Marinelli, M.; Cocca, R. and Di Felice, P. (2021). An IT Infrastructure for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises Willing to Compete in the Global Market. In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS, ISBN 978-989-758-509-8 ISSN 2184-4992, pages 768-775. DOI: 10.5220/0010476907680775.

Paolone, G., Pilotti, F., Marinelli, M., Di Felice, P. and Valenza, G.: A NoSQL Database about Customer Reviews. International Journal of Computer Applications 2021, 174(14): 42-46; 10.5120 /ijca2021921044

Paolone, G., Paesani, R., Marinelli, M. and Di Felice, P.: Empirical Assessment of the Quality of MVC Web Applications Returned by xGenerator. Computers 2021, 10(2), 20; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers10020020

Di Valerio, D., Marinelli, M., Paolone, G., Pilotti, F., Vellante, S. and Di Felice, P.: A Technological Platform and a Process to Implement the Informative Marketing Strategy. MDPI in 1st International Electronic Conference on Applied Sciences session Computing and Artificial Intelligence, 2020, https://sciforum.net/paper/view/conference/7955

Paolone, G., Marinelli, M., Paesani, R., and Di Felice, P.: Automatic Code Generation of MVC Web Applications. Computers 2020, 9(3), 56; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers9030056

G. D’Emilia, G. Paolone, et al. (2015): Business modeling of a measurement-based context: a methodological process. International Conference on Software Engineering and Applications (ICSOFT-EA), Colmar, Alsace (France), 20-22 July 2015.

G. D’Emilia, G. Paolone, et al. (2014): A Measurement-Oriented modelling approach: basic concepts to be shared. Springer Book: Software Technologies. International Joint Conference (ICSOFT), Vienna, Austria, August 29-31, 2014. Revised Selected Papers. Series: Communications in Computer and Information Science, Vol. 555.

G. D’Emilia, G. Paolone et al.: (2014): A measurement-oriented modelling approach: a step forward. International Conference on Software Engineering and Applications (ICST-EA 2014), Vienna (Austria), 29- 21 August 2014.

G. Paolone, P. Di Felice, et al. (2012): Towards service-oriented business modeling. In: Spagnoletti, P. (Ed.). Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation Vol.2 - Organizational Change and Information Systems Working and Living Together in New Ways, ISBN 978-3-642-37227-8 Springer, Heidelberg. Proceedings of the International Conference of the Italian Chapter of AIS (Association for Information Systems), Rome (Italy), 28-29 September 2012.

G. Paolone, P. Di Felice, et al. (2012): Business processes modelling through multi level Activity Diagrams. International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE), Wroclaw (Poland), 29-30 June 2012.

G. Paolone, P. Di Felice, E. Clementini, et al. (2010): Use case double tracing linking business modeling to software development. International Conference of the Italian Chapter of AIS (Association for Information Systems), Naples (Italy), October 8-9, 2010.

G. Paolone, P. Di Felice, E. Clementini, et al. (2010): A business use case driven methodology: a step forward. International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE), Athens (Greece), 22-24 July 2010.

G. Paolone, E. Clementini, et al. (2009): Web 2.0 applications: model-driven tools and design. International Conference of the Italian Chapter of AIS (Association for Information Systems), Costa Smeralda (Italy), October 2-3, 2009.

G. Paolone, E. Clementini, et al (2008): Design and development of web 2.0 applications. International Conference of the Italian Chapter of AIS (Association for Information Systems), Paris (France), 13-14 December 2008.

G. Paolone, E. Clementini, et al. (2008): A methodology for building enterprise Web 2.0 applications. International Conference on the Modern Information Technology in the Innovation Processes of the Industrial Enterprises (MITIP 2008), Prague (Czech Republic), 12-14 November 2008.