Ray Welland's home page

Professor of Software Engineering in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow.

I am Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Information and Mathematical Sciences. Within the Department my main responsibility is for Student Recruitment. I was Head of the Department of Computing Science from 1 April 1996 until 31 July 2003, when I handed over to Muffy Calder and took a sabbatical from 1 September 2003 to 31 August 2004.

• Teaching
• Research Interests
• Other Activities
• Publications
• Contact Details

Teaching

My main teaching interest is Software Engineering. In 2004-05, I will be teaching a fourth year module on Software Engineering Processes (SEP4), contributing about half of Professional Software Development (PSD3) for third-year undergraduates and contributing to the Professional Software Development module for the MSc IT. PDF copies of the notes for SEP4 can be found in my SEP4 directory, notes for my PSD3 lectures in the PSD3 directory and notes for my IT PSD lectures in the ITPSD directory. Details of the Visual Paradigm UML tool we are using for SEP4 this year can be found here.

In 2002-03, I taught a fourth year module on Requirements Engineering and Re-engineering ( RER4), contributed ten lectures to Professional Software Development (PSD3) for third-year undergraduates and taught the Systems Analysis and Design module for the MSc IT. I usually supervise undergraduate third-year team projects and fourth-year individual projects, and MSc IT projects (over the summer). A number of these projects have involved collaboration with The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, particularly working with Jim Devine.

I co-ordinate the undergraduate degree in Software Engineering, including finding placements for students, see Student Work Placements for general background material about our placement scheme. I also responsible for co-ordinating the Computing Science component of the Electronics and Software Engineering degree programme, which also includes a similar work placement. Advice for students on Software Engineering placements, including how they are assessed and relationship to level 4 projects, is given in a downloadable document on Software Engineering Degree Placements.

Research interests

The main theme of my research during the last eighteen years has been the development of software engineering tools and methods. My first major contribution in this area was my work with Ian Sommerville for the Alvey ECLIPSE project while at Strathclyde University. In the two FIDE Esprit projects, I was involved in developing methods and later tools, applying my software engineering knowledge within the persistent programming context. In conjunction with the FIDE work, I was involved in the PhD supervision of Dag Sjøberg which has led to continuing collaborative research in a number of areas, including software metrics and constraints. The SHAPE Esprit project allowed me to get involved in developing tools in another, completely different, context - hypermedia applications.

The ZEST (Zoned Evolvable Software Technology) project took me into a new area of software engineering, the systematic development and evolution of large distributed software systems. In parallel with this, my supervision of Artur Serrano rekindled my original interest in the development of configurable software development tools. Serrano's PhD demonstrated the feasibility of a different approach to this problem, based on constraint specification, and I am actively pursuing this line of research with Artur Serrano and my colleague Philip Gray; for a summary of the current state of the Glasgow work see DECS (Design Editor Constraint System). I was involved in the organisation of an ICSE 2004 Workshop on Directions in Software Engineering Environments that took place on 25 May 2004 in Edinburgh.

My collaborative work with the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery made me realise the appalling lack of software engineering tools for Web site development and maintenance (Web Engineering, if you like). Currently, I have a research student, Andrew McDonald, who has just completed his PhD in this area.

I have two other research student, Alistair Hutton, studying the comprehension and maintenance of large O-O systems, and Brad Glisson, who is just starting out on a study of Web Security.

Other Activities

I was one of the co-chairs of the EVA 2001 Scotland conference in Glasgow, 24-28 July 2001. EVA = Electronic Imaging and the Visual Arts but the title does not convey the wide diversity of topics that are covered! Jim Devine and I gave a presentation on our collaborative work at the the EVA 2000 Scotland Conference in Edinburgh, July 2000. I presented a paper at EVA 2002 at Imperial College London on work done with Andrew McDonald.

I have been an external examiner for the undergraduate Computing programme at Lancaster University; the MSc IT at Paisley University; the undergraduate degree in Business Administration at Glasgow Caledonian University, the MSc IT at Queen Mary University of London and the undergraduate degrees in Computation at UMIST. I am currently external examiner for undergraduate degrees in Computer Science at Cardiff University, having started in 2003.

I have been the Series Editor for two major series of books. Most recently I edited the Essence of Computing Series, originally working with Prentice Hall, now Pearson Education. Prior to that I worked on the BCS Practitioner Series in its first incarnation published by Prentice Hall.

Publications

• Karahasanovic A., Anda B,. Arisholm E., Hove S.E., Jørgensen M., Sjøberg D.I.K. and Welland R. Collecting Feedback During Software Engineering Experiments. Empirical Software Engineering 10(2), pp113-147 (2005).

• McDonald A. and Welland R. Evaluation of Commercial Web Engineering Processes. In Koch N., Fraternali P. and Wirsing M. (eds) Web Engineering, LNCS 3140 (Proceedings of ICWE 2004, Munich, Germany, July 2004) , pp 166-170 , Springer
• Purchase H.C. Welland R. McGill M. and Colpoys L. Comprehension of diagram syntax: an empirical study of Entity Relationship notations. International Journal of Human Computer Studies 61 (2004), pp 187-203
• Grundy J. Welland R.C. and Stoeckle H. Workshop on Directions in Software Engineering Environments. IEE (2004)

• McDonald A. and Welland R. Agile Web Engineering (AWE) Process: Multidisciplinary Stakelholders and Team Communication. In Lovelle J, Rodriguez B., Aguilar L. Gayo J. and Ruiz M. (eds) Web Engineering, 515-518, Springer-Verlag LNCS 2722, 2003. (Proceedings of ICWE 2003, July 2003, Oviedo, Spain.)
• Purchase H., Welland R., McGill M. and Colpoys L. Comprehension of Diagram Syntax: an empirical study of Entity Relationship notations. Presented at EASE (Empirical Assessment in Software Engineering) Conference, April 2003, Keele University.

• McDonald A. and Welland R. Supporting Evolution in a Web Engineering Process. Proceedings of the EVA 2002 Conference, 37:1-37:11, July 2002.

• McDonald A. and Welland R. Agile Web Engineering (AWE) Process. Department of Computing Science Technical Report TR-2001-98, 55pp, University of Glasgow, Scotland, Decemember 2001.
• McDonald A. and Welland R. Web Engineering in Practice. Proceedings of the Fourth WWW10 Workshop on Web Engineering, 21-30, May 2001.
• McDonald A. and Welland R. A Survey of Web Engineering in Practice. Department of Computing Science Technical Report TR-2001-79, 52 pp, University of Glasgow, Scotland, March 2001.

• McCrae, R., Evans, H, and Welland R. PerlCaffeine, Compiling Perl to Java. Proceedings of the Perl Conference 4.0, July 2000, Monterey, 127-135, O'Reilly (2000).
• Devine, J. and Welland, R. Cultural computing: exploiting interactive digital media. Invited paper in Museums International (UNESCO, Paris), No.205, 52 (1), 32-35, (2000). ISSN 1350-0775
• Atkinson, M.P. and Welland, R. (Editors) Fully Integrated Data Environments, 630 pp, Springer-Verlag, (2000). IBSN 3-540-65772-X
• Atkinson, M.P., Welland, R.C., Philbrow, P.C., Waite, C.A., Cooper, R.L., Lavery, D., Froggatt, A., Herzig, C., Macneill, S.D., Mira da Silva, M., Montgomery, G., Pirmohamed, A. and Printezis, T. The Glasgow Persistent Libraries. In Atkinson, M.P. and Welland, R. (Editors) Fully Integrated Data Environments, 527-539, Springer-Verlag, 2000.

• Gray P. and Welland R. Increasing the Flexibility of Modelling Tools via Constraint-based Specification. Proceedings of CASCON'99, 8-11 November 1999, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
• Grimstad S., Sjøberg D., Atkinson, M and Welland R. Evaluating Usability Aspects of PJama based on Source Code Measurements. In Morrison R., Jordan M., and Atkinson M. (eds) Advances in Persistence Object Systems, 307-321, Morgan Kaufmann (1999). (Proceedings of The Third International Workshop on Persistence and Java (PJW3), September 1998, San Fransisco.)

• Serrano J.A. and Welland R. VCt - A Formal Language for the Specification of Diagrammatic Modelling Techniques. Information and SoftwareTechnology, 40 (9), 463-474 (1998).
• Devine J. and Welland R. Multi-media Navigation in a Virtual Museum. Digital Resources in the Humanities (DRH 98), Glasgow, September 1998.
• Welland R. and Atkinson M. A Zoned Architecture for Large Scale Evolution. Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Software Architecture (ISAW3), Orlando, Florida, 1-2 November 1998, 155-158, ACM (1998).
• Cooper R. and Welland R. Computing Science Projects at the University of Glasgow. In Holcombe M., Stratton A., Fincher S. and Griffiths G. (eds) Projects in the Curriculum, Proceedings of the Project '98 Workshop, Sheffield 1998, 169-183, Springer-Verlag (1998).

• Sjøberg, D.I.K., Welland R., Atkinson, M.P., Philbrow, P and Waite C. Exploiting Persistence in Build Management. Software Practice and Experience, 27(4), 447-480 (April 1997).
• Sjøberg D.I.K., Welland R., Atkinson, M.P., Philbrow, P., Waite C. and MacNeill S. The Persistent Workshop - a Programming Environment for Napier88. Nordic Journal of Computing 4 (1), 123-149 (1997) (An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 7th Nordic Workshop on Programming Environment Research NWPER '96, Aalborg, Denmark, 29-31 May, pp37-52, 1996.)
• Sjøberg D.I.K., Welland R. and Atkinson, M.P. Software Constraints for Large Application Systems. Computer Journal, 40(10), 598-616 (1997).
• Welland R., Sjøberg D. and Atkinson M.P. Empirical Analysis based on Automatic Tool Logging. EASE-97 (Empirical Assessment and Evaluation in Software Engineering Workshop), Keele University, 24-25 March 1997.

• Sjøberg D.I.K., Welland R., Atkinson M.P., Jørgensen, M., Martinussen, J.P. and Maus A. Evaluating Software Maintenance Technology. Norwegian Conference in Informatics (NIK), Alta, Norway, 18-20 November, 1996.

Contact details

E-mail: ray@dcs.gla.ac.uk (E-mail handled by Eudora)
Tel: +44 (0)141 330 4968 (direct line) (or:) +44 (0)141 339 8855 x4968
Fax: +44 (0)141 330 4913 (Department)

Secretarial consultant: Susanne Mackenzie
Tel: +44 (0)141 330 4256

Ray Welland
Last updated: 24 December 2004