Marcello Missiroli

Platform Engineering (PE) is a growing area of Software Engineering, with many facets, including the elusive concept of Internal Development Platforms (IDPs). They integrate various technologies and tools to support the realization of software projects, especially their managing and developing roles, fostering Agile collaboration and enhancing team productivity. In particular for the new trends of Agile remote working and for Agile applied to the Digital Transformation in the Public Sector. While proprietary IDPs abound, academic research that could naturally lead to open-source IDPs remain scarce. In particular for Scrum, a fundamental Agile methodology in the strategic area of Digital Transformation in the Public Sector, where IDP self-hosting is also appropriate. This paper addresses this gap by proposing the design and realization of the first, to the best of our knowledge, IDP supporting Scrum, being open-source and with self-hosting capabilities. The end-product of our research is the Compositional Agile System (CAS), an extendable microservice architecture-based IDP. Its design, as well as CAS, makes full use of hands-on previous successful experiences of IDP development by members of this team, specifically non-trivial tasks in Italian Public Administration and to foster remote working in University Software Engineering classes, a practice started during the pandemic but nowa standard.We offer several architectural and example scenarios where CAS can be of use, concentrating on the Public Administration. Particularly relevant is the use of CAS in analyzing a pillar of Italian Digital Administration available to its citizens, i.e., AppIo. The software is publicly available.

Context: Comparative study of software development methodologies in millenials high school students. Objective: This paper compares the performance and satisfaction of both students and teachers in using two development strategies in a K-12 Computer Science teaching practice. Method: This study includes an experiment, administered in a laboratory controlled setting to measure students' performances. Results: Scrum produces less usable software with better working features compared to Waterfall, it is also more appreciated by students. Teachers are more experienced with Waterfall, which also offers more control on the development process. Conclusions: From an educational perspective, the two methods are equivalent. Since we noted an overall positive effect on the learning environment, we recommend that at least one method be taught in practice.

Location-based services relying on in-vehicle devices are becoming so common that it is likely that, in the near future, devices of some sorts will be installed on new vehicles by default. The pressure for a rapid adoption of these devices and services is not yet counterbalanced by an adequate awareness about system security and data privacy issues. For example, service providers might collect, elaborate and sell data belonging to cars, drivers and locations to a plethora of organizations that may be interested in acquiring such personal information. We propose a comprehensive scenario describing the entire process of data gathering, management and transmission related to in-vehicle devices, and for each phase we point out the most critical security and privacy threats. By referring to this scenario, we can outline issues and challenges that should be addressed by the academic and industry communities for a correct adoption of in-vehicle devices and related services.

Cloud services represent an unprecedented opportunity, but their adoption is hindered by confidentiality and integrity issues related to the risks of outsourcing private data to cloud providers. This paper focuses on integrity and proposes an innovative solution that allows cloud tenants to detect unauthorized modifications to outsourced data while minimizing storage and network overheads. Our approach is based on encrypted Bloom filters, and is designed to allow efficient integrity verification for databases stored in the cloud. We assess the effectiveness of the proposal as well as its performance improvements with respect to existing solutions by evaluating storage and network costs.