Browsing by study line "Ohjelmistot"

Digitaalinen transformaatio tarkoittaa prosessia, jossa organisaatiot reagoivat ympäristössään tapahtuviin muutoksiin käyttämällä uusia digitaalisia teknologioita muuttamaan arvonluonti-prosessejaan pysyäkseen kilpailukykyisinä. Tämän hetken digitaalisen transformaation tärkeimpinä teknologisina ajureina pidetään tekoälyä, lohkoketjua, pilviteknologiaa ja data-analytiikkaa. Tutkielman tarkoituksena oli selvittää kirjallisuuden avulla, miten digitaalinen transformaatio vaikuttaa ohjelmistokehitykseen. Menetelmänä käytettiin systemaattista kirjallisuuskatsausta, sillä se tarjoaa protokollan, jota noudattamalla voidaan vähentää katsaukseen liittyviä vinoumia. Tulosten mukaan digitaalinen transformaatio tarkoittaa ohjelmistokehityksen kannalta eri alojen digitaalisen transformaation toteuttamista, uusien teknologioiden mukaantuloa ja automaation lisääntymistä. Digitaalinen transformaatio muuttaa ohjelmistokehitystä muuttamalla osaamistarpeita ja työnjakoa, datasta on tulossa yhä tärkeämpää ja pilvestä hallitseva alusta ohjelmistoille. Digitaalisen transformaation vuoksi tarvittavista taidoista tärkeimpiä ovat tekoäly, data-analytiikka, tietoturva, toimialaosaaminen, matalan koodin alustat, pilvialustat, kyberfyysiset järjestelmät ja esineiden internet. Digitaalinen transformaatio vaikuttaa ohjelmistokehitykseen muiden alojen digitaalisen transformaation toteuttamisen kautta, jolloin ohjelmistokehittäjiltä vaaditaan kykyä toteuttaa asiakkaiden haluamia ohjelmistoja, joka voi vaatia uusien teknologioiden osaamista. Se vaikuttaa myös ohjelmistoalaan ohjelmistokehityksen muuttuessa yhä enemmän automatisoiduksi. Tulevaisuudessa tekoälyn rooli ohjelmistokehityksessä kasvaa.

Parlamentaaristen aineistojen digitointi ja rakenteistaminen tutkimuskäyttöön on nouseva tutkimuksenala, jonka tiimoilta esimerkiksi Euroopassa on tällä hetkellä käynnissä useita kansallisia hankkeita. Tämä tutkielma on osa Semanttinen parlamentti -hanketta, jossa Suomen eduskunnan täysistuntojen puheenvuorot saatetaan ensimmäistä kertaa yhtenäiseksi, harmonisoiduksi aineistoksi koneluettavaan muotoon aina eduskunnan alusta vuodesta 1907 nykypäivään. Puheenvuorot ja niihin liittyvät runsaat kuvailutiedot on julkaistu kahtena versiona, parlamentaaristen aineistojen kuvaamiseen käytetyssä Parla-CLARIN XML -formaatissa sekä linkitetyn avoimen datan tietämysverkkona, joka kytkee aineiston osaksi laajempaa kansallista tietoinfrastruktuuria. Yhtenäinen puheenvuoroaineisto tarjoaa ennennäkemättömiä mahdollisuuksia tarkastella suomalaista parlamentarismia yli sadan vuoden ajalta monisyisesti ja automatisoidusti. Aineisto sisältää lähes miljoona erillistä puheenvuoroa ja linkittyy tiiviisti eduskunnan toimijoiden biografisiin tietoihin. Tässä tutkielmassa kuvataan puheenvuorojen esittämistä varten kehitetyt tietomallit ja puheenvuoroaineistojen keräys- ja muunnosprosessi sekä tarkastellaan prosessin ja syntyneen aineiston haasteita ja mahdollisuuksia. Toteutetun aineistojulkaisun hyödyllisyyden arvioimiseksi on Parla-CLARIN-muotoista aineistoa jo hyödynnetty poliittiseen kulttuuriin liittyvässä digitaalisten ihmistieteiden tutkimuksessa. Linkitetyn datan pohjalta on kehitetty semanttinen portaali, Parlamenttisampo, aineistojen julkaisemista ja tutkimista varten verkossa.

The fast development cycles of Web User Interfaces (UI) create challenges for test automation to keep up with the changes in web elements. Test automation may suffer from test breakages after developers update the UIs of the System Under Test (SUT). Test breakages are not defects or bugs in the SUT, but a failure in test automation code. Failing to correctly locate web element from the UI, is one of the key reasons for test breakages to occur. Prior work to gain self-healing of element locators, has been traditionally done with different algorithms and recently with the help of Large Language Models (LLMs). This thesis aims to discover how to enable self-healing locators for Robot Framework Web UI tests, are there some web element locator types that are more easily repaired than others, and which LLMs should be used for this task. An experimental study was conducted for enabling self-healing locators for Robot Framework. Custom Robot Framework library was created with Python, which was tested for eight different locator strategies raised from locator breakage taxonomy. Results show that the best performance in self-healing locators is gained by using the bigger LLMs. GPT-4 Turbo and Mistral Large showed the best performance accuracy by repairing 87,5% of the locators in the Robot Framework test cases. The worst performer was Mistral 7B Instruct which was not able to correct any locators. Using LLMs for self-healing locators in Robot Framework tests is possible. To get the best results for self-healing locators, my results suggest that practitioners should focus on LLM prompt designing, in the usage of candidate algorithm with locator version history and use the biggest LLMs available if possible.

This thesis conducts a systematic literature review on ethical issues of large language models (LLM). These models are a very prudent topic, as both their presence and demand have skyrocketed since the release of ChatGPT - a free to use generative language model. The literature review of 116 studies, both conceptual and empirical, identifies 39 recurring ethical issues. The issues range from methodological to fundamental ones, for example Environmental impacts" and "Biased training data or outputs". These identified issues are analyzed based on the Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI (Artificial Intelligence), released by the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on AI. The guidelines detail requirements that all trustworthy and ethical AI applications should adhere to, e.g., Human agency, Transparency, Accountability. All identified issues are mapped to these requirements, and the conclusion is that LLMs have significant challenges relating to each one. The findings indicate that the use LLMs comes with significant issues, both demonstrated and theorized. While some methods for mitigating these issues are identified, many still remain unanswered. One of these unanswered issues is the most identified one - inherent biases in LLMs. Since there is no universal understanding on biases, there is no way to make LLMs seem unbiased to everyone. This thesis collates the current talking points and issues identified with LLMs. It provides a comprehensive, but not exhaustive, list of these issues and shows that there is much discussion on the topic. The conclusion is that more discussion is required, but more vitally, even more (regulatory) action is needed along with it.

Etuuspohjaisen eläkejärjestelyn laskennan tavoitteena on selvittää eläkevakuutuksen ottajan säästö- ja eläkesuunnitelmien yhteensopivuus ottaen samalla huomioon sopimukseen kuuluvat turvat ja muut kulut. Vapaaehtoisiin eläkesopimuksiin tehtyjen lakimuutosten seurauksena tällainen laskenta on monimutkaistunut huomattavasti 2000-luvun aikana ja vanhoille järjestelmille luodut laskentamallit eivät aina suoriudu toivotulla nopeudella. Tämän tutkielman aiheena on Profit Software Oy:n Profit Life & Pension -vakuutustenhallintajärjestelmän optimointi edellä kuvatun laskennan osalta.

While the role of IT and computer science in the society is on the rise, interest in computer science education is also on the rise. Research covering study success and study paths is important for understanding both student needs and developing the educational programmes further. Using a data set covering student records from 2010 to 2020, this thesis aims to find key insights and base research in the topic of computer science study success and study paths in the University of Helsinki. Using novel visualizations and descriptive statistics this thesis builds a picture of the evolution of study paths and student success during a 10-year timeframe, providing much needed contextual information to be used as inspiration for future focused research into the phenomena discovered. The visualizations combined with statistical results show that certain student groups seem to have better study success and that there are differences in the study paths chosen by the student groups. It is also shown that the graduation rates from the Bachelor’s Programme in Computer Science are generally low, with some student groups showing higher than average graduation rates. Time from admission to graduation is longer than suggested and the sample study paths provided by the university are not generally followed, leading to the conclusion that the programme structure would need some assessment to better incorporate students with diverse academic backgrounds and differing personal study plans.

The rapid growth and increased requirements within the game development process have made it largely dependent on time, effort and complexity. Game engines were developed to reduce these constraints, by providing game developers with useful features and tools. However, there also lies a deep problem, which is the dependency formed between game developers and the engine administration, the upper management who controls the engine. This dependency relies on the engine administration to maintain their engine without causing harm towards their users. A major conflict happened in the autumn of 2023 between the indie development community and Unity Technologies. Motivated by this conflict we set goals within this thesis to assess the relationship and dependency between game developers and engine administration, and to provide awareness towards trust issues and the impact towards the game industry. In this thesis, we approach this problem with three methods: survey, interviews, and a case study. Development teams participated in the survey, from which three developers were selected for interviews. The game developers described multiple events that formed the basis for the case study, which focused on the past events within Unity Engine. The results show that Unity has considerable value for game developers, but trust in Unity has been significantly impacted by the recent actions of its administration. Developers were met with serious considerations to change their game engine, whether the administration would not regain their lost trust. Despite this, the developers still hope that the engine recovers and the administration takes action to regain their trust. As a conclusion, we emphasize the interaction between game developers and engine administration, what would lead to their mutual interest, in other words creating games.

SQLite has been called the most widely deployed database system but its use in web services has been somewhat limited compared to client/server database engines. Today due to the continued development of SQLite it has the needed features to be a serious option for certain kinds of web services. SQLite is also the technology behind many emerging globally distributed database technologies. In a case study, an existing web application that is backed by centralized SQLite is evaluated in the context of what trade-offs would have to be made when switching to a globally distributed database. This is done by benchmarking the difference in latency users experience depending on their geographical location. Outside of that known challenges in the context of distributed computing as well as challenges specific to migrating from a centralized embedded database to a globally distributed one are evaluated as well. In the results, we found out that there are latency improvements to be made with the globally distributed approach. That said optimizing application code is likely to be the most effective latency improvement for many projects. In addition, especially the increased complexity of running a distributed system compared to a centralized one was in our estimations a big rea- son why the application being studied ultimately decided not to migrate towards a globally distributed deployment. Our findings relate primarily to this one application and other applications with different cir- cumstances could come to a different answer. These technologies are still rapidly advancing so it is likely we will see continued development and properties of these globally distributed database technologies evolving.

Background: The production, operation and use of information technology (IT) have a significant impact on the environment. As an example, the estimated footprint of global greenhouse gas emissions of the IT industry, including the production, operation and maintenance of main consumer devices, data centres and communication networks, doubled between 2007 (1–1.6%) and 2016 (2.5–3.1%). The European Union regulates the energy efficiency of data centre hardware. However, there is still a lack of regulation and guidance regarding the environmental impacts of software use, i.e. impacts from the production, operation and disposal of hardware devices required for using software. Aims: The goal of this thesis is to provide actionable knowledge which could be used by software practitioners aiming to reduce the environmental impacts of software use. Method: We conducted a systematic literature review of academic literature where we assessed evidence of the effectiveness of tools, methods and practices for reducing the environmental impacts of software use. The review covers 20 papers. Results: 60% of studied papers focus on reducing the energy consumption of software that is executed on a single local hardware device, which excludes networked software. The results contain 6 tools, 25 methods and 11 practices. Program code optimisation can potentially reduce the energy consumption of software use by 2–62%. Shifting the execution time of time-flexible data centre workloads towards times when the electric grid has plenty of renewable electricity can potentially reduce data centre CO2 emissions by 33.7%. Conclusions: The results suggest that the energy consumption of software use has received much attention in research. We suggest more research to be done on environmental impacts other than energy consumption, such as CO2 emissions, software-induced hardware obsolescence, electronic waste and freshwater consumption. Practitioners should also take into account the potential impacts of data transmission networks and remote hardware, such as data centres, in addition to local hardware.

This thesis explores the Ionic Framework, a popular open-source framework for building hybrid mobile applications using web technologies. The first part of the thesis briefly compares hybrid applications, native applications, and PWAs (Progressive Web Apps). The thesis includes a concise overview of the Ionic Framework through a literature review and a guide on how to use Ionic with React from installation to distribution, providing practical tips and recommendations for developers new to the framework. This part includes a discussion on the tools and technologies required to develop with Ionic, as well as using Ionic UI components and styling them. In addition, this thesis documents an Ionic project and workshop conducted for Knowit Solutions Oy. The project involved building a proof-of-concept mobile application using Ionic, while the workshop provided hands-on training for JavaScript developers on how to use the framework effectively. This thesis aims to introduce the Ionic Framework and demonstrate its usefulness for building mobile applications for iOS and Android with a single codebase.