arXiv subjects

Rodrigo Falcão

Publications and source records attributed to Rodrigo Falcão.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A Research Agenda on Agents and Software Engineering: Outcomes from the Rio A2SE Seminar

The rise of agentic AI is reshaping software engineering in two intertwined directions: agents are increasingly applied to support software engineering tasks, and Agentic AI systems themselves are complex systems that require re-thinking currently established software engineering practices. To chart a coherent research agenda covering the two directions, we organized the A2SE seminar in Rio de Janeiro, bringing together 18 experts from academia and industry. Through structured presentations, collaborative topic clustering, and focused group discussions, participants identified six thematic areas: Governance, Software Engineering for Agents, Agents for Software Architecture, Quality and Evaluation, Sustainability, and Code, and they prioritized short-term and long-term research directions for each. This paper presents the resulting community-driven, opinionated research agenda, offering the SE community a structured foundation for coordinating efforts at this critical juncture.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2026

Toward architecting self-coding information systems

In this extended abstract, we propose a novel research topic in the field of agentic AI, which we refer to as self-coding information systems. These systems will be able to dynamically adapt their structure or behavior by evaluating potential adaptation decisions, generate source code, test, and (re)deploy their source code autonomously, at runtime, reducing the time to market of new features. Here we motivate the topic, provide a formal definition of self-coding information systems, discuss some expected impacts of the new technology, and indicate potential research directions.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2025

Evaluating the effectiveness of LLM-based interoperability

Background: Systems of systems are becoming increasingly dynamic and heterogeneous, and this adds pressure on the long-standing challenge of interoperability. Besides its technical aspect, interoperability has also an economic side, as development time efforts are required to build the interoperability artifacts. Objectives: With the recent advances in the field of large language models (LLMs), we aim at analyzing the effectiveness of LLM-based strategies to make systems interoperate autonomously, at runtime, without human intervention. Method: We selected 13 open source LLMs and curated four versions of a dataset in the agricultural interoperability use case. We performed three runs of each model with each version of the dataset, using two different strategies. Then we compared the effectiveness of the models and the consistency of their results across multiple runs. Results: qwen2.5-coder:32b was the most effective model using both strategies DIRECT (average pass@1 >= 0.99) and CODEGEN (average pass@1 >= 0.89) in three out of four dataset versions. In the fourth dataset version, which included an unit conversion, all models using the strategy DIRECT failed, whereas using CODEGEN qwen2.5-coder:32b succeeded with an average pass@1 = 0.75. Conclusion: Some LLMs can make systems interoperate autonomously. Further evaluation in different domains is recommended, and further research on reliability strategies should be conducted.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2024

Experiences in Using the V-Model as a Framework for Applied Doctoral Research

The pervasive role played by software in virtually all industries has fostered ever-increasing development of applied research in software engineering. In this chapter, we contribute our experience in using the V-Model as a framework for teaching how to conduct applied research in empirical software engineering. The foundational idea of using the V-Model is presented, and guidance for using it to frame the research is provided. Furthermore, we show how the framework has been instantiated throughout nearly two decades of PhD theses done at the University of Kaiserslautern (RPTU Kaiserslautern) in partnership with Fraunhofer IESE, including the most frequent usage patterns, how the different empirical methods fit into the framework, and the lessons we have learned from this experience.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2024

Towards a decentralized data privacy protocol for self-sovereignty in the digital world

A typical user interacts with many digital services nowadays, providing these services with their data. As of now, the management of privacy preferences is service-centric: Users must manage their privacy preferences according to the rules of each service provider, meaning that every provider offers its unique mechanisms for users to control their privacy settings. However, managing privacy preferences holistically (i.e., across multiple digital services) is just impractical. In this vision paper, we propose a paradigm shift towards an enriched user-centric approach for cross-service privacy preferences management: the realization of a decentralized data privacy protocol.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2023

Using I4.0 digital twins in agriculture

Agriculture is a huge domain where an enormous landscape of systems interact to support agricultural processes, which are becoming increasingly digital. From the perspective of agricultural service providers, a prominent challenge is interoperability. In the Fraunhofer lighthouse project Cognitive Agriculture (COGNAC), we investigated how the usage of Industry 4.0 digital twins (I4.0 DTs) can help overcome this challenge. This paper contributes architecture drivers and a solution concept using I4.0 DTs in the agricultural domain. Furthermore, we discuss the opportunities and limitations offered by I4.0 DTs for the agricultural domain.

cs.OH↗

arXiv2022

Business Process Model for Interoperability Improvement in the Agricultural Domain Using Digital Twins

A farm generates a lot of data from various systems, which is then stored in a distributed manner, usually in non-standardized formats, which bears the risk of data inconsistencies. This work addresses this issue by using business process management (BPM) to demonstrate that the use of digital twins (DTs) can improve interoperability between services in the agriculture domain. Steps from the BPM lifecycle were applied to a farming use case in Germany. First, the as-is business process model was discovered and modeled without DTs, analyzed and then redesigned into the to-be model according to the DT integration. The to-be model showed a reduction in the number of tasks needed to be performed by the farmer as well as an improvement of process data quality, interoperability, and efficiency. Finally, a comparison of the' average processing times of both models with the help of process simulation revealed improvements in the to-be process.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2022

xPACE and TASC Modeler: Tool support for data-driven context modeling

From a requirements engineering point of view, the elicitation of context-aware functionalities calls for context modeling, an early step that aims at understanding the application contexts and how it may influence user tasks. In practice, however, context modeling activities have been overlooked by practitioners due to their high complexity. To improve this situation, we implemented xPACE and TASC Modeler, which are tools that support the automation of context modeling based on existing contextual data. In this demonstration paper, we present our implementation of a data-driven context modeling approach, which is composed of a contextual data processor (xPACE) and a context model generator (TASC Modeler). We successfully evaluated the results provided by the tools in a software development project.

cs.SE↗