Computer Sciences Commons^™

A Scalable Approach To Multi-Style Architectural Modeling And Verification, Stephen Wong, Jing Sun, Ian Warren, Jun Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Software Architecture represents the high level description of a system in terms of components, external properties and communication. Despite its importance in the software engineering process, the lack of formal description and verification support limits the value of developing architectural models. Automated formal engineering methods can provide an effective means to precisely describe and rigorously verify intended structures and behaviors of software systems. In this paper, we present an approach to support the design and verification of software architectural models using the Alloy analyzer. Based on our earlier work, we propose a fundamental library for specifying system structures in terms …

A Formal Model Of Semantic Web Service Ontology (Wsmo) Execution, Hai H. Wang, Nick Gibbins, Terry R. Payne, Ahmed Saleh, Jun Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Semantic Web services have been one of the most significant research areas within the semantic Web vision, and have been recognized as a promising technology that exhibits huge commercial potential. Current semantic Web service research focuses on defining models and languages for the semantic markup of all relevant aspects of services, which are accessible through a Web service interface. The Web service modelling ontology (WSMO) is one of the most significant semantic Web service framework proposed to date. To support the standardization and tool support of WSMO, a formal semantics of the language is highly desirable. As there are a …

Link Lifetimes And Randomized Neighbor Selection In Dhts, Zhongmei Yao, Dmitri Loguinov

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Several models of user churn, resilience, and link lifetime have recently appeared in the literature [12], [13], [34], [35]; however, these results do not directly apply to classical Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs) in which neighbor replacement occurs not only when current users die, but also when new user arrive into the system, and where replacement choices are often restricted to the successor of the failed zone in the DHT space. To understand neighbor churn in such networks, this paper proposes a simple, yet accurate, model for capturing link dynamics in structured P2P systems and obtains the distribution of link lifetimes …

Enforcing Behavioral Constraints In Evolving Aspect-Oriented Programs, Raffi Khatchadourian, Johan Dovland, Neelam Soundarajan

Publications and Research

Reasoning, specification, and verification of Aspect-Oriented (AO) programs presents unique challenges especially as such programs evolve over time. Components, base-code and aspects alike, may be easily added, removed, interchanged, or presently unavailable at unpredictable frequencies. Consequently, modular reasoning of such programs is highly attractive as it enables tractable evolution, otherwise necessitating that the entire program be reexamined each time a component is changed. It is well known, however, that modular reasoning about AO programs is difficult. In this paper, we present our ongoing work in constructing a rely-guarantee style reasoning system for the Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) paradigm, adopting a trace-based …

Better Refactoring Tools For A Better Refactoring Strategy, Andrew P. Black

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Refactoring tools can improve the speed and accuracy with which we create and maintain software – but only if they are used. In practice, tools are not used as much as they could be; this seems to be because they do not align with the refactoring strategy preferred by the majority of programmers: floss refactoring. We propose five principles that characterize successful floss refactoring tools – principles that can help programmers to choose the most appropriate refactoring tools and also help toolsmiths to design more usable tools.

A Framework For Relationship Pattern Languages, Sudarshan Murthy, David Maier

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

A relationship pattern is an abstraction of a recurring need when establishing relationships among information elements in specific contexts. By developing or leveraging a relationship pattern, modelers can solve a class of problems once and describe many relationship types at once. We have developed a framework for specifying relationship patterns and pattern languages (sets of patterns) in both modeling-language-independent and modeling-language-specific ways. We describe this framework both informally and formally. We provide examples of some commonly observed relationship patterns and show how to use them in ER with the help of a relationship pattern language called Exemplar. We also provide …

Scalable Concurrent Hash Tables Via Relativistic Programming, Josh Triplett

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Existing approaches to concurrent programming often fail to account for synchronization costs on modern shared-memory multipro- cessor architectures. A new approach to concurrent programming, known as relativistic programming, can reduce or in some cases eliminate synchronization overhead on such architectures. This approach avoids the costs of inter-processor communication and memory access by permitting processors to operate from a relativistic view of memory provided by their own caches, rather than from an absolute reference frame of memory as seen by all processors. This research shows how relativistic programming techniques can provide the perceived advantages of optimistic synchronization without the useless parallelism …

Patterns Of Aspect-Oriented Design, Black P. Andrew, James Noble, David J. Pearce, Arno Scmidmeir

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Aspect-oriented programming languages are becoming commonplace, and programmers are accumulating experience in building and maintaining aspect-oriented systems. This paper addresses how the use of these languages affects program design: how aspect-oriented languages change the design space, which designs should be emulated and which avoided, and the strengths and weaknesses of particular kinds of design. We identify five patterns of aspect-oriented design: Spectator, Regulator, Patch, Extension, and Heterarchical Design. For each pattern, we describe the problem it solves, show how aspect-oriented language features are used in the pattern, give characteristic examples of the pattern’s use, and assess its benefits and liabilities. …

Digital Cs1 Study Pack Based On Moodle And Python, Atanas Radenski

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Books and Book Chapters

We believe that CS1 courses can be made more attractive to students:

• by teaching a highly interactive scripting language – Python
• by using an open source course management system - such as Moodle - to make all course resources available in a comprehensive digital study pack, and
• by offering detailed self-guided online labs

We have used Moodle [1] and Python [2] to develop a "Python First" digital study pack [3] which comprises a wealth of new, original learning modules: extensive e-texts, detailed self-guided labs, numerous sample programs, quizzes, and slides. Our digital study pack pedagogy is described in recent ITiCSE …

Set Linear Algebra And Set Fuzzy Linear Algebra, Florentin Smarandache, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, K. Ilanthenral

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

In this book, the authors define the new notion of set vector spaces which is the most generalized form of vector spaces. Set vector spaces make use of the least number of algebraic operations, therefore, even a non-mathematician is comfortable working with it. It is with the passage of time, that we can think of set linear algebras as a paradigm shift from linear algebras. Here, the authors have also given the fuzzy parallels of these new classes of set linear algebras. This book abounds with examples to enable the reader to understand these new concepts easily. Laborious theorems and …

The Java 5 Generics Compromise Orthogonality To Keep Compatibility, Atanas Radenski, Jeff Furlong, Vladimir Zanev

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

In response to a long-lasting anticipation by the Java community, version 1.5 of the Java 2 platform - referred to as Java 5 - introduced generic types and methods to the Java language. The Java 5 generics are a significant enhancement to the language expressivity because they allow straightforward composition of new generic classes from existing ones while reducing the need for a plethora of type casts. While the Java 5 generics are expressive, the chosen implementation method, type erasure, has triggered undesirable orthogonality violations. This paper identifies six cases of orthogonality violations in the Java 5 generics and demonstrates …

Machine-Assisted Proof Support For Validation Beyond Simulink, Chunqing Chen, Jin Song Dong, Jun Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Simulink is popular in industry for modeling and simulating embedded systems. It is deficient to handle requirements of high-level assurance and timing analysis. Previously, we showed the idea of applying Timed Interval Calculus (TIC) to complement Simulink. In this paper, we develop machine-assisted proof support for Simulink models represented in TIC. The work is based on a generic theorem prover, Prototype Verification System (PVS). The TIC specifications of both Simulink models and requirements are transformed to PVS specifications automatically. Verification can be carried out at interval level with a high level of automation. Analysis of continuous and discrete behaviors is …

Reasoning About The Behavior Of Aspect-Oriented Programs, Neelam Soundarajan, Raffi Khatchadourian, Johan Dovland

Publications and Research

Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) has become increasingly popular over the last few years. At the same time, reasoning about the behavior of these programs poses serious challenges. In this paper, we present a rely-guarantee approach to such reasoning. The rely-guarantee approach has proven useful in reasoning about concurrent and distributed programs. We show that some of the key problems encountered in reasoning about aspect-oriented programs are similar to those encountered in reasoning about concurrent programs; and that the rely-guarantee approach, appropriately modified, helps address these problems. We illustrate our approach with a simple example.

Automated Refactoring Of Legacy Java Software To Enumerated Types, Raffi Khatchadourian, Jason Sawin, Atanas Rountev

Publications and Research

Modern Java languages introduce several new features that offer significant improvements over older Java technology. In this article we consider the new enum construct, which provides language support for enumerated types. Prior to recent Java languages, programmers needed to employ various patterns (e.g., the weak enum pattern) to compensate for the absence of enumerated types in Java. Unfortunately, these compensation patterns lack several highly-desirable properties of the enum construct, most notably, type safety. We present a novel fully-automated approach for transforming legacy Java code to use the new enumeration construct. This semantics-preserving approach increases type safety, produces code that is …

Novelty Detection For Cross-Lingual News Stories With Visual Duplicates And Speech Transcripts, Xiao Wu, Alexander G. Hauptmann, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

An overwhelming volume of news videos from different channels and languages is available today, which demands automatic management of this abundant information. To effectively search, retrieve, browse and track cross-lingual news stories, a news story similarity measure plays a critical role in assessing the novelty and redundancy among them. In this paper, we explore the novelty and redundancy detection with visual duplicates and speech transcripts for cross-lingual news stories. News stories are represented by a sequence of keyframes in the visual track and a set of words extracted from speech transcript in the audio track. A major difference to pure …

An Augmented Approach To Support Collaborative Distance Learning Of Unified Modeling Language, Keng Siau, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Brenda Eschenbrenner, Ashu Guru

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Teaching in the classroom faces many challenges of providing a collaborative, interactive environment that effectively facilitates students’ learning. The challenges increase when the physical classroom converts into a virtual classroom. This difficulty is further exacerbated when the course is diagramming intensive, practice-oriented, and hands-on in nature. Technology has been sought after to help with these challenges. Web Conferencing software, when compared to Web Broadcasting software, can facilitate real-time interaction and collaboration in a distance learning context. For courses that are diagramming intensive and practice-oriented, Tablet PCs, when compared to desktop PCs, can support drawing and diagramming because of the ability …

Internet Enabled Remote Driving Of A Combat Hybrid Electric Power System For Duty Cycle Measurement, Jarrett Goodell, Marc Compere, Wilford Smith, Mark Brudnak, Mike Pozolo, Et Al.

Publications

This paper describes a human-in-the-loop motion-based simulator interfaced to hybrid-electric power system hardware, both of which were used to measure the duty cycle of a combat vehicle in a virtual simulation environment. The project discussed is a greatly expanded follow-on to the experiment published in [1,7]. This paper is written in the context of [1,7] and therefore highlights the enhancements. The most prominent of these enhancements is the integration (in real-time) of the Power & Energy System Integration Lab (P&E SIL) with a motion base simulator by means of a “long haul” connection over the Internet (a geographical distance of …

Enhancing The Performance Of Semi-Supervised Classification Algorithms With Bridging, Jason Yuk Hin Chan, Josiah Poon, Irena Koprinska

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Traditional supervised classification algorithms require a large number of labelled examples to perform accurately. Semi-supervised classification algorithms attempt to overcome this major limitation by also using unlabelled examples. Unlabelled examples have also been used to improve nearest neighbour text classification in a method called bridging. In this paper, we propose the use of bridging in a semi-supervised setting. We introduce a new bridging algorithm that can be used as a base classifier in any supervised approach such as co-training or selflearning. We empirically show that classification performance increases by improving the semi-supervised algorithm’s ability to correctly assign labels to previouslyunlabelled …

The Student Scholarship And Creative Achievement Day Application Software, Charles Alan Hofer

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Performance Analysis Of Ieee 802.11b Devices In The Presence Of Interference Aware Scheduling-Adaptive Frequency Hopping Enabled Bluetooth Devices, Deepthi Gopalpet

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Wireless Local Area networks (WLAN) and Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) provide complimentary services using the same unlicensed radio frequency band of operation. The 802.11b WLAN operates in the 2.4 GHz band and uses a Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum technique. It is designed to cover large areas ranging up to 100 meters in diameter, which may connect hundreds of computers. Bluetooth (BT) WPAN also operates in the same frequency band as the IEEE 802.lib and it uses a Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum technique. BT is primarily used for communications between notebooks, palm units and other personal computing devices within relatively …

Automated Refactoring Of Legacy Java Software To Enumerated Types, Raffi Khatchadourian, Jason Sawin, Atanas Rountev

Publications and Research

Modern Java languages introduce several new features that offer significant improvements over older Java technology. In this article we consider the new enum construct, which provides language support for enumerated types. Prior to recent Java languages, programmers needed to employ various patterns (e.g., the weak enum pattern) to compensate for the absence of enumerated types in Java. Unfortunately, these compensation patterns lack several highly-desirable properties of the enum construct, most notably, type safety. We present a novel fully-automated approach for transforming legacy Java code to use the new enumeration construct. This semantics-preserving approach increases type safety, produces code that is …

Rely-Guarantee Approach To Reasoning About Aspect-Oriented Programs, Raffi Khatchadourian, Neelam Soundarajan

Publications and Research

Over the last few years, the question of reasoning about aspect-oriented programs has been addressed by a number of authors. In this paper, we present a rely-guarantee approach to such reasoning. The rely-guarantee approach has proven extremely successful in reasoning about concurrent and distributed programs. We show that some of the key problems encountered in reasoning about aspect-oriented programs are similar to those encountered in reasoning about concurrent programs; and that the rely-guarantee approach, appropriately modified, helps address these problems. We illustrate our approach with a simple example.

Digital Support For Abductive Learning In Introductory Computing Courses, Atanas Radenski

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Students who grew up browsing the Web are skilled in what is usually referred to as abduction, a reasoning process that starts with a set of specific observations and then generates the best possible explanation of those observations. In order to exploit the abduction skills of contemporary students, we have developed digital CS1/2 study packs that promote and support active learning through abduction, i.e., abductive learning. The study packs integrate a variety of digital resources: online self-guided labs, e-texts, tutorial links, sample programs, quizzes, and slides. These online packs stimulate students to learn abductively by browsing, searching, and performing self-guided …

Filling The Ontology Space For Coalition Battle Management Language, Charles Turnitsa, Curtis Blais, Andreas Tolk

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Faculty Publications

The Coalition Battle Management Language is a language for representing and exchanging plans, orders, and reports across live, constructive and robotic forces in multi-service, multi-national and multi-organizational operations. Standardization efforts in the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization seek to define this language through three parallel activities: (1) specify a sufficient data model to unambiguously define a set of orders using the Joint Command, Control, and Consultation Information Exchange Data Model (JC3IEDM) as a starting point; (2) develop a formal grammar (lexicon and production rules) to formalize the definition of orders, requests, and reports; (3) develop a formal battle management ontology to …

Parallel Remote Interactive Management Model, Faris Nabeeh Zuriekat

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis discusses PRIMM which stands for Parallel Remote Interactive Management Model. PRIMM is a framework for object oriented applications that relies on grid computing. It works as an interface between the remote applications and the parallel computing system. The thesis shows the capabilities that could be achieved from PRIMM architecture.

Cache Coherence Protocol Verification Using Ωmega, Ki Yung Ahn

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

We verify some correctness properties of the DASH cache coherence protocol using Ωmega. Ωmega is a language with a rich type system featuring GADTs, type functions, and user-guided type checking rules. Cache coherence protocols have both safety properties and liveness properties. We show how to describe some of the safety properties of DASH cache coherence protocol in mega. Since liveness properties are not easily expressed by types, we investigate invariants sufficient to imply some of the liveness properties of concern, and assert those invariants as well in the type system of Ωmega. Using Ωmega, we can have both a working …

Why Don’T People Use Refactoring Tools?, Andrew P. Black, Emerson Murphy-Hill

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Tools that perform refactoring are currently under-utilized by programmers. As more advanced refactoring tools are designed, a great chasm widens between how the tools must be used and how programmers want to use them. In this position paper, we characterize the dominant process of refactoring, demonstrate that many research tools do not support this process, and initiate a call to action for designers of future refactoring tools.

Directflow: A Domain-Specific Language For Information-Flow Systems, Andrew P. Black, Chuan-Kai Lin

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Programs that process streams of information are commonly built by assembling reusable information-flow components. In some systems the components must be chosen from a pre-defined set of primitives; in others the programmer can create new custom components using a general-purpose programming language. Neither approach is ideal: restricting programmers to a set of primitive components limits the expressivity of the system, while allowing programmers to define new components in a general-purpose language makes it difficult or impossible to reason about the composite system. We advocate defining information-flow components in a domain-specific language (DSL) that enables us to infer the properties of …

Personal Information Management. A Framework For Development Of Personalisable Web Based Services, Christopher Fuchs

Theses

The thesis research proposed herein will model, analyse and implement strategies for the development of personalised services. The goal of the research work is to design and implement a framework which supports developers by minimising the effort required in implementing personalised services. This includes the ability to react to localisation changes and to present proper information. An overall design goal is the independency of most components from each other which will be attained through the use of standard technologies and protocols and the consistent use of a component model. The result will include the proposed framework and the analyses of …

Solving The Teacher Assignment-Course Scheduling Problem By A Hybrid Algorithm, Aldy Gunawan, Kien Ming Ng, Kim Leng Poh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents a hybrid algorithm for solving atimetabling problem, which is commonly encountered in manyuniversities. The problem combines both teacher assignment andcourse scheduling problems simultaneously, and is presented as amathematical programming model. However, this problem becomesintractable and it is unlikely that a proven optimal solution can beobtained by an integer programming approach, especially for largeproblem instances. A hybrid algorithm that combines an integerprogramming approach, a greedy heuristic and a modified simulatedannealing algorithm collaboratively is proposed to solve the problem.Several randomly generated data sets of sizes comparable to that ofan institution in Indonesia are solved using the proposed algorithm.Computational results …