Computer Sciences Commons^™

Moops: A Web Implementation Of The Personal Software Process Reporting System, Thomas Russell Gigler Iii.

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of Moops is to bridge the gap between PSP Scriber, geared very specifically to the CSCI655 class, and other available PSP implications which are so general they are difficult to use immediately without valuable time spent learning the software. Moops is a PHP/MySQL based web application designed to provide the students taking the CSCI655 graduate software engineering course at CSUSB with an intuitive, easy to use tool to implement the Personal Software Process (PSP). Moops eliminates the possibility of errors in calculations by completing all calculations for the user.

Design And Implementation Of A Multi-Player Role Playing Game, Giang Tuan Trang

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project was to solve a multiplayer computer game problem. A team of 15 students were formed to solve a game programming problem in the summer of 2008. The team consisted of students from various programming backgrounds and interests. The team's goal was to finish the first working artifact minus the art work by the end of summer 2008. This first artifact with a concrete, solid architecture will serve as a foundation for future students to learn game programming.

Building Web Applications Using Web Services, Keerthi Nannapaneni

Theses Digitization Project

This project was performed to get hands on experience on the implementation of web services. During this project execution, significant time was spent researching about existing web services and various programming environments that can be used for building the application. The following application - AJAX, JavaScript, Java, Java server pages, HTML, and CSS. Existing data content from the following web service resources were used in this application - Google API, ArcWebServices, Weather XML feed. The purpose of this application is to show the map location along with the weather of the place selected by the user. This application can be …

An Empirical Validation Of Object-Oriented Design Metrics For Fault Prediction, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Jie Xu

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Object-oriented design has become a dominant method in software industry and many design metrics of object-oriented programs have been proposed for quality prediction, but there is no well-accepted statement on how significant those metrics are. In this study, empirical analysis is carried out to validate object-oriented design metrics for defects estimation. Approach: The Chidamber and Kemerer metrics suite is adopted to estimate the number of defects in the programs, which are extracted from a public NASA data set. The techniques involved are statistical analysis and neuro-fuzzy approach. Results: The results indicate that SLOC, WMC, CBO and RFC are reliable metrics …

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 …

Refactoring Tools: Fitness For Purpose, Emerson Murphy-Hill, 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 sometimes they do not align with the refactoring tactic preferred by the majority of programmers, a tactic we call 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 tools that fit the programmer's purpose.

Graphics Processor Based Implementation Of Bioinformatics Codes, Andrew Bellenir, Christian Trefftz, Greg Wolffe

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

We created a powerful computing platform based on video cards with the goal of accelerating the performance of bioinformatics codes. To satisfy the demands of the video gaming industry, modern graphics processing units (GPUs) have become very advanced computational devices, using a large set of stream processors to render multiple pixels in parallel. Recently, computer scientists have taken interest in a GPU's ability to execute a single instruction on multiple data (SIMD computation) for general applications, as opposed to graphics processing only. This is known as general purpose computation on a graphics processing unit, or GPGPU.

Our project was comprised …

Amvc: A Loosely-Coupled Architecture For Component-Based Clients, Brendan Lawlor

Theses

There is an architectural deficit in most currently undertaken rich client applications: In n-tier applications the presentation layer is represented as a single layer. This is as true of browser-based rich clients (Rich Internet Applications) as of rich desktop clients since both are designed along component-based, event-driven lines. The result of creating rich clients without sufficient application architecture underpinning is often tightly-coupled code of unnecessary complexity, with the associated high cost of maintenance. No commonly understood pattern is currently evident that would allow rich client components to be combined into a loosely coupled application. This paper describes the theory and …

Model-Based Instrumentation Of Distributed Applications, Jan Schäfer

Theses

Problems such as inconsistent or erroneous instrumentation often plague applications whose source code is manually instrumented during the implementation phase. Integrating performance instrumentation capabilities into the Model Driven Software Development (MDSD) process would greatly assist software engineers who do not have detailed knowledge of source code instrumentation technologies. This thesis presents an approach that offers instrumentation support to software designers and developers. A collection of instrumentation patterns is defined to represent typical instrumentation scenarios for distributed applications. A UML profile derived from these patterns is then used to annotate UML models. Based on suitable code generation templates, the annotated models …

A Translation Engine In Support Of Context-Level Interoperability, Kym J. Pohl, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

The support of context-level interoperability demands increasing attention in today’s arena of semantics-oriented decision-support systems. Unlike data-oriented exchange, such semantic interoperability must venture beyond the elementary communication of discrete data values and endeavor to translate between significantly more expressive, context-rich representations. Further, support of this level of interoperability must not require a contamination of the native perspective embedded within each participant’s representation. Offered as a foundation upon which specific interoperability solutions can be developed, this paper presents a service-oriented framework supporting an extensible set of translation paradigms to effectively connect expressive ontology-based environments. Fundamental to this capability is the notion …

Development Of Integrated Process Simulation System Model For Spent Fuel Treatment Facility Design, Yitung Chen, Sean Hsieh

Separations Campaign (TRP)

The major objectives will lead to the creation of a framework that combines all the strengths of AMUSE’s complicated calculations, well-established commercial system process package, and ISOPro’s flexible parameter optimization modules. Development of the process simulation code can be done using the solvent extraction process at Argonne National Laboratory in collaboration with the research team from the Mechanical Engineering Department at UNLV.

Research accomplishments:

• Completed final version of the ISOPro User Manual associated with summarized ISOPro source codes.

• Redesigned and completed use case and design class diagrams (DCD) of the ISOPro package using ArgoUML.

• Improved ISOPro system …

Covert Encryption And Document Authentication Using Texture Coding, Jonathan Blackledge, Mary Hallot

Articles

With the improvements in the quality of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) printing and scanning devices, the ability to counterfeit documents has become a widespread problem. Consequently, there has been an increasing demand to develop digital watermarking techniques which can be applied to both electronic and printed images (and documents) that can be authenticated, prevent unauthorized copying and withstand abuse and degradation. In this paper , a new approach to digital watermarking is presented and a range of possible applications are considered. The process is defined by using concepts and techniques borrowed from Cryptography. It is based on computing a 'scramble image' by …

Location Update Versus Paging Trade-Off In Cellular Networks: An Approach Based On Vector Quantization, Abhishek Roy, Archan Misra, Sajal K. Das

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper we propose two information-theoretic techniques for efficiently trading off the location update and paging costs associated with mobility management in wireless cellular networks. Previous approaches attempt to always accurately convey a mobile's movement sequence and hence, cannot reduce the signaling cost below the entropy bound. Our proposed techniques, however, exploit rate-distortion theory to arbitrarily reduce the update cost, at the expense of an increase in the corresponding paging overhead. To this end, we describe two location tracking algorithms, based on spatial quantization and temporal quantization, which first quantize the movement sequence into a smaller set of codewords, …

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.

Important Characteristics Of Software Development Team Members: An Empirical Investigation Using Repertory Grid, Keng Siau, Xin Tan, Hong Sheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

An information system is typically developed by a team of information systems (IS) professionals. Research shows that teams staffed with the right people are more likely to be effective and efficient. There is a paucity of study that examines the important traits of IS professionals in team contexts. The objective of this research is to identify and understand the important characteristics of good team members in software development projects. We applied an established psychological technique (Repertory Grid) to guide our interviews with 21 experienced IS professionals, who have had extensive experience in software development teams. The comprehensive list of important …

Important Characteristics Of Software Development Team Members: An Empirical Investigation Using Repertory Grid, Keng Siau, Xin Tan, Hong Sheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

An information system is typically developed by a team of information systems (IS) professionals. Research shows that teams staffed with the right people are more likely to be effective and efficient. There is a paucity of study that examines the important traits of IS professionals in team contexts. The objective of this research is to identify and understand the important characteristics of good team members in software development projects. We applied an established psychological technique (Repertory Grid) to guide our interviews with 21 experienced IS professionals, who have had extensive experience in software development teams. The comprehensive list of important …

Advances And Challenges With Data Broadcasting In Wireless Mesh Networks, Chun Tung Chou, Junaid Qadir, Joo Ghee Lim, Archan Misra

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Wireless mesh networks have become a promising means to provide low-cost broadband access. Many WMN applications require broadcasting data (IPTV etc.) over the WMN. This article studies how efficient data broadcast, measured in terms of broadcast latency, can be realized by exploiting two features of WMNs: the use of multiple transmission rates at the link layer and the use of multiple radio interfaces on each node. We demonstrate that by exploiting these features, broadcast latency can be reduced severalfold compared to the current default practice in wireless LANs of using the lowest transmission rate for broadcast traffic. We also discuss …

Context-Aware Statistical Debugging: From Bug Predictors To Faulty Control Flow Paths, Lingxiao Jiang, Zhendong Su

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Effective bug localization is important for realizing automated debugging. One attractive approach is to apply statistical techniques on a collection of evaluation profiles of program properties to help localize bugs. Previous research has proposed various specialized techniques to isolate certain program predicates as bug predictors. However, because many bugs may not be directly associated with these predicates, these techniques are often ineffective in localizing bugs. Relevant control flow paths that may contain bug locations are more informative than stand-alone predicates for discovering and understanding bugs. In this paper, we propose an approach to automatically generate such faulty control flow paths …

Mining Modal Scenarios-Based Specifications From Execution Trace Of Reactive Systems, David Lo, Shahar Maoz, Siau-Cheng Khoo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Specification mining is a dynamic analysis process aimed at automatically inferring suggested specifications of a program from its execution traces. We describe a novel method, framework, and tool, for mining inter-object scenario-based specifications in the form of a UML2-compliant variant of Damm and Harels Live Sequence Charts (LSC). LSC extends the classical partial order semantics of sequence diagrams with temporal liveness and symbolic class level lifelines, in order to generate compact and expressive specifications. The output of our algorithm is a sound and complete set of statistically significant LSCs (i.e., satisfying given thresholds of support and confidence), mined from an …

Model Checking In The Absence Of Code, Model And Properties, David Lo, Siau-Cheng Khoo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Model checking is a major approach in ensuring software correctness. It verifies a model converted from code against some formal properties. However, difficulties and programmers ’ reluctance to formalize formal properties have been some hurdles to its widespread industrial adoption. Also, with the advent of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components provided by third party vendors, model checking is further challenged as often only a binary version of the code is provided by vendors. Interestingly, latest instrumentation tools like PIN and Valgrind have enable execution traces to be collected dynamically from a running program. In this preliminary study, we investigate what can …

A Two-Phase Approach To Interactivity Enhancement For Large-Scale Distributed Virtual Environments, Nguyen Binh Duong Ta, Suiping Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Distributed virtual environments (DVEs) are distributed systems that allow multiple geographically distributed clients (users) to interact simultaneously in a computer-generated, shared virtual world. Applications of DVEs can be seen in many areas nowadays, such as online games, military simulations, collaborative designs, etc. To support large-scale DVEs with real-time interactions among thousands or even more distributed clients, a geographically distributed server architecture (GDSA) is generally needed, and the virtual world can be partitioned into many distinct zones to distribute the load among the servers. Due to the geographic distributions of clients and servers in such architectures, it is essential to efficiently …

Transway® (Integrated Computerized Deployment System) Technical And Operational Description, Joshua Nibecker, Harmony Larsen, Shawn Pan, Clay Warren, Robert Chambers, Dennis Taylor, Ben Weber, James Delos Reyes, Craig Maas, Mark Porczak, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

The TRANSWAY® software application is an adaptive, ontology-based toolset with collaborative agents, designed to assist the Deployment and Distribution Operations Center (DDOC) staff of the United States Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) with the performance of movement planning tasks. The principal focus of the TRANSWAY® toolset is re-planning. The objective of TRANSWAY® is to provide DDOC operators with an intelligent planning engine that receives data from GTN and JOPES, and utilizes the existing Integrated Computerized Deployment System (ICODES) and Joint Forces Collaborative Toolkit (JFCT®; -formerly known as SEAWAY) agent-based applications as functional extensions.

With its initial and immediate focus on the …

Mining Web-Functional Dependencies For Flexible Information Access, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

We present an approach to enhancing information access through Web structure mining in contrast to traditional approaches involving usage mining. Specifically, we mine the hardwired hierarchical hyperlink structure of Web sites to identify patterns of term-term co-occurrences we call Web functional dependencies (FDs). Intuitively, a Web FD ‘x y’ declares that all paths through a site involving a hyperlink labeled x also contain a hyperlink labeled y. The complete set of FDs satisfied by a site help characterize (flexible and expressive) interaction paradigms supported by a site, where a paradigm is the set of explorable sequences therein. …

Performance Of Network-Coding In Multi-Rate Wireless Environments For Multicast Applications, Luiz F. M. Viera, Archan Misra, Mario Gerla

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper investigates the interaction between net-work coding and link-layer transmission rate diversity in multi-hop wireless networks. By appropriately mixing data packets at intermediate nodes, network coding allows a single multicast flow to achieve higher throughput to a set of receivers. Broadcast applications can also exploit link-layer rate diversity, whereby individual nodes can transmit at faster rates at the expense of corresponding smaller coverage area. We first demonstrate how combining rate-diversity with network coding can provide a larger capacity for data dissemination of a single multicast flow, and how consideration of rate diversity is critical for maximizing system throughput. We …

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 …

Mining Modal Scenarios From Execution Traces, David Lo, Shahar Maoz, Siau-Cheng Khoo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Specification mining is a dynamic analysis process aimed at automatically inferring suggested specifications of a program from its execution traces. We describe a method, a framework, and a tool, for mining inter-object scenario-based specifications in the form of a UML2-compliant variant of Damm and Harel's Live Sequence Charts (LSC), which extends the classical partial order semantics of sequence diagrams with temporal liveness and symbolic class level lifelines, in order to generate compact and expressive specifications. Moreover, we use previous research work and tools developed for LSC to visualize, analyze, manipulate, test, and thus evaluate the scenario-based specifications we mine. Our …

Sketchwizard: Wizard Of Oz Prototyping Of Pen-Based User Interfaces, Richard C. Davis, T. Scott Saponas, Michael Shilman, James A. Landay

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

SketchWizard allows designers to create Wizard of Oz prototypes of pen-based user interfaces in the early stages of design. In the past, designers have been inhibited from participating in the design of pen-based interfaces because of the inadequacy of paper prototypes and the difficulty of developing functional prototypes. In SketchWizard, designers and end users share a drawing canvas between two computers, allowing the designer to simulate the behavior of recognition or other technologies. Special editing features are provided to help designers respond quickly to end-user input. This paper describes the SketchWizard system and presents two evaluations of our approach. The …

The Effect Of A New Version Of Software On Its Use: A Case Study Of A Course Management System, John Beckett

Faculty Works

Course Management Systems (CMS) are used to support the growing trend of colleges and universities to offer classes at a distance, and to use technology to provide resources and communication with and for students in traditional classroom settings. Actual use and success of these systems has been mixed in practice, however, for reasons which are not entirely clear.

The theory of Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) described and codified by Everett M. Rogers in 1962 is used to describe how innovations are selected, adopted, and brought to bear on the needs of people with jobs to do. Gary C. Moore and …

Enabling The Interoperability Of Large-Scale Legacy Systems, Kalyan Moy Gupta, Michael A. Zang, Adam Gray, David W. Aha, Joe Kriege, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

Legacy system data models can interoperate only if their syntactic and semantic differences are resolved. To address this problem, we have developed the Intelligent Mapping Toolkit (IMT), which enables mixed-initiative mapping of meta-data and instances between relational data models. IMT employs a distributed multi-agent architecture so that, unlike many other efforts, it can perform mapping tasks that involve thousands of schema elements. This architecture includes a novel federation of matching agents that leverage case-based reasoning methods. As part of our pre-deployment evaluation for USTRANSCOM and other DoD agencies, we evaluated IMT’s mapping performance and scalability. We show that combinations of …