Software Engineering Commons^™

Condensing Class Diagrams By Analyzing Design And Network Metrics Using Optimistic Classification, Ferdian Thung, David Lo, Mohd Hafeez Osman, Michel R.V. Chaudron

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A class diagram of a software system enhances our ability to understand software design. However, this diagram is often unavailable. Developers usually reconstruct the diagram by reverse engineering it from source code. Unfortunately, the resultant diagram is often very cluttered; making it difficult to learn anything valuable from it. Thus, it would be very beneficial if we are able to condense the reverse- engineered class diagram to contain only the important classes depicting the overall design of a software system. Such diagram would make program understanding much easier. A class can be important, for example, if its removal would break …

It's Not A Bug, It's A Feature: Does Misclassification Affect Bug Localization?, Pavneet Singh Kocchar, Tien-Duy B. Le, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Bug localization refers to the task of automatically processing bug reports to locate source code files that are responsible for the bugs. Many bug localization techniques have been proposed in the literature. These techniques are often evaluated on issue reports that are marked as bugs by their reporters in issue tracking systems. However, recent findings by Herzig et al. find that a substantial number of issue reports marked as bugs, are not bugs but other kinds of issues like refactorings, request for enhancement, documentation changes, test case creation, and so on. Herzig et al. report that these misclassifications affect bug …

Practical Analysis Framework For Software-Based Attestation Scheme, Li Li, Hong Hu, Jun Sun, Yang Liu, Dong Jin Song

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

An increasing number of ”smart” embedded devices are employed in our living environment nowadays. Unlike traditional computer systems, these devices are often physically accessible to the attackers. It is therefore almost impossible to guarantee that they are un-compromised, i.e., that indeed the devices are executing the intended software. In such a context, software-based attestation is deemed as a promising solution to validate their software integrity. It guarantees that the software running on the embedded devices are un-compromised without any hardware support. However, designing software-based attestation protocols are shown to be error-prone. In this work, we develop a framework for design …

Tauth: Verifying Timed Security Protocols, Li Li, Jun Sun, Yang Liu, Jin Song Dong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Quantitative timing is often relevant to the security of systems, like web applications, cyber-physical systems, etc. Verifying timed security protocols is however challenging as both arbitrary attacking behaviors and quantitative timing may lead to undecidability. In this work, we develop a service framework to support intuitive modeling of the timed protocol, as well as automatic verification with an unbounded number of sessions. The partial soundness and completeness of our verification algorithms are formally defined and proved. We implement our method into a tool called TAuth and the experiment results show that our approach is efficient and effective in both finding …

Gpu Accelerated Counterexample Generation In Ltl Model Checking, Zhimin Wu, Yang Liu, Yun Liang, Jun Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Strongly Connected Component (SCC) based searching is one of the most popular LTL model checking algorithms. When the SCCs are huge, the counterexample generation process can be time-consuming, especially when dealing with fairness assumptions. In this work, we propose a GPU accelerated counterexample generation algorithm, which improves the performance by parallelizing the Breadth First Search (BFS) used in the counterexample generation. BFS work is irregular, which means it is hard to allocate resources and may suffer from imbalanced load. We make use of the features of latest CUDA Compute Architecture-NVIDIA Kepler GK110 to achieve the dynamic parallelism and memory hierarchy …

A Hybrid Model Of Connectors In Cyber-Physical Systems, Xiaohong Chen, Jun Sun, Meng Sun Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Compositional coordination models and languages play an important role in cyber-physical systems (CPSs). In this paper, we introduce a formal model for describing hybrid behaviors of connectors in CPSs. We extend the constraint automata model, which is used as the semantic model for the exogenous channel-based coordination language Reo, to capture the dynamic behavior of connectors in CPSs where the discrete and continuous dynamics co-exist and interact with each other. In addition to the formalism, we also provide a theoretical compositional approach for constructing the product automata for a Reo circuit, which is typically obtained by composing several primitive connectors …

Scc-Based Improved Reachability Analysis For Markov Decision Processes, Lin Gui, Jun Sun, Songzheng Song, Yang Liu, Jin Song Dong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are extensively used to model systems with both probabilistic and nondeterministic behavior. The problem of calculating the probability of reaching certain system states (hereafter reachability analysis) is central to the MDP-based system analysis. It is known that existing approaches on reachability analysis for MDPs are often inefficient when a given MDP contains a large number of states and loops, especially with the existence of multiple probability distributions. In this work, we propose a method to eliminate strongly connected components (SCCs) in an MDP using a divide-and-conquer algorithm, and actively remove redundant probability distributions in the MDP …

Learning Directional Co-Occurrence For Human Action Classification, Hong Liu, Mengyuan Liu, Qianru Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Spatio-temporal interest point (STIP) based methods have shown promising results for human action classification. However, state-of-art works typically utilize bag-of-visual words (BoVW), which focuses on the statistical distribution of features but ignores their inherent structural relationships. To solve this problem, a descriptor, namely directional pair-wise feature (DPF), is proposed to encode the mutual direction information between pairwise words, aiming at adding more spatial discriminant to BoVW. Firstly, STIP features are extracted and classified into a set of labeled words. Then in each frame, the DPF is constructed for every pair of words with different labels, according to their assigned directional …

Lifi: Line-Of-Sight Identification With Wifi, Zimu Zhou, Zheng Yang, Chenshu Wu, Wei Sun, Yunhao Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Wireless LANs, especially WiFi, have been pervasively deployed and have fostered myriad wireless communication services and ubiquitous computing applications. A primary concern in designing each scenario-tailored application is to combat harsh indoor propagation environments, particularly Non-LineOf-Sight (NLOS) propagation. The ability to distinguish LineOf-Sight (LOS) path from NLOS paths acts as a key enabler for adaptive communication, cognitive radios, robust localization, etc. Enabling such capability on commodity WiFi infrastructure, however, is prohibitive due to the coarse multipath resolution with mere MAC layer RSSI. In this work, we dive into the PHY layer and strive to eliminate irrelevant noise and NLOS paths …

The Case For Open Source Software, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

You use it more often than you are aware, and you can even use it to get a job

Using Statistical Methods To Determine Geolocation Via Twitter, Christopher M. Wright

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

With the ever expanding usage of social media websites such as Twitter, it is possible to use statistical inquires to form a geographic location of a person using solely the content of their tweets. According to a study done in 2010, Zhiyuan Cheng, was able to detect a location of a Twitter user within 100 miles of their actual location 51% of the time. While this may seem like an already significant find, this study was done while Twitter was still finding its ground to stand on. In 2010, Twitter had 75 million unique users registered, as of March 2013, …

Regionalization Of An Asset Storage And Distribution Service, Cameron Dunn, Nathaniel Morrison

Computer Engineering

The existing service we work on, Asset Services, is comprised of multiple independent services which work together to provide an easy interface for internal clients to allow end users to upload their own content, and then distribute that content to both internal and external clients, with a firewall between the service and most external clients. Although Asset Services handles millions of requests a day from all over the globe, all requests and data were sent through a single data center. The objective of this project was to create new endpoints for end users to upload and download assets to/from. By …

A Framework For Constructing Serious Games, Taylor Glen Yust

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Communicating ideas and knowledge through serious games is a trend that is currently gaining in popularity. However, at present, there is a distinct lack of a game development methodology that takes a critical approach to transforming information into gameplay. This thesis presents a framework that can be followed to construct compelling serious games that are effective at transferring knowledge to the player. This is accomplished through an analysis of atomic knowledge items and their relationships to one another, followed by a meaningful and synergetic implementation of these ideas at a foundational mechanics level.

This thesis also describes the development of …

Tapjacking Threats And Mitigation Techniques For Android Applications, Vanessa Cooper

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

With the increased dependency on web applications through mobile devices, malicious attack techniques have now shifted from traditional web applications running on desktop or laptop (allowing mouse click- based interactions) to mobile applications running on mobile devices (allowing touch-based interactions). Clickjacking is a type of malicious attack originating in web applications, where victims are lured to click on seemingly benign objects in web pages. However, when clicked, unintended actions are performed without the user’s knowledge. In particular, it is shown that users are lured to touch an object of an application triggering unintended actions not actually intended by victims. This …

Porting The Embedded Xinu Operating System To The Raspberry Pi, Eric Biggers

Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science Honors Projects

This thesis presents a port of a lightweight instructional operating system called Embedded Xinu to the Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi, an inexpensive credit-card-sized computer, has attracted a large community of hobbyists, researchers, and educators since its release in 2012. However, the system-level software running on the Raspberry Pi has been restricted to two ends of a spectrum: complex modern operating systems such as Linux at one end, and very simple hobbyist operating systems or simple “bare-metal” programs at the other end. This project bridges this gap by porting the Embedded Xinu operating system to the Raspberry Pi. Although simple …

Variable Bounds Analysis Of A Climate Model Using Software Verification Techniques, Peter Revesz, Robert Woodward

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

Software verification techniques often use some approximation method that identifies the limits of the possible range of values that variables in a computer program can take during execution. Current climate models are complex computer programs that are typically iterated time-step by time-step to predict the next value of the climate-related variables. Because these iterative methods are necessarily computed only for a fixed number of iterations, they are unable to answer many long-range questions that may be posed regarding climate change, for example, whether there are natural fluctuations or whether a tipping point is reached after which there is no return …

How Many Eyeballs Does A Bug Need? An Empirical Validation Of Linus' Law, Subhajit Datta, Proshanta Sarkar, Sutirtha Das, Sonu Sreshtha, Prasanth Lade, Subhashis Majumder

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Linus’ Law reflects on a key characteristic of open source software development: developers’ tendency to closely work together in the bug resolution process. In this paper we empirically examine Linus’ Law using a data-set of 1,000+ Android bugs, owned by 70+ developers. Our results indicate that encouraging developers to work closely with one another has nuanced implications; while one form of contact may help reduce bug resolution time, another form can have quite the opposite effect. We present statistically significant evidence in support of our results and discuss their relevance at the individual and organizational levels.

Development Of Etsu Student Life Android Application, Tyler L. Cox

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this thesis, the author gives a description his journey creating and developing a Student Life Application for East Tennessee State University. This thesis will document his process with development as well as reflect on the struggles and victories in creation of this application.

A Self-Adaptive Framework For Failure Avoidance In Configurable Software, Jacob Swanson

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Many software systems today are highly-configurable, meaning the user can customize their instance of the application, adding and removing features as needed. However, this configurability makes it harder to ensure that faults will not escape testing and manifest as failures in the field. This is because many failures are configuration-dependent; they will appear under certain combinations of features configurations, but not others. Once faults are found and reported in the field, there can be a long lag time (days, weeks or even months) until patches are created and released to fix them. In the meantime, users will continue to use …

Distributed Gui Testing Of Ios Applications With Hadoopunit, Krissada Dechokul

Theses and Dissertations

Smartphones have become an important medium of communication for millions of people. They have come to expect high-quality mobile applications, which have increased the importance of software testing in modern software development. While software testing can ensure the quality of a system under test (SUT), it has suffered from lengthy execution time, especially for system-level GUI testing. In general, system-level GUI testing can be time-consuming because it requires walking through every user interface element and every possible variation that users could experience through the GUI of the application. In addition, this type of testing exercises the SUT from the outside …

Handling Location Uncertainty In Event Driven Experimentation, Kartik Muralidharan, Srinivasan Seshan, Narayan Ramasubbu, Rajesh Krishna Balan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The wide spread use of smart phones has ushered in a wave of context-based advertising services that operate on pre-defined user events. A prime example is Location Based Advertising. What is missing though, is the ability to experiment with these services under varying event conditions with real users using their regular phones in real-world environments. Such experiments provide greater insight into user needs for and responsiveness towards context-based advertising applications. However, these event-driven experiments rely on data that arrive from sources such as mobile sensors which have inherent uncertainties associated with them. This effects the interpretation of the outcome of …

First Step Mental Health App, Joshua Martin, James Faraday, Mackenzie Lopez

Undergraduate Research Symposium

The goal of this project is to create a tool that provides students at Minnesota State University, Mankato with mental health information through a freely available smartphone application (App). Our approach uses a software engineering design process that focuses on who our customers are, what resources are available, and how we can best connect the two to improve student lives. We identified the stakeholders involved and worked with campus mental health professionals to help shape our App. While there is a broad range of mental health topics, we have focused on materials related to depression. The first process gives the …

Applications Of Gamification: Overcoming A Digital Disconnect, Adrienne Carroll

Senior Seminars

The universally accepted definition of gamification is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts. A non-game context refers to any context with an expected use other than simple entertainment (Giannetto et al., 2013, p.197). Gamification is a relatively new term, coined in the early 2000's, which did not gain popular recognition until 2010. The application of gamification is far-reaching, with the potential to revolutionize traditional corporate and educational strategies. The key goal of gamification is user-engagement, which is a factor that many current approaches overlook. It aims to change not only the involvement of users, but to change …

Major Advancements In Personal Computing, Brandon Brooks

Senior Seminars

This research essay expounds on the history and the journey of the Personal Computer. You will read about some of the most important items that the author felt contributed to the advancement of the PC over the years. The dates of the information ranges from the late 1960s up until the last year or so. The author talks about hardware components and software components, but the bulk of the material in this paper explains the history of each major milestone and what contributed to making it better, or more useful than the last. Each sub-topic will bring us closer to …

Writing Self-Testing Java Classes With Selftest, Yoonsik Cheon

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

This document provides a tutorial introduction to Java annotations called SelfTest. The SelfTest annotations allow one to annotate Java classes with test data, and the SelfTest annotation processor generates executable JUnit test classes from annotated Java classes by translating test cases to executable JUnit tests. The SelfTest annotations not only automate unit testing of Java classes significantly but also provides a step toward writing self-testing Java classes by embedding test data in source code for both compile and runtime processing.

[Sabbatical Report], Huanjing Wang

Sabbatical Reports

My sabbatical leave was conducted during Spring semester 2014. The leave was successful because it strengthened my research in data mining and software engineering domains and resulted four full-paper publications in peer-reviewed international conferences and one journal paper (to be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal). The purpose of my sabbatical was to complete two main projects: (1) Investigate the stability and defect prediction model performance of feature selection techniques together on real-world software metrics data and (2) Design a novel, robust, and efficient metric selection method for imbalanced data.

Automatic Objects Removal For Scene Completion, Jianjun Yang, Yin Wang, Honggang Wang, Kun Hua, Wei Wang, Ju Shen

Computer Science Faculty Publications

With the explosive growth of Web-based cameras and mobile devices, billions of photographs are uploaded to the Internet. We can trivially collect a huge number of photo streams for various goals, such as 3D scene reconstruction and other big data applications. However, this is not an easy task due to the fact the retrieved photos are neither aligned nor calibrated. Furthermore, with the occlusion of unexpected foreground objects like people, vehicles, it is even more challenging to find feature correspondences and reconstruct realistic scenes. In this paper, we propose a structure-based image completion algorithm for object removal that produces visually …

Profit-Maximizing Incentive For Participatory Sensing, Tie Luo, Hwee-Pink Tan, Lirong Xia

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We design an incentive mechanism based on all-pay auctions for participatory sensing. The organizer (principal) aims to attract a high amount of contribution from participating users (agents) while at the same time lowering his payout, which we formulate as a profit-maximization problem. We use a contribution-dependent prize function in an environment that is specifically tailored to participatory sensing, namely incomplete information (with information asymmetry), risk-averse agents, and stochastic population. We derive the optimal prize function that induces the maximum profit for the principal, while satisfying strict individual rationality (i.e., strictly have incentive to participate at equilibrium) for both risk-neutral and …

Automated Mentor Assignment In Blended Learning Environments, Chris Boesch, Kevin Steppe

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper we discuss the addition of automatic assignment of mentors during inclass lab work to an existing online platform for programing practice. SingPath is an web based tool for users to practice programming in several software languages. The platform started as a tool to provide students with online feedback on solutions to programming problems and expanded over time to support different of blended learning needs for a variety of classes and classroom settings. The SingPath platform supports traditional self-directed learning mechanisms such as badges and completion metrics as well as features for use in classrooms, such as tournaments. …

3d Visualization Architecture For Building Applications Leveraging An Existing Validated Toolkit, David A. Polyak

Master's Theses (2009 -)

The diagnostic radiology space and healthcare in general is a slow adopter of new software technologies and patterns. Despite the widespread embrace of mobile technology in recent years, altering the manner in which societies in developed countries live and communicate, diagnostic radiology has not unanimously adopted mobile technology for remote diagnostic review. Desktop applications in the diagnostic radiology space commonly leverage a validated toolkit. Such toolkits not only simplify desktop application development but minimize the scope of application validation. For these reasons, such a toolkit is an important piece of a company’s software portfolio. This thesis investigated an approach for …