Software Engineering Commons^™

Spinfer: Inferring Semantic Patches For The Linux Kernel, Lucas Serrano, Van-Anh Nguyen, Ferdian Thung, Lingxiao Jiang, David Lo, Julia Lawall, Gilles Muller

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In a large software system such as the Linux kernel, there is a continual need for large-scale changes across many source files, triggered by new needs or refined design decisions. In this paper, we propose to ease such changes by suggesting transformation rules to developers, inferred automatically from a collection of examples. Our approach can help automate large-scale changes as well as help understand existing large-scale changes, by highlighting the various cases that the developer who performed the changes has taken into account. We have implemented our approach as a tool, Spinfer. We evaluate Spinfer on a range of challenging …

Optimising The Fit Of Stack Overflow Code Snippets Into Existing Code, Brittany Reid, Christoph Treude, Markus Wagner

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Software developers often reuse code from online sources such as Stack Overflow within their projects. However, the process of searching for code snippets and integrating them within existing source code can be tedious. In order to improve efficiency and reduce time spent on code reuse, we present an automated code reuse tool for the Eclipse IDE (Integrated Developer Environment), NLP2TestableCode. NLP2TestableCode can not only search for Java code snippets using natural language tasks, but also evaluate code snippets based on a user’s existing code, modify snippets to improve fit and correct errors, before presenting the user with the best snippet, …

Mining And Predicting Micro-Process Patterns Of Issue Resolution For Open Source Software Projects, Yiran Wang, Jian Cao, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Addressing issue reports is an integral part of open source software (OSS) projects. Although several studies have attempted to discover the factors that affect issue resolution, few pay attention to the underlying micro-process patterns of resolution processes. Discovering these micro-patterns will help us understand the dynamics of issue resolution processes so that we can manage and improve them in better ways. Of the various types of issues, those relating to corrective maintenance account for nearly half hence resolving these issues efficiently is critical for the success of OSS projects. Therefore, we apply process mining techniques to discover the micro-patterns of …

Enhancing The Performance Of Ir-Based Traceability Recovery Of Requirement Artifacts Using Noun Phrases, Dafaalla Abdelrahman Mashahi Khalafalla

Student Works (2020-2029)

Requirement traceability can be considered as a measure of software quality to help achieve validation, verification, and reusability. Neglecting traceability leads to less maintainable software. Creating traceability links after-the-fact, known as traceability recovery, is a tedious and time-consuming process when it is done manually. Therefore, information retrieval (IR) methods have been used to automatically identify traceability links between the artifacts. However, as a result of limitations of the software engineer and the IR techniques, the performance of the IR methods is negatively affected. There is no IR method that is able to recover traceability links between artifacts with high precision …

A Process Model For Designing Performance Dashboard Using Visualization Techniques, Bahar Muhammad Nasim

Student Works (2020-2029)

Data visualization is the presentation of data in a pictorial or graphical format. It enables decision-makers to see data analysis presented visually, so they can observe difficult concepts or identify new patterns. With interactive visualization, we can take the concept a step further by using technology to drill down into charts and graphs for more detail, interactively changing what data see and how it is processed. With the help of data visualization, it is expected to promote creative data exploration. A performance dashboard is one of the most common use cases for data visualization, and it enables decision-makers such as …

How Are Deep Learning Models Similar? An Empirical Study On Clone Analysis Of Deep Learning Software, Xiongfei Wu, Liangyu Qin, Bing Yu, Xiaofei Xie, Lei Ma, Yinxing Xue, Yang Liu, Jianjun Zhao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Deep learning (DL) has been successfully applied to many cutting-edge applications, e.g., image processing, speech recognition, and natural language processing. As more and more DL software is made open-sourced, publicly available, and organized in model repositories and stores (Model Zoo, ModelDepot), there comes a need to understand the relationships of these DL models regarding their maintenance and evolution tasks. Although clone analysis has been extensively studied for traditional software, up to the present, clone analysis has not been investigated for DL software. Since DL software adopts the data-driven development paradigm, it is still not clear whether and to what extent …

The Critical Success Factors Of Cloud Based Application Implementation In Construction Management, Sukiman Mohd Asfahani

Student Works (2020-2029)

Design and construction are information intensive activities, involving a great number of people collaborating to produce complex, one-off developments. Whilst historically, information may have been managed and communicated using paper-based systems and verbal instructions, the integration of the supply chain, the introduction of computer aided design (CAD) and building information modelling (BIM) and the development of cloud computing application means that information communications technology (ICT) is becoming a fundamental part, not just of the design office, but also of the construction site. Cloud computing is a relatively new phenomenon in the construction industry. It allows the delivery over the 'cloud' …

Privacy-Enhanced Remote Data Integrity Checking With Updatable Timestamp, Tong Wu, Guomin Yang, Yi Mu, Rongmao Chen, Shengmin Xu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Remote data integrity checking (RDIC) enables clients to verify whether the outsourced data is intact without keeping a copy locally or downloading it. Nevertheless, the existing RDIC schemes do not support the pay-as-you-go (PAYG) payment model, where the payment is decided by the volume and duration of the outsourced data. Specifically, none of the existing works have considered the client’s control over changes in storage duration. In this paper, we propose an RDIC scheme to simultaneously check the data content and storage duration represented by an updatable timestamp via the third-party auditor (TPA). Also, our proposed scheme achieves indistinguishable privacy …

Spring 2020

In The Loop

Letter from the Dean: Advancing Past Adversity; Look Who's Talking: Expert Talk Series; Seen and Heard; Keeping It Real: Client Web Projects for Students; OMG, It's DIBS, LOL!; X-ray Vision: Brian Andrews bones up on anthropomorphic entities and virtual realty in an audacious Project Bluelight film; Nothing But Net: Shannon Linares scores a win for female and first-generation college students in network engineering and cybersecurity careers; Mix Master: Claire Rosas blends disciplines and social synergy in her designs, from egg-ceptional typography to adaptive ergs

Increasing The Trust In Refactoring Through Visualization, Alex Bogart, Eman Abdullah Alomar, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Ali Ouni

Articles

In software development, maintaining good design is essential. The process of refactoring enables developers to improve this design during development without altering the program’s existing behavior. However, this process can be time-consuming, introduce semantic errors, and be difficult for developers inexperienced with refactoring or unfamiliar with a given code base. Automated refactoring tools can help not only by applying these changes, but by identifying opportunities for refactoring. Yet, developers have not been quick to adopt these tools due to a lack of trust between the developer and the tool. We propose an approach in the form of a visualization to …

Is Using Deep Learning Frameworks Free?: Characterizing Technical Debt In Deep Learning Frameworks, Jiakun Liu, Qiao Huang, Xin Xia, Emad Shihab, David Lo, Shanping Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Developers of deep learning applications (shortened as application developers) commonly use deep learning frameworks in their projects. However, due to time pressure, market competition, and cost reduction, developers of deep learning frameworks (shortened as framework developers) often have to sacrifice software quality to satisfy a shorter completion time. This practice leads to technical debt in deep learning frameworks, which results in the increasing burden to both the application developers and the framework developers in future development.In this paper, we analyze the comments indicating technical debt (self-admitted technical debt) in 7 of the most popular open-source deep learning frameworks. Although framework …

Revisiting Supervised And Unsupervised Methods For Effort-Aware Cross-Project Defect Prediction, Chao Ni, Xin Xia, David Lo, Xiang Chen, Qing Gu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cross-project defect prediction (CPDP), aiming to apply defect prediction models built on source projects to a target project, has been an active research topic. A variety of supervised CPDP methods and some simple unsupervised CPDP methods have been proposed. In a recent study, Zhou et al. found that simple unsupervised CPDP methods (i.e., ManualDown and ManualUp) have a prediction performance comparable or even superior to complex supervised CPDP methods. Therefore, they suggested that the ManualDown should be treated as the baseline when considering non-effort-aware performance measures (NPMs) and the ManualUp should be treated as the baseline when considering effort-aware performance …

A Virtualization Based System Infrastructure For Dynamic Program Analysis, Jiaqi Hong

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Dynamic malware analysis schemes either run the target program as is in an isolated environment assisted by additional hardware facilities or modify it with instrumentation code statically or dynamically. The hardware-assisted schemes usually trap the target during its execution to a more privileged environment based on the available hardware events. The more privileged environment is not accessible by the untrusted kernel, thus this approach is often applied for transparent and secure kernel analysis. Nevertheless, the isolated environment induces a virtual address gap between the analyzer and the target, which hinders effective and efficient memory introspection and undermines the correctness of …

On The Relationship Between Developer Experience And Refactoring: An Exploratory Study And Preliminary Results, Eman Abdullah Alomar, Anthony Peruma, Christian D. Newman, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Ali Ouni

Articles

Refactoring is one of the means of managing technical debt and maintaining a healthy software structure through enforcing best design practices, or coping with design defects. Previous refactoring surveys have shown that these code restructurings are mainly executed by developers who have sufficient knowledge of the system’s design, and disposing of leadership roles in their development teams. However, these surveys were mainly limited to specific projects and companies. In this paper, we explore the generalizability of the previous results though analyzing 800 open-source projects. We mine their refactoring activities, and we identify their corresponding contributors. Then, we associate an expertise …

Bubble-In Digital Testing System, Chaz Hampton

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Bubble-In is a cloud-based test-taking system build for students and teachers. The Bubble-In system is a test-taking application that interfaces with a cloud server. The mobile applications have been built for Android and Apple devices and the webserver is hosted on Digital Ocean VPS run with Nginx. The Bubble-In application is equipped with anti-cheating mechanisms such as question-answer key scrambling, not allowing screenshots, screen recording, or leaving the application. The tests students take are sent to the webserver to be graded and have statistics calculated and displayed in easy to use format for the test creator. Instructors can use the …

Cc2vec: Distributed Representations Of Code Changes, Thong Hoang, Hong Jin Kang, Julia Lawall, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Existing work on software patches often use features specific to a single task. These works often rely on manually identified features, and human effort is required to identify these features for each task. In this work, we propose CC2Vec, a neural network model that learns a representation of code changes guided by their accompanying log messages, which represent the semantic intent of the code changes. CC2Vec models the hierarchical structure of a code change with the help of the attention mechanism and usesmultiple comparison functions to identify the differences between the removed and added code. To evaluate if CC2Vec can …

Integrating Finance Dictionary In Lexicon-Based Approach With Machine Learning Algorithm To Analyse The Impact Of Opec News Sentiment On Financial Market, Ling Wu

Student Works (2020-2029)

Since last few decades, machine learning algorithm which trains computers to learn from experience, is one of the most rapidly developing techniques which settles in the intersection research field of statistics and computer science. This research aims to build a properly trained machine learning classifier to study the impact of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) news sentiment on stock prices of six Malaysian public listed companies (energy sector) in the main board of Bursa Malaysia. The data used in this research are collected during the period 2012-2017. To carry out the research, firstly, lexicon-based approach is used to analyze …

Mutation Testing Of Smart Contracts At Scale, Pieter Hartel, Richard Schumi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

It is crucial that smart contracts are tested thoroughly due to their immutable nature. Even small bugs in smart contracts can lead to huge monetary losses. However, testing is not enough; it is also important to ensure the quality and completeness of the tests. There are already several approaches that tackle this challenge with mutation testing, but their effectiveness is questionable since they only considered small contract samples. Hence, we evaluate the quality of smart contract mutation testing at scale. We choose the most promising of the existing (smart contract specific) mutation operators, analyse their effectiveness in terms of killability …

A Machine Learning Approach For Vulnerability Curation, Yang Chen, Andrew E. Santosa, Ming Yi Ang, Abhishek Sharma, Asankhaya Sharma, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Software composition analysis depends on database of open-source library vulerabilities, curated by security researchers using various sources, such as bug tracking systems, commits, and mailing lists. We report the design and implementation of a machine learning system to help the curation by by automatically predicting the vulnerability-relatedness of each data item. It supports a complete pipeline from data collection, model training and prediction, to the validation of new models before deployment. It is executed iteratively to generate better models as new input data become available. We use self-training to significantly and automatically increase the size of the training dataset, opportunistically …

The Prom Problem: Fair And Privacy-Enhanced Matchmaking With Identity Linked Wishes, Dwight Horne

Computer Science and Engineering Theses and Dissertations

In the Prom Problem (TPP), Alice wishes to attend a school dance with Bob and needs a risk-free, privacy preserving way to find out whether Bob shares that same wish. If not, no one should know that she inquired about it, not even Bob. TPP represents a special class of matchmaking challenges, augmenting the properties of privacy-enhanced matchmaking, further requiring fairness and support for identity linked wishes (ILW) – wishes involving specific identities that are only valid if all involved parties have those same wishes.

The Horne-Nair (HN) protocol was proposed as a solution to TPP along with a …