11555065
Reverse Engineering Scripting Language Extensions
Software systems are often written in more than one programming language. During development, programmers need to understand not only the dependencies among code in a particular language, but dependencies that span languages. In this paper, we focus on the problem of scripting languages (such as Perl) and their extension mechanisms to calling functions with a C interface. Our general approach involves building a fact extractor for each scripting language, by hooking into the language interpreter itself. The produced facts conform to a common schema, and an analyzer is extended to recognize the cross-language dependencies. We present how these statically discovered dependencies can be represented, visualized, and explored in the Eclipse environment
13402065
JRefleX: towards supporting small student software teams
The success of a software development project depends on the technical competency of the development team, the quality of the tools they use, and the project-management decisions they make during the software lifecycle. Instructors of software-engineering courses that involve small project teams are often overwhelmed with the task of monitoring the progress of multiple teams. Without adequate monitoring and advice on best practices, problems in the team's process or the developed product may go unnoticed until it is too late to be easily fixed. This paper introduces the JRefleX environment, with components built upon Eclipse, to support the education of small software teams.
37272834
Issues in Integrating Schemas for Reverse Engineering
Abstract After adopting a standard format such as GXL to exchange graphs of artifacts for reverse engineering tools, the next logical step is to define an appropriate schema for the information contained in the graphs. Various researchers have developed schemas, but in practice, it is still hard to choose an existing one. Typically, researchers end up needing to implement new schemas for the particulars of their tools or case studies. In the paper, we discuss a potential scenario for integrating schemas, with the aim of improving the interoperability among reverse engineering tools.
14588802
Lessons learned in Web site architectures for public utilities
Web sites are complex systems. They evolve all the time and are hard to understand and be maintained. This paper discusses some issues and challenges related to Web site development and maintenance. An evolutionary three-tier Web site architecture is presented based on our experiences in building and maintaining Web-based public utility management systems. In the current public utility domain, the coexistence of regulated and deregulated markets and diverse business rules bring many challenges to software engineers to build extensible and maintainable Web-based systems. New technologies provide opportunities to meet these requirements. However, how to adopt new technologies appropriately becomes another issue. Some design and implementation tradeoffs, as well as some lessons learned are considered in this paper.
42165633
On the business value and technical challenges of adopting Web services
This paper provides a balanced perspective of the business value and technical challenges of adopting Web services. Technology adoption is a continual challenge for both tool developers and enterprise users. Web services are a prime example of an emerging technology that is fraught with adoption issues. Part of the problem is separating marketing hype from business reality. Web services are network-accessible interfaces to application functionality. They are built using Internet technologies such as XML and standard protocols such as SOAP. The adoption issues related to Web services are complex and multifaceted. For example, determining whether this technology is a fundamental advance, rather than something old under a new name, requires technical depth, business acumen, and considerable historical knowledge of past developments. A sample problem from the health care industry is used to illustrate some of the adoption issues.
29660826
Issues in accessing Web sites from mobile devices
Mobile devices such as PDAs and cellular phones that offer Internet access are proliferating. Due to the many unique characteristics of these devices, such as their small screen size and limited network connectivity, existing Web sites may have to undergo significant evolution to support this type of mobile client. The paper outlines some of the issues in accessing Web sites from mobile devices, such as the Apple Newton, the Compaq iPAQ, and WAP-enabled cell phones. These issues are based on our experiences as both users of mobile devices and as content providers.
17291567
Understanding software systems using reverse engineering technology perspectives from the Rigi project
Software engineering research has focused mainly on software construction and has neglected software maintenance and evolution. Proposed is a shift in research from synthesis to analysis. Reverse engineering is introduced as a possible solution to program understanding and software analysis. Presented is reverse engineering technology developed as part of the Rigi project. The Rigi approach involves the identification of software artifacts in the subject system and the aggregation of these artifacts to form more abstract architectural models. Reported are some analyses on the source code of SQL/DS, performed by the authors while visiting the Program Understanding project at the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies in Toronto.
17549193
Accurate 3-D Motion Tracking with an Application to Super-Resolution
Many of the existing image processing applications, in particular the construction of super-resolution videos, require an accurate high-speed motion tracking algorithm. This paper proposes an efficient recursive approach that recovers 3D motion from a stereo image sequence with high precision based on the trifocal tensor. In the computation process, neither the 3D structure of the scene nor its reconstruction is necessary. The validity of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated by applying it to upgrade the resolution of real stereo images. Empirical comparisons show that our novel approach outperformed traditional work in terms of both the accuracy of motion estimation and the quality of super-resolved images
1805653
Domain-retargetable reverse engineering
A user programmable approach to reverse engineering is described. The approach uses a scripting language that enables users to write their own routines for these activities, making the system domain-retargetable. The environment supported by this programmable approach subsumes existing reverse engineering systems by being able to simulate facets of each one and provides a smooth transition from semi-automatic to automatic reverse engineering.<<ETX>>
7779937
Fundamental Properties of the Core Matching Functions for Information Retrieval
Traditional benchmarking methods for information retrieval (IR) are based on experimental performance evaluation. Although the metrics precision and recall can measure the performance of a system, it cannot assess the functionality of the underlying model. Recently, a theory of “aboutness” has been studied and used for reasoning about functional of IR models. Latest research shows the functionality of an IR model is largely determined by its retrieval mechanism, i.e., the matching function; in particular, containment and overlapping (either with or without a threshold value) are core IR matching functions. The objective of this paper is to model the containment and overlapping matching functions within an aboutness-based framework, reason and analyze the inherent functionality of them from an abstract and theoretical viewpoint. Separate aboutness relations for containment, pureoverlapping (i.e. without threshold) and threshold-overlapping are defined, and the sets of properties supported by them are derived and analyzed respectively. These three relations can be used to explain the functionality supported by an IR system and their effects to its performance; and moreover, they provide the design guidelines for new IR systems.
14489674
Automatic lyrics alignment for Cantonese popular music
From lyrics-display on electronic music players and Karaoke videos to surtitles for live Chinese opera performance, one feature is common to all these everyday functionalities temporal: synchronization of the written text and its corresponding musical phrase. Our goal is to automate the process of lyrics alignment, a procedure which, to date, is still handled manually in the Cantonese popular song (Cantopop) industry. In our system, a vocal signal enhancement algorithm is developed to extract vocal signals from a CD recording in order to detect the onsets of the syllables sung and to determine the corresponding pitches. The proposed system is specifically designed for Cantonese, in which the contour of the musical melody and the tonal contour of the lyrics must match perfectly. With this prerequisite, we use a dynamic time warping algorithm to align the lyrics. The robustness of this approach is supported by experiment results. The system was evaluated with 70 twenty-second music segments and most samples have their lyrics aligned correctly.