Construction of Domain Models By
Recovering Concepts from Source Code
Jerry Gannod
Computer Science & Systems Analysis
Miami University, Oxford Ohio
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
3:00 PM 110 Purdy-Kresge Library
Abstract:
Software being constructed today is increasingly more complex than the systems built as recently as five years ago. At the same time, the engineers’ mental capacity continues to be limited to about seven distinct pieces of information at a time. Improvements like the widespread use of UML have led to more abstraction in software designs, however when dealing with reverse engineering, the artifacts of study continue to be the software codes. As a matter of practice, the well-known concept assignment problem (e.g., the problem of identifying abstract concepts embedded in software) is still being solved at the line-by-line level of analyzing source code. As software developers begin to take advantage of technologies such as the semantic web and other ontology-based methodologies, the introduction of abstraction in as-built software designs will allow the engineer to move farther away from the details of the system, increasing his ability to see the role that domain level concepts play in the system. In this talk, I will present a technique that facilitates introduction of abstraction in class diagrams based on their relationship to the core concepts in the domain. This approach can simplify the process of reverse engineering and design recovery, as well as other activities that require a mapping to domain level concepts.
Biography:
Dr. Gerald (Jerry) Gannod is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Systems Analysis at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. His research interests include service-oriented computing, software product lines, software reverse engineering, formal methods for software development, and software architecture.
Dr. Gannod received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Michigan State University in 1998 under the direction of Dr. Betty H.C. Cheng. Jerry's industrial experience includes a stint with the Unisys Corporation and IBM.
Dr. Gannod's projects have been supported by NSF, NASA Langley, NASA IV&V Center, Intel and Motorola (via the Consortium for Embedded Systems), and the Institute for Manufacturing and Enterprise Systems.
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