Programming
Languages, Environments, and Automatic Software Engineering Laboratory
The PLEASE Lab conducts active research in areas
including
programming languages, automatic debugging, and component based
software
engineering.
While new software languages and environments,
such as
Java, offer rich support for software introspection, manipulation, and
evolution,
there is still much traditional software that is compiled into platform
specific
executables and runs in a context that does not easily o er such
luxuries.
Yet even in these environments, mechanisms such as dynamic link
libraries
do over the potential of building more control over the deployed and
running
system, and can o er opportunities for supporting dynamic evolution of
such
systems.
This project is our initial explorations into
building such support. Our approach is to extend the GNU open-source
dynamic loader to give the deployer control over the configuration of
the system, and to be able to dynamically evolve that system.
Applications of this capability include runtime monitoring, dynamic
analysis, and online program evolution.
Unicon is the world's first goal-directed object-oriented language. It is
described extensively over at Source Forge, and benefits from the work of
collaborators from many countries.
Unicron: a Virtual Computer Science Community (Jeffery et al)
Unicron is a modern 3D cartoon-like interactive environment in which users can
collaborate on software development and computer science education
tasks. The first Unicron implementation will model NMSU's computer
science department, with classrooms, labs, hallways and offices.
We suggest to proceed further
towards design
of intelligent debugging tools. The approach is based on precise
program behavior
models in terms ov event traces and debugging rules and strategies
supported
by debugging automation tools will be essentially tools for performing
computations
over event traces.
One of our first endeavours is to
come up with an Encyclopedia of Automatic Debugging, comprising both
textual and formal descriptions of automatically detectable generic
bugs. As a target language for our research we are using the Unicon
programming language. A first paper on UFO is available at
http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/TechReports/2002/004.pdf
A substantial collection of links to the current
research in debugging autmation is available at the Algorithmic and
Automatic Debugging page.
PLEASE Students
The lab depends on the research contributions of graduate and
undergraduate students. Here are some of them:
Current Students
Former Students
| Keshava Reddy Kottapally |
a JavaSpace-based framework for mobile agents |
| Naomi Martinez |
very high level 3D graphics for Unicon |
| Scott Underwood |
automatic debugging using UFO |
PLEASE Seminars
The PLEASE lab holds casual seminars on a variety of software
engineering topics.
| Date |
Speaker |
Title |
Abstract |
| 6/17/04 |
Sumant Tambe
|
Dynamic Dynamic Loader (DDL) Framework Architecture |
We are constructing an extensible,
tool-plugin framework to support program monitoring, introspection and
evolution. This talk described the architecture of the DDL framework along with how tools and
Redirection Library interact using Redirection Library
API to carry out
their tasks. |
| 3/12/04 |
Dr. Jonathan Cook
|
Table-based Redirection
|
Dr. Cook explained concept of table-based redirection and
what needs to be done to support it in DDL infrastructure. |
| More seminars to be added. |
Seminars in year 2002
Last Updated: July 18, 2004