Software Evolution Lab Projects for Undergraduates and Graduate Students

Software Evolution Lab Projects for Undergraduate and Graduate Students

I'm looking for energetic people who love to design and build systems. I'm interested in programming tools for understanding and visualizing the (object-oriented) design and software architecture of large systems so they can be evolved. I can often provide financial support for graduate students or exceptionally qualified undergraduates.

There are several kinds of projects (examples are listed at the bottom of this page):

Building or enhancing software tools, including graphical visualization tools
Using software tools: system development or case studies
Building on or enhancing ActiveCampus
Automating the CSE department: system development or enhancement

Many of these projects involve object-oriented design and technology, program visualization, compiler technology or software engineering. Projects are for both undergraduates (e.g., CSE 199) and graduates (e.g., CSE 293). Many of these projects could also serve as the basis for a Master's thesis. If you are pursuing a PhD, these projects are only a starting point. Come see me for additional projects. As an example of a recent project that came from this page, see Walter Korman's Elbereth project page.

For more in-depth information about these projects, you may wish to look at my lab's research page, which provides information about current research projects and recent papers. But most importantly, don't hesitate to drop me e-mail or drop by and see me in APM 4210.

Beneficial Skills

Proficiency with Java, C/C++, Tcl/Tk, or Common Lisp programming languages; proficiency with lex/flex, yacc/bison compiler tools.

Beneficial Background

Some background in one or more these areas is useful:

System Construction: Design and construction of large, complicated software systems.
Compilers: Classes such as CSE 131B or CSE 231.
Software Engineering: Classes such as CSE 110, CSE210, and CSE 218.

Example Tools Projects

Aspect Browser projects
- Integrate the Nebulous component into the JBuilder or Forte IDE.
- Design a plug-in mechanism to ease adding new inference tools.
- Add new aspect inference tools to AB or enhance the existing ones, e.g.,
  - computing redundancies
  - importing raw data
- Add an aspect agent to Nebulous or the Emacs editor.
- Add an "aspect metrics" feature.
- Integrate StarTool features (see below).
Enhance the graphical StarTool programming tools:
- Retarget to C++, FORTRAN, or Java using our simple retargeting interface.
- Create a version that is not language-specific (e.g., like grep). See the searching tools project below, as well.
- Add support for editing program source.
Searching tools
- Design and implement a ``classifying grep'' that not only matches patterns in your code but classifies/clusters them according to their similarity. See here for an example of what I'm talking about, but this tool has to parse.
- Design and implement a lightweight grep-like search tool that uses parsing or token-level matching rather than character-level lexical analysis. See the CAWK paper for examples of similar tools, or here for something really similar.

Restructuring/Refactoring
- Design and implement a simple refactoring (restructuring) tool for Java.
- Add a simple restructuring capability to the graphical C star diagram reengineering tool or Java star diagram reengineering tool (Elbereth)

Figure out how to visualize design problems, perhaps using design patterns, in object-oriented software.
Graphically display relationships amongst yacc/bison grammar rules.
Write a dead-code detector for Java.
Fast, scalable data-flow analysis
- Parallelize the Icaria/Ponder dataflow framework on the nifty Tera parallel computer at SDSC or a network of workstations, in particular the C program slicer.
- Implement advanced dataflow analyses on top of Icaria/Ponder dataflow framework.

Redesign a network application or service so that it can tolerate disconnected operation without significant loss of performance or functionality.

Example Development and Case Study Projects

Redesign/Refactor parts of a large system using one of our graphical StarTools.
Investigate the effectiveness and performance of our program slicing tool for C.
Apply Jim Hayes's technique for making graphical program tools retargetable to another tool.
Analyze the modularity of an open source system like Mozilla or Apache.

Example CSE Automation Projects

Design and implement an application for completing a grant budget, travel voucher, or purchase order.
Write an application for aiding class scheduling and schedule publishing.