/ Minetada Osano / Associate Professor
/ Alexander P. Vazhenin / Assistant Professor
The Software Engineering Laboratory aims to integrate new algebraic and formal techniques with emerging software engineering design methodology in order to solve practical problems of software development and maintenance while making effective use of software tools and engineering practice. The development of software systems is now regarded as among the most complex tasks performed by humankind. The problems due to the scale of this complexity affect the costs and time expended on the construction of software systems. After being built, software systems may be unreliable, difficult to use and, even most seriously, their maintenance and evolution are generally frought with unforeseen costs and peril. These problems, together with ever-increasing demand for software systems, comprise the software crisis. Our work spans the frame from requirements capture, design and specification to software maintenance, re-use and evolution.
Lab members lead the Framework for Advanced Software Techniques Research Group, a cooperative project with the Information Systems Laboratory and others. Part of the research aims to develop maintenance process models in order to create a software maintenance environment to recover higher level documentation of existing software systems to bring them into a CASE database. With this mechanism, existing software systems will benefit from forward engineering tools provided by the CASE environment as they are maintained. Sophisticated mathematical methods in our Algebraic Engineering approach to software systems provide a foundation for the object-oriented paradigm and are now being applied in a variety of settings. Dr. Capretz's COMFORM software maintenance environment has been implemented in prototype form on PC, and we are now applying the algebraic engineering formalism to automatic form manipulation in maintenance system management for further software leverage.
The laboratory conducts the Software Engineering Seminar providing the university community with information on current software engineering research, practice and tools.
Student research in the lab focused on Computational Morphogenesis, Advanced System Administration, Energy and the Environment, and Genetic Algorithms and Adaptive Systems. Lab members promoted the general university computing environment as experts on various help lists, and through the installation and maintenance of various common-use software. This year the SE lab obtained additionally nine powerful Sparc workstations, five personal computers, various printers and CASE tools.
Prof. A. Vazhenin provides investigations related to research and development a multimedia programming technology, WEB-based programming tools as well as high-precision computations. A multimedia technology is used for the interactive specification of application algorithms. This research is implemented together with the Distributed Processing Laboratory. The key point of such technology is the use of self-explanatory components in a film format. A film is a series of color stills supported, if necessary, by text and voice/sound. Each still is to represent a view (some features) of objects or processes. In our approach, each method is considered as a plan of actions for solving a problem. To test our approach, we consider various computational methods and prepare knowledge of these methods in the film format. Matrix computations are under our special attention. They are the heart of most applications in scientific computing. The great attention is paid to the special visual language that is oriented to input and verify arithmetic/logical expressions, as well as special user-oriented interface using multimedia icons and high-level program keyboards.
The other investigations are directed to research and development of basic elements of the WWW-oriented Workplace of Applied Programmer (W4AP). From the user's viewpoint, this workplace represents an application-oriented virtual machine being accessible via standard WEB-browsers. This means that the hardware/software features of the W4AP server should be hidden from the applied user. The process of the research implementation is based on using modern technologies like object-oriented programming, clustering computational and multimedia resources, networking as well as parallel, distributed and client/server platforms and Internet Computing. The created system should also have the high-level of security because of the high risk of Internet-applications. The proposed approach allows to increase application programmer productivity, support parallel program transparency, and provide accessibility of parallel computers to large user populations. To imvolve this approach in the teaching process, investigations are also implemented in the framework of the SCCP-project.
The Super Precision Parallel AriTHmetic (SPARTH-approach) provides possibilities that computing system can be convenient for simple and flexible controlling of the variable word length, natural handling errors and intervals, automatic verifying of results, etc. The guaranteed result accuracy for an acceptable time is obtained by using the multi-precision arithmetic, dynamically changed length of operands, and parallel processing. In this research, we investigate the high-precision visual language (SPARTH-Visual) and object-oriented SPARTH++ as well as high-level human/computer interface to input and verify high-precision operators. The SPARTH-library should be included into environment of the W4AP-server.
Refereed Journal Papers
A new multimedia programming paradigm is presented. It is based on a system of micro- and macro-icons representing self-explanatory software components in a film format. A film is a series of color stills supported, if necessary, by text and sound. Each still is to represent a view of objects or processes. Each film is to represent a multiple view (an extended set of dynamic and/or static features) of objects or processes. A self-explanatory film means that the associated stills are organized and presented in such a way that the semantic richness of a computational scheme is clearly brought out. Icons and films are acquired in a net-accessible database. The user should not study them in advance. The film management system provides simple access to database items and modes to manipulate films. In this paper we explain where the database items are taken from and how the self-explanatory features of items are reached. We also describe how these items can be used for multimedia representation of methods and data and for programming users' algorithmic ideas. In addition, some technical details related to the film management system, rendering engines used for displaying various features of the software components, and the icon language are presented. A special attention is paid to how computational formulas can be attached to a film.
Refereed Proceeding Papers
We describe techniques for a multimedia representation of matrix computations based on filmification of application methods and data. The multimedia representation is related to special-purpose pictures and animations rendering intermediate/final results of computation and schemes of corresponding computational methods. To support rendering data, a multimedia interface and matrix filtration and matrix scaling techniques are used. To support rendering computational schemes, a film technology is used. Within the framework of this technology, self-explained series of frames, an interface for formula attachment, a program management subsystem as well as tools for data manipulating are discussed.
A new approach for the preparation of educational materials is considered. It is based on self-explanatory components being created in a film format. The components provide and support well- and intuitively-defined interpretive procedures for multimedia representation of methods and data. A few levels of visual (multimedia) expression compaction are used to keep materials rather small and easily learnable. In this paper we describe our idea of self-explanatory components for the representation of computational methods and data. Three rendering engines used for displaying various features of the components are also considered.
A new multimedia programming paradigm is considered. It is based on a system of micro- and macro-icons (composite pictures) representing self-explanatory software components in a film format. Icons and films are collected in a special database. The user should not study them in advance. In this paper we explain where the database items are taken from and how the self-explanatory features of items are reached.
Important issues are discussed of visual programming technology called VIM. This technology is based on filmification of application methods. It defines set of multimedia objects in multi-dimensional space-time, and a partial order of scanning of these elements. An approach using hierarchical organization of multimedia VIM-objects is described. These objects have possibilities in both performing operations on multimedia/visual data, and forming the final executable code. Software includes subsystems manipulating with VIM-objects like node, structure, frame, and film. It provides also an automatic generation of VIM-program being produced according to the film specification and formulas being attached by the user during human/computer dialogue.
Academic Activities