A Survey of Software-Defined Networking: Past, Present, and Future of Programmable Networks

accepted in IEEE Communications Surveys & TutorialsInternational audienceThe idea of programmable networks has recently re-gained considerable momentum due to the emergence of the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm. SDN, often referred to as a ''radical new idea in networking'', promises to dramatically simplify network management and enable innovation through network programmability. This paper surveys the state-of-the-art in programmable networks with an emphasis on SDN. We provide a historic perspective of programmable networks from early ideas to recent developments. Then we present the SDN architecture and the OpenFlow standard in particular, discuss current alternatives for implementation and testing of SDN-based protocols and services, examine current and future SDN applications, and explore promising research directions based on the SDN paradigm

Approximation and relaxation of semantic web path queries

Given the heterogeneity of complex graph data on the web, such as RDF linked data, it is likely that a user wishing to query such data will lack full knowledge of the structure of the data and of its irregularities. Hence, providing flexible querying capabilities that assist users in formulating their information seeking requirements is highly desirable. In this paper we undertake a detailed theoretical investigation of query approximation, query relaxation, and their combination, for this purpose. The query language we adopt comprises conjunctions of regular path queries, thus encompassing recent extensions to SPARQL to allow for querying paths in graphs using regular expressions (SPARQL 1.1). To this language we add standard notions of query approximation based on edit distance, as well as query relaxation based on RDFS inference rules. We show how both of these notions can be integrated into a single theoretical framework and we provide incremental evaluation algorithms that run in polynomial time in the size of the query and the data, returning answers in ranked order of their `distance' from the original query. We also combine for the first time these two disparate notions into a single `flex' operation that simultaneously applies both approximation and relaxation to a query conjunct, providing even greater flexibility for users, but still retaining polynomial time evaluation complexity and the ability to return query answers in ranked order

Code similarity and clone search in large-scale source code data

Software development is tremendously benefited from the Internet by having online code corpora that enable instant sharing of source code and online developer's guides and documentation. Nowadays, duplicated code (i.e., code clones) not only exists within or across software projects but also between online code repositories and websites. We call them "online code clones."' They can lead to license violations, bug propagation, and re-use of outdated code similar to classic code clones between software systems. Unfortunately, they are difficult to locate and fix since the search space in online code corpora is large and no longer confined to a local repository. This thesis presents a combined study of code similarity and online code clones. We empirically show that many code snippets on Stack Overflow are cloned from open source projects. Several of them become outdated or violate their original license and are possibly harmful to reuse. To develop a solution for finding online code clones, we study various code similarity techniques to gain insights into their strengths and weaknesses. A framework, called OCD, for evaluating code similarity and clone search tools is introduced and used to compare 34 state-of-the-art techniques on pervasively modified code and boiler-plate code. We also found that clone detection techniques can be enhanced by compilation and decompilation. Using the knowledge from the comparison of code similarity analysers, we create and evaluate Siamese, a scalable token-based clone search technique via multiple code representations. Our evaluation shows that Siamese scales to large-scale source code data of 365 million lines of code and offers high search precision and recall. Its clone search precision is comparable to seven state-of-the-art clone detection tools on the OCD framework. Finally, we demonstrate the usefulness of Siamese by applying the tool to find online code clones, automatically analyse clone licenses, and recommend tests for reuse