29,552 research outputs found
Policy Enforcement with Proactive Libraries
Software libraries implement APIs that deliver reusable functionalities. To
correctly use these functionalities, software applications must satisfy certain
correctness policies, for instance policies about the order some API methods
can be invoked and about the values that can be used for the parameters. If
these policies are violated, applications may produce misbehaviors and failures
at runtime. Although this problem is general, applications that incorrectly use
API methods are more frequent in certain contexts. For instance, Android
provides a rich and rapidly evolving set of APIs that might be used incorrectly
by app developers who often implement and publish faulty apps in the
marketplaces. To mitigate this problem, we introduce the novel notion of
proactive library, which augments classic libraries with the capability of
proactively detecting and healing misuses at run- time. Proactive libraries
blend libraries with multiple proactive modules that collect data, check the
correctness policies of the libraries, and heal executions as soon as the
violation of a correctness policy is detected. The proactive modules can be
activated or deactivated at runtime by the users and can be implemented without
requiring any change to the original library and any knowledge about the
applications that may use the library. We evaluated proactive libraries in the
context of the Android ecosystem. Results show that proactive libraries can
automati- cally overcome several problems related to bad resource usage at the
cost of a small overhead.Comment: O. Riganelli, D. Micucci and L. Mariani, "Policy Enforcement with
Proactive Libraries" 2017 IEEE/ACM 12th International Symposium on Software
Engineering for Adaptive and Self-Managing Systems (SEAMS), Buenos Aires,
Argentina, 2017, pp. 182-19
A heuristic-based approach to code-smell detection
Encapsulation and data hiding are central tenets of the object oriented paradigm. Deciding what data and behaviour to form into a class and where to draw the line between its public and private details can make the difference between a class that is an understandable, flexible and reusable abstraction and one which is not. This decision is a difficult one and may easily result in poor encapsulation which can then have serious implications for a number of system qualities. It is often hard to identify such encapsulation problems within large software systems until they cause a maintenance problem (which is usually too late) and attempting to perform such analysis manually can also be tedious and error prone. Two of the common encapsulation problems that can arise as a consequence of this decomposition process are data classes and god classes. Typically, these two problems occur together – data classes are lacking in functionality that has typically been sucked into an over-complicated and domineering god class. This paper describes the architecture of a tool which automatically detects data and god classes that has been developed as a plug-in for the Eclipse IDE. The technique has been evaluated in a controlled study on two large open source systems which compare the tool results to similar work by Marinescu, who employs a metrics-based approach to detecting such features. The study provides some valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the two approache
NLP2Code: Code Snippet Content Assist via Natural Language Tasks
Developers increasingly take to the Internet for code snippets to integrate
into their programs. To save developers the time required to switch from their
development environments to a web browser in the quest for a suitable code
snippet, we introduce NLP2Code, a content assist for code snippets. Unlike
related tools, NLP2Code integrates directly into the source code editor and
provides developers with a content assist feature to close the vocabulary gap
between developers' needs and code snippet meta data. Our preliminary
evaluation of NLP2Code shows that the majority of invocations lead to code
snippets rated as helpful by users and that the tool is able to support a wide
range of tasks.Comment: tool demo video available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-gaVYtCznI; to appear as a tool demo paper
at ICSME 2017 (https://icsme2017.github.io/
De-ossifying the Internet Transport Layer : A Survey and Future Perspectives
ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions and comments.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Raising the Datagram API to Support Transport Protocol Evolution
Some application developers can wield huge resources to build
new transport protocols, for these developers the present UDP
Socket API is perfectly fine. They have access to large test
beds and sophisticated tools. Many developers do not have these
resources. This paper presents a new high-level Datagram API
that is for everyone else, this has an advantage of offering a
clear evolutionary path to support new requirements. This new
API is needed to move forward the base of the system, allowing
developers with limited resources to evolve their applications
while accessing new network services
Overcoming Language Dichotomies: Toward Effective Program Comprehension for Mobile App Development
Mobile devices and platforms have become an established target for modern
software developers due to performant hardware and a large and growing user
base numbering in the billions. Despite their popularity, the software
development process for mobile apps comes with a set of unique, domain-specific
challenges rooted in program comprehension. Many of these challenges stem from
developer difficulties in reasoning about different representations of a
program, a phenomenon we define as a "language dichotomy". In this paper, we
reflect upon the various language dichotomies that contribute to open problems
in program comprehension and development for mobile apps. Furthermore, to help
guide the research community towards effective solutions for these problems, we
provide a roadmap of directions for future work.Comment: Invited Keynote Paper for the 26th IEEE/ACM International Conference
on Program Comprehension (ICPC'18
- …