Erica Mealy (nee Glynn)Ph.D. Student
Division of Systems and Software Engineering (SSE) Research
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Research
PhD Topic
An integrated approach to semi-automated Software Refactoring
Software evolution can account for up to 75% of costs associated with developing software systems. Software refactoring is a process of improving internal quality of software systems while reducing the costs associated with evolution. Current research into support for refactoring focuses on a fully manual approach, automation of only a portion of the process, or inadequately designed automation of the entire process.
Full automation of any process involving human users, whilst desired by the operators, has negative effects on a users understanding of the system, and causes mistrust and over-trust, deskilling associated with removing tasks that formerly develop understanding/expertise, and issues with job satisfaction and performance related to minimum levels of interaction/stimulation.
In this project we will elicit user requirements for software refactoring support, and design and develop techniques and a tool that will appropriately support refactoring processes. The developed support will focus on providing automation that is balanced with maintaining user awareness and involvement. Techniques will be developed to enable the development of support that is currently not possible/available for software refactoring.
These techniques will include new means to assess potential candidates for refactoring, determine what refactoring transformation need application, and ways in which these candidates can be reported to the software refactorer. The techniques will use an integrated approach, common in software development environments, that is not yet available in software refactoring tools. The support will be designed and built using requirements, with the development of an experimental evaluation protocol and the implementation of a pilot study to evaluate the developed support also being conducted.
We predict we will find that current tools and techniques do no fulfil user requirements by providing the minimum acceptable level of support and that the introduction of support aligned with user requirements will reduce costs associated with evolution, enable refactoring to be more widely used and provide better quality software systems.
Advisors:Associate Professor Paul Strooper
Associate Professor David Carrington
Publications
Program Analysis tools in UQ*
- E. Glynn. Program Analysis tools in UQ*, Honours Thesis, School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, October 2003. (PDF)
- E. Glynn, I. J. Hayes, and A. MacDonald. Integration of generic program analysis tools into a software development environment. In Vladimir Estivill-Castro, editor, Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Australasian Computer Science Conference (ACSC2005), Newcastle, NSW, Australia, January/February 2005, volume 38 of CRPIT, pages 249258. Australian Computer Society, 2005. (PDF)
Modernization and Evolution
- A. Gerber, E. Glynn, M. Lawley, A. MacDonald, and K. Raymond. Architecture Driven Modernization(ADM): Knowledge Discovery Metamodel (KDM) Initial Submission, OMG Submission admtf/04-04-01, Object Management Group, 2004. (PDF, RFP document).
- A. Gerber, E. Glynn, A. MacDonald, M. Lawley, and K. Raymond. Modelling for knowledge discovery, In Proceedings of the Workshop on Model-driven Evolution of Legacy Systems(MELS), pages 1-6. IEEE Computer Society Press, 2004. (PDF)
- E. Glynn. Worm to WonderWorm: A Case Study in Evolution, DSTC Research Symposium, August, 2004.
Software refactoring
- E. Mealy and P. Strooper Evaluating software refactoring tool support, In Proceedings of the Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC), 18th - 21st April 2006, Sydney, Australia, pages 331-340. IEEE Computer Society Press, 2006. (PDF)
- E. Mealy, D. Carrington, P. Strooper and P. Wyeth Improving Usability of Software Refactoring Tools, In Proceedings of the Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC), 10th - 13th April 2007, Melbourne, Australia, pages 1-10. IEEE Computer Society Press, 2007. (PDF)
Appendix A: Initial Guideline sets (PDF)
Appendix B: Categorised Guideline set (PDF)
Appendix C: Final Guideline set (PDF)
Appendix D: Usability Requirements ( PDF Temporarily unavailable)
Appendix E: Usability Evaluation (PDF)
- E. Mealy. Holistic Semi-Automated Software Refactoring, Proceedings of 1st workshop on Refactoring tools, ECOOP 07, pages 38-39, 31st July, 2007.
- E. Mealy. Engineering Usability for Software Refactoring Tools, Proceedings of 1st workshop on Refactoring tools, ECOOP 07, pages 40-41, 31st July, 2007.
Work In Progress
- E. Mealy, D. Carrington, P. Strooper Usability Engineering for Software Refactoring Tools, Journal of Systems and Software, Elsevier (invited paper)
Professional Activities
Conferences
- Workshops Chair,Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC) 2005.
http://aswec2005.itee.uq.edu.au/
Sun Microsystems Research Labs
Graduate Student Internship
- Dates: 3rd December, 2004 to 8th April, 2005. - Research Group: Squawk Compiler (Java compiler written in Java for very small devices)
- Project: Bytecode Optimisation
Sun Microsystems Research Labs Down Under
Graduate Student Internship
- Dates: 30th July, 2007 to 1st February, 2008. - Research Group: Static Program Analysis
- Project: Benchmark suite for static bug checking
Tutoring
- Semester 1, 2007:ENGG1000: Introduction to Professional Engineering - Educational Software Development Projects
ICTConnects@UQ
- Semester 2, 2006:
CSSE2003: Software Engineering Studio
- Semester 1, 2006:
ENGG1000: Introduction to Professional Engineering - Games Development (Software) Projects
- Semester 2, 2005:
CSSE2003: Software Engineering Studio
- Semester 2, 2004:
COMP2801: Software Engineering Studio
- Semester 1, 2004:
COMP3401/7402: Compilers and Interpreters
COMP2500/7908: Programming in the Large