CS 6/73903 Software Visualization

Department of Computer Science

Kent State University

 

Instructor:           Dr. Jonathan I. Maletic

Office Hours:       MW 2:00-3:00pm (before class if no colloquium or meeting)

Office:                  MSB 218

Phone:                  330-672-9038

Email:                  jmaletic@cs.kent.edu

URL:                    http://www.cs.kent.edu/~jmaletic/

 

 

Time:                    TR 4:45-6:00pm

Class Room:        MSB 276

 

Course URL:       http://www.cs.kent.edu/~jmaletic/cs63903/

 

Prerequisites:

CS 7/63901 Software Engineering or permission.

Students must have strong software development skills and have keen interests in one or all of software engineering, information visualization, HCI, graphics, or cognitive psychology.

 

Course Description:

Software visualization draws on aspects of program comprehension, reverse engineering, program analysis, and information visualization techniques.  The course will focus on visualization methods and techniques that support various software maintenance and engineering tasks.  The investigation of methods that go beyond the use of current diagrammatic notations for software development will be undertaken.  Both the static and dynamic nature of software systems will be investigated.

 

Course Topics:

Introduction and overview of software visualization

A reference model for software visualization

Taxonomies of software visualization (Price 93, 98, Roman 93, Myers 90, Stasko 98, Maletic 02)

Static analysis methods to support visualization methods

Visualizing source code for debugging, editing, understanding

Visualizing design level information, relationships among modules and other static structures (control flow, data flow, etc)

Visualizing dynamic behaviors

Supporting reverse engineering, development and other maintenance task

Software visualization systems: (SeeSoft, ShriMP, Jinsight, Traantula, sv3D, IMSOvision, etc)

 

References:

A reading list will be posted on the course web page.

Reading will primarily consist of conference and journal articles

 

Course Format and Grading:

The course will be run as a research forum.  A number of introductory lectures will be given on program analysis and information visualization.  Then students will present a number of selected research papers on the issues of software visualization.  Discussion of the papers and presentations is a vital and required component of the course.  Approximately 40 research papers will be covered during the term.  All students must read each paper and be able to ask questions and make insightful comments about the material.

 

Students will be evaluated on daily class participation, presentations, a small number of paper reviews, and a course project.  The course project will be substantial and can include development of a software prototype, empirical experiments, or in-depth surveys.  Projects can be developed in small groups (2-3 students) and must reflect the theme of the course.  Topics of the projects will be developed in conjunction with the instructor.

 

Grades will be calculated as:

Daily Class Participation 20%

Paper Presentations: 20%

Reviews and Final Exam 5%

Project Presentation/Poster 5%

Project 50%

 

Scale: A: 100-90, B: 89-80, C: 79-70, D: 69-60, F: 59- 0

 

Other Notes:

Lecture is the student’s responsibility, if class is missed; it is in the students best interests to get the notes from a fellow student.

Any modifications to the syllabus will be made on the course URL.

Please turn off all wireless phones, beepers, pagers, radios, the sound on all laptops and PDAs, and any other noise making devises.

Copying or plagiarism of any type will not be tolerated and will be dealt with in accordance to Kent State University's policy on cheating and plagiarism described in the student handbook.  You should read the Department’s policy on this issue: http://www.cs.kent.edu/programs/grad/acad-dishonesty.htm

Special accommodations for students with disabilities: In accordance with the University policy, if you have a documented disability and require accommodations to obtain equal access in this course, please contact the instructor at the beginning of the semester or when given an assignment for which an accommodation is required.  Students with disabilities should verify their eligibility through the Office of Student Disability Services (SDS) in Michael Schwartz Student Services Center (672-3391).

 

Last updated: 01/11/2005