PCODA 2007

3rd International Workshop on Program Comprehension through Dynamic Analysis

Program

The program is available PCODA2007program.

Proceedings

Download here [pdf, 1.5 MB].

Context

PCODA 2007 builds upon the two previous editions of PCODA held in 2005 and 2006. These past two editions were very discussion-oriented workshops, where differences and similarities between the discussed techniques were highlighted, where general difficulties of using dynamic analysis were discussed and where possible future research directions became clear. We hope to continue this trend with PCODA 2007 and we would like to invite you to submit papers and join the workshop in Vancouver, Canada.

Overview

Without consistent or adequately complete documentation, maintainers are faced with the inevitable problem of understanding how the system is implemented prior to undertaking any maintenance task. Research into the discipline of program comprehension aims to reduce the impact of this problem; a real-life problem which studies have shown to be impacting software engineers in the sense that they tend to spend up to 50% of their time trying to comprehend the structure of a software system. PCODA focuses on program comprehension techniques that rely specifically on dynamic analysis

Topics of interest

Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to, the following:

• Program comprehension models
  • Theories and models for software comprehension based on dynamic analysis
  • Program comprehension processes and strategies involving dynamic analysis techniques
  • Research methodologies when setting up program comprehension experiments
• Techniques and tools
  • Applications of dynamic analysis techniques to program comprehension
  • Strengths and limitations of existing dynamic analysis techniques
  • Trace analysis and exploration techniques
  • Techniques for reducing the large size of run-time information
  • Hybrid analyses that involve both static and dynamic analysis
  • Dynamic analysis tools with an emphasis on program comprehension
  • Comparisons between existing tools and approachs
  • Dynamic analysis in the context of distributed systems
  • Dynamic analysis in the context of webservices (or service oriented architectures)
• Evaluation Techniques
  • Criteria for evaluating dynamic analysis techniques; setting up benchmark experiments
  • Experiments and case studies with a focus on program comprehension using dynamic analysis
  • Empirical effectiveness studies of tools and approaches

Dates & location

To be held on Monday October 29th, 2007, co-located with the 14th International Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE) in Vancouver, Canada.

Important Dates

• Submission: 10th September 2007
• Notification: 26th September 2007
• Camera ready: 12th October 2007 (send email to: a.e.zaidman@tudelft.nl)
• Workshop date: 29th October 2007

• Notification date is tentative and will be readjusted according to the WCRE 2007 early registration deadline, so that notification happens before the registration deadline!

Special issue

A special issue on the topic of dynamic analysis in reverse engineering will be published in the Journal on Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice (JSME) featuring the best papers of PCODA.

Organization

• Orla Greevy
• Abdelwahab Hamou-Lhadj
• Andy Zaidman

Program Committee

• Daniel Amyot, University of Ottawa, Canada
• Bas Cornelissen, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
• Wim De Pauw, IBM Research, USA
• Serge Demeyer, University of Antwerp, Belgium
• Arie van Deursen, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
• Tudor Girba, University of Bern, Switzerland
• Adrian Kuhn, University of Bern, Switzerland
• Leon Moonen, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
• Vassilios Tzerpos, York University, Canada

Workshop format

The workshop will be 1/2 day, discussion-oriented. Afterwards, each participant will be asked to formulate a short summary of the workshop (maximum 250 words), highlighting points of interest of his or her research. These summaries will be posted on a website (the URL will be determined later), so that possible collaborations will become visible.

Submission instructions

Be standard. There exists a lot of work on reengineering, which may give rise to some terminology conflicts. We encourage people to use the reengineering taxonomy defined in (E. J. Chikofsky and J. H. C. II. Reverse engineering and design recovery: A taxonomy, IEEE Software, 7(1):13–17, 1990.)

Be electronic. Submit your position paper in PDF, following the IEEE conference publication guidelines. Also, please include a text-only abstract in your email. Submit everything by e-mail to all of the following e-mail addresses abdelw@ece.concordia.ca, greevy@iam.unibe.ch and a.e.zaidman@tudelft.nl

Be short. Propose only one idea. We all know that you are a quality researcher with plenty of good ideas. Only, we have limited resources and we must focus. Please target five pages for your (position) papers.

Be innovative. It is okay to propose a recent idea that still has some unfinished sides to it. It is supposed to be a WORKshop, not a mini-conference. If you want to propose a crazy idea, introduce it in an extended abstract (1 page).

Be a rebel. Neglect these guidelines if you feel that your idea needs a special treatment in some way.

Previous editions

• PCODA 2005, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
• PCODA 2006, Benevento, Italy

-- AndyZaidman - 18 Oct 2007