PCODA 2010

5th International Workshop on Program Comprehension through Dynamic Analysis

Context

PCODA 2010 builds upon the four previous editions of PCODA in 2005, 2006 and 2007 and 2008. These past four 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 2010 and we would like to invite you to submit papers and join the workshop in Boston, MA, USA.

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 in October 2010, co-located with the 17th International Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE2010) in Boston, MA, USA.

Important Dates

• Abstract submission: Aug 13 Aug 28
• Submission deadline: Aug 20 Aug 28
• Notification: Sep 10
• Camera ready: Sep 24
• Workshop date: Oct 14

Proceedings

Proceedings can be downloaded here [pdf, 2.2MB].

Tentative Program

08:30 - 08:40 Welcome and Introductions

08:40 - 09:10 Keynote Speech: Reading a Trace like a Story by Abdelwahab Hamou-Lhadj

09:10 - 09:35 XPath-Based Query Language for Trace Analysis by Oleksandr Panchenko, Alexander Koglin, Johannes Bohnet and Alexander Zeier

09:35 - 10:00 Exploiting Dynamic Information in IDEs Eases Software Maintenance by David Röthlisberger

10:00 - 10:30 Break

10:30 - 10:55 Can we use network analysis methods to discover functionally important method calls in software systems by considering dynamic analysis data? by Anjan Pakhira and Peter Andras

10:55 - 11:20 Reducing the Performance Overhead of Dynamic Analysis through Custom-made Agents by Tobias Gutzmann and Welf Lowe

11:20 - 11:55 Panel Discussion: Future of Dynamic Analysis for Program Comprehension

11:55 - 12:00 Wrap-up

Organization

• Orla Greevy
• Abdelwahab Hamou-Lhadj
• David Röthlisberger
• Andy Zaidman

Program Committee

• Constantinos Constantinides, Concordia University, Canada
• Simon Denier, INRIA Lille - Nord Europe
• Abdelouahed Gherbi, École de technologie supérieure (ETS), Canada
• Tudor Girba, Netstyle, Switzerland
• Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, École Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada
• Adrian Kuhn, University of Bern, Switzerland
• Adrian Lienhard, Netstyle, Switzerland
• David Lo, School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University
• Oscar Nierstrasz, Institute of Computer Science (IAM) of the University of Bern
• Tamar Richner, Mobiliar, Switzerland
• Wim De Pauw, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, IBM
• Heidar Pirzadeh, Concordia 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. Cross 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 (see the IEEE website here. Submit everything through EasyChair.

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
• PCODA 2007, Vancouver, BC, Canada
• PCODA 2008, Antwerp, Belgium

-- AndyZaidman - 21 May 2010