Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
University of Victoria
$1,881.00
Leveraging historical project information to understand and support software maintenance and change activities
FY 2007-08
Summary
Software repositories (such as source control systems, archived communications between project personnel, and defect tracking systems) contain a wealth of historical information about the progress of software projects. For example, source control systems store changes to the code as development progresses and defect tracking systems follow the resolution of software defects. Practitioners actively use such information in ad-hoc manners to effectively manage their projects and develop high quality code; yet few software engineering researchers investigate enriching their current research methods and techniques with historical information. The long term goal of this research is to systematically uncover the potential and empirically explore the benefits of information stored in software repositories. This proposal will mine such historical information to understand and support software change activities. The recovered information will be integrated into tools, development environments and processes used by software practitioners to build high quality systems that are delivered within budget and on schedule. In particular, this research will create models to understand, predict and explain code change patterns (such as refactorings) in large projects over the short (inter-release) and long (across releases) term. Since practitioners require immediate and timely access to the most appropriate and knowledgeable person related to a piece of code or feature, this research will develop techniques and tools to support practitioners in effectively locating code experts (i.e. other developers who are most familiar with particular code sections). This proposal will as well explore improving the learning experience of junior students by creating automated code tutors to assist students in producing bug free code and to inform instructors about any difficulties students are having in applying recently taught concepts. All the proposed research will be validated through large empirical studies.
Program
Discovery Grants Program - Individual
Recipient
Location
British Columbia, Canada
Recipient Type
Academia
Type
Grant
Source
NSERC's Awards Data
As published
Application id
327521-2006
Name nom
Hassan, Ahmed
Department département
Computing, School of
Organization id
7
Institution établissement
University of Victoria
Province en
British Columbia
Province fr
Colombie-Britannique
Country en
CANADA
Country fr
CANADA
Fiscal year exercice financier
2007
Competition year année de concours
2006
Award amount
1881
Program id
RGPIN
Program name en
Discovery Grants Program - Individual
Program name fr
Programme de subventions à la découverte - individuelles
Group en
Discovery grants programs
Group fr
Programmes de subventions à la découverte
Committee code
330
Committee name en
Computing and Information Sciences - A
Committee name fr
Informatique - A
Area of application code
801
Area of application group en
Information and communication services
Area of application group fr
Services d'information et de télécommunications
Area of application en
Computer software
Area of application fr
Logiciel
Research subject code
2706
Research subject group en
Information technology
Research subject group fr
Technologie de l'information
Research subject en
Software engineering
Research subject fr
Génie logiciel
Partie
2
Nb partie
3
Application title
Leveraging historical project information to understand and support software maintenance and change activities
Keyword
NA
Application summary
Software repositories (such as source control systems, archived communications between project personnel, and defect tracking systems) contain a wealth of historical information about the progress of software projects. For example, source control systems store changes to the code as development progresses and defect tracking systems follow the resolution of software defects. Practitioners actively use such information in ad-hoc manners to effectively manage their projects and develop high quality code; yet few software engineering researchers investigate enriching their current research methods and techniques with historical information. The long term goal of this research is to systematically uncover the potential and empirically explore the benefits of information stored in software repositories. This proposal will mine such historical information to understand and support software change activities. The recovered information will be integrated into tools, development environments and processes used by software practitioners to build high quality systems that are delivered within budget and on schedule. In particular, this research will create models to understand, predict and explain code change patterns (such as refactorings) in large projects over the short (inter-release) and long (across releases) term. Since practitioners require immediate and timely access to the most appropriate and knowledgeable person related to a piece of code or feature, this research will develop techniques and tools to support practitioners in effectively locating code experts (i.e. other developers who are most familiar with particular code sections). This proposal will as well explore improving the learning experience of junior students by creating automated code tutors to assist students in producing bug free code and to inform instructors about any difficulties students are having in applying recently taught concepts. All the proposed research will be validated through large empirical studies.
