CS746: Fall 2012 - Assignments and Project

Target Software to analyze is:   freeciv (turn-based game)

See survey form

See Brown/Wilson book (volume 2, for Fall 2012)


Overview

Assignment A1: Survey Architecture of Target System

A1.1

Mon

Sep 17

2012

Team (for Concrete Architecture)

A1.2

Mon

Sep 17

2012

Choose 2 systems (book chapters). You will present 1 or 2 systems

A1.3

Mon

Sep 17

2012

First half of survey of Target System (by individual)

A1.4

Mon

Sep 24

2012

Entire survey of Target System (by individual)

Assignment A2: Concrete Architecture (by team)

A2.1

Mon

Oct 01

2012

Landscape (by team)

A2.2

Wed

Oct 10

2012

Clustered Landscape (by team)

A2.3

Mon

Oct 15

2012

Concrete Architecture Report (by team)

Course Project

Part 1

Mon

Oct 22

2012

Proposal

Part 2

Mon

Last day of classes

Dec 3

2012

Final Report


Assignment A1: Architecture Survey

Assignment A1.1 (by team)

Email a list of team members (size about 3 people) to  instructor (for Assignment 2 and for Project).

Assignment A1.2 (by individual)

Choose 2 systems (book chapters).  During the term, you will present create and present surveys of 1 or 2 systems, ideally from the 2 you choose (but perhaps not).  Email your choices to the instructor.

Assignment A1.3 (by individual)

Complete the first half (through “basic metrics”) of the Survey for the Target Software.  Do not communicate with author of the Brown/Wilson book chapter or other people related to the system.  Study the book chapter.  Search the web.  Find the downloadable software. Email a PDF version the half completed survey to instructor.

Assignment A1.4 (by individual)

Submit your complete survey of the Target Software.  Do not communicate with author of the Brown/Wilson book chapter or other people related to the system. Email a PDF version to instructor. 


Assignment A2: Concrete Architecture

Produce the concrete architecture of the Target Software.

Assignment A2.1

Using LSEDIT produce a software landscape of the Target Software, using TA extracted from the Target System. You do not need to group files into subsystems. Mail a screen shot of the landscape to the instructor.  Do not email the TA file.

Assignment A2.2

Group the top-level entities of your landscape from A2.1 into subsystems (and those subsystems into subsystems if necessary) by modifying the TA. Mail a screen shot of the new landscape along with the modified TA to the instructor.

Assignment A2.3

Submit your concrete architecture of  the Target Software. Give a clear description of each subsystem or module within you top-level subsystem. Describe the architecture of one of the (interesting) top-level subsystems. Use LSEdit to produce diagrams of the concrete architecture.

 

Make sure the high level (architectural) structure is clear.  Avoid giving too much low level information.  Make sure the reader gets a good feel for how the system works  (how it carries out its operations).

Limit your paper to at most 10 pages. Bring a hardcopy to class and email a PDF version to instructor.


Course Project

Carry out a project and write it up in the format requried by WICSA.  Turn in a hardcopy and mail a PDF copy to the instructor.  Note that 10 pages is the maximum for WICSA.  See http://www.wicsa.net/   See also WICSA’s “topics of interest”.  Submissions must be formatted according to the IEEE CS proceedings format (8.5" x 11" two-column format). Templates and instructions can

be downloaded from the IEEE Computer Society Press

[http://www.computer.org/portal/pages/cscps/cps/cps_forms.html].

 

Projects are due the last day of class.

              

Some Suggested Topics

 

Following are some suggested topics for the course project. You are encouraged to propose new interesting topics relevant to this course.

1. Architecture Refactoring: Future

Description

Refactor the architecture of a large software system to support a new feature. Take one of the systems that were studied in previous years, or choose a new program. Specify a new feature, extract its architecture, identify architecture refactorings to accommodate the feature and analyze impacts and risks. Identify possible tool support (and possibly implement) for this process.

You can also identify an architectural problem and come up with a refactoring to solve the problem.

Requirements

You must choose a software system larger than 100 KLOC. Example systems: Linux, Mozilla, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Emacs, Gnumeric etc. Your project submission should discuss tools actually used, and tools that would have been ideal to use.

2. Architecture Refactoring: Historical

Description

Analyze the historical sequence of refactorings of the architecture of a large software system. Take one of the systems that were studied in previous years, or choose a new program. Extract the architectures over a historical sequence of versions, discover architectural changes, identify the causes for changes and the kind of architectural refactorings have been performed. Identify possible tool support (and possibly implement) for this process.

Requirements

You must choose a software system larger than 100 KLOC. Extract at least 5 versions. Example systems: Linux, Mozilla, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Emacs, Gnumeric etc. Your project submission should discuss tools actually used, and tools that would have been ideal to use.

3. Architectural Repair

Description

Studies on the architecture of many systems in previous years showed how different the concrete architecture was from their conceptual architecture. Take one of these systems, identify how their concrete and conceptual architectures differ, and repair both the conceptual and concrete architectures. Identify possible automated tool support (and possibly implement such support) for this process.

Requirements

Example systems: Linux, Mozilla, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Emacs, Gnumeric etc.

4. New Tools

Description

Build new tools or integrate existing tools into the toolkit used in this course. Examples:

Requirements

Before implementing anything new, study existing tools that accomplish similar tasks and identify the weaknesses that your tool will overcome. Validate usefulness of the tool by using it in the study of a system.

5. New Landscapes

Description

Produce a landscape of a large piece of software. Examples:

Requirements

Landscape that was not done in previous years.

6. Architecture of a Family of Systems

Description

Extract the architecture of a family of systems. Identify the commonalities and variablities of features in the systems family. Decompose the architecture based on the features. The configuration of the architectural components may be extracted from the pre-processor directives (#ifdef), makefiles or other artifacts.


Last update 22 Aug  2011  -- RCH