[Colloq] PhD Thesis Proposal - Therapon Skotiniotis

[Rachel Kalweit]

College of Computer and Information Science

PhD Thesis Proposal:
Therapon Skotiniotis

Thesis Title:
Modular Adaptive Programming with Demeter Interfaces


Wednesday, March 28,
9:30am
366 West Village H

Abstract

Adaptive Programming (AP) provides advanced modularization for 
traversal-related concerns in object-oriented programs.  Computation in 
AP programs consists of (i) a graph-based model of a program's class 
hierarchy, (ii) a navigation specification, called a strategy, and (iii) 
a visitor defining computation during traversal.  Strategy 
specifications can abstract over graph structure allowing modifications 
to the program's class hierarchy without affecting visitor behavior. 
Despite the benefits of AP there are also limitations, including 
hardcoded name dependencies between strategies and the class hierarchy 
and non-modular adaptive code such as strategies and visitors. These 
limitations hamper adaptive code reuse and make composition of adaptive 
code difficult.

To address these limitations we propose Demeter Interfaces. A Demeter 
interface provides (i) an interface between the program's class 
hierarchy and the definitions of both strategies and visitors, (ii) 
constraints on the structure of a class hierarchy that implements a 
Demeter interface, and (iii) the ability to encapsulate and parameterize 
adaptive code. We claim that Demeter interfaces allow for better 
encapsulation of adaptive code leading to modular and reusable adaptive 
programs.

Committee:

  Prof. Karl Lieberherr
  Prof. Mitchell Wand
  Prof. Matthias Felleisen
  Dr. Ralf Lammel, Microsoft Research


-- 
Rachel Kalweit
College of Computer and Information Science
202 West Village H
Northeastern University
phone: 617-373-2462
fax: 617-373-5121
rachelb at ccs.neu.edu