Trip Report
Progress Report
Thesis Plan
Kevin Pulo
2003-09-11
Overview
• Brisbane Trip Report
– Griffith University
– University of Queensland
• Thesis plan
• Recent progress
(in no particular order)
Brisbane Trip Report – Griffith Uni
• Visited the Software Quality Institute
(SQI), headed by Prof. Geoff Dromey
• Software engineers
• Invented Design Behaviour Trees (DBTs)
and Genetic Software Engineering (GSE)
DBTs
• A method for designing software systems by
defining “behaviours” of components from their
requirements
• These are then combined to form the overall
behaviour of the system
• Can then be used to generate skeletal code
• Build the system out of the requirements, not a
system which satisfies the requirements
• Behaviours are naturally visually represented
using trees
Typical Component DBTs
Requirement-R1:
When the user opens the
door the light goes on
Requirement-R2:
When the user closes the
door the light goes off
Integrating Component DBTs
Requirement-R1:
When the user opens the
door the light goes on
Requirement-R2:
When the user closes the
door the light goes off
Integrating Component DBTs
Satisfies both
R1 and R2
Overall DBTs
Very Large DBTs
User Navigation Data
• They have issues visualising large DBTs
• Installed my code on their machines
– General code cleanup
– Interface simplification
– Animated undo/redo
• Logging facilities to record user navigation
– Will be useful in devising quality measures
– Will provide a benchmark suite / corpus for
running the measures
DBT Improvements
• Tip-over convention instead of inclusion
layout (basically the same algorithm)
• Some other misc features
• Send updated version to Griffith researchers
Brisbane Trip Report - UQ
• Visited Advanced Computational Modelling
Centre (ACMC) at UQ
• Bernard Pailthorpe, co-director (former
director of Sydney Vislab, SDSC’s Vislab)
• Research mainly in Scientific Visualisation,
collaborations with many wide fields
(biotech, medical, psychology, physics,
maths, chem, marine, etc)
• Visited ViSAC - Visualisation Laboratory
ViSAC photos
Thesis Outline
(Working) Fancy Title: “Techniques for Structural
Focus + Context Display and Navigation”
1. Introduction, Background, etc
– Started literature survey
2. Models, Measures and Techniques
3. Application to Relational Data
i. Inclusion Trees
ii. Clustered Graphs
4.
5.
6.
7.
Case Study 1: Design Behaviour Trees (DBTs)
Case Study 2: FADE clustered graphs
Case Study 3: Citation networks
Conclusion, etc
Data Sources - Trees
• Design Behaviour Trees – Data #1
– Inclusion and tip-over layouts
– Mostly done
• Philogenetic Trees – ???
– Neither inclusion or tip-over seem appropriate
– Problem is length of edge usually indicates
time
– How to represent this in inclusion layout?
Data Sources – Clustered Graphs
• FADE clustered graphs – Data #2
– Uses my work from first year (extending to Recursive
Voronoi Diagrams (RVDs))
– Generally graphs of various views of software
– Relatively sparse
– From Aaron Quigley’s thesis or use SE tools to
generate my own – or maybe even arbitrary graphs
• Citation networks – Data #3
– From any/all of Citeseer, Web-of-Science, IEEE,
ACM, etc
– Clustered according to hierarchical topic (where
available)
– Relatively dense
Edge Routing
• Research possible algorithms
• Attempt implementation of simple/naïve
one first
• Attempt harder ones only if simple one
doesn’t suffice
• Develop edge animations
– Topology changes are hard
Evaluation – Empirical Measures
• Devise 5-7 good measures of the quality
of a Smooth Structural Zooming technique
– Eg: number of different animation directions,
number of objects moving concurrently,
amount of overlap between objects, etc
• Assertion is that these measures are a
good representation of reality
• Apply the measures to a corpus of test
data
Test Data
• Require test data of both graphs/trees
AND navigation through them
• Hence the Griffith usage data
• Other possibilities:
– Generated (random)
– Hand-constructed specific cases (eg.
best/worst, “typical”)
Evaluation – User Experiments
• Devise tasks to test some hypothesis
• Considering not doing them
• Require a lot of time and work:
– Ethics approval
– Logistics
– Many unknown details:
• Hypothesis = ?
• Task(s) = ?
• Measurements (eg. time, accuracy)
Sep
03
Griffith code
Deliverables: Tip-over + misc code
Due: Sept 26 (2 weeks)
Design Experiments (?)
Deliverables: Ethics approval request
Due: Sept 26 (2 weeks)
Oct
03
Jewelry Box SSZ
Deliverables: Code for SSZ of JB
layout (incl. force-scan alg)
Due: 10 Oct (2 weeks)
Obtain Preliminary Clustered
Graph Data
Deliverables: One small clustered
graph from data #2 or #3
Due: 3 Oct (1 week)
Obtain full data #2 (FADE)
Deliverables: Dataset of > 10 graphs,
varying sizes
Due: 24 Oct (2 weeks)
Nov
03
Research and implement routing
algorithms
Deliverables: Code for edge routing
and edge animation
Due: 28 Nov (7 weeks)
Collect Griffith Usage Data
Deliverables: Usage data + code to
use it as input + devise measures
Due: 14 Nov (3 weeks)
Obtain data #3 (Citation networks)
Deliverables: Dataset of > 10 graphs,
varying sizes
Due: 28 Nov (2 weeks)
Dec
03
Apply SSZ methods to data #2
Deliverables: Code operating on
FADE graphs
Due: 12 Dec (2 weeks)
Write thesis chapters 1 - 3
Due: 2 Jan (5 weeks)
Apply measures to data #1 and #2
Deliverables: Results of measures
Due: 26 Dec (2 weeks)
Jan
04
Develop experiments (?)
Deliverables: Code, data,
instructions for experiments
Due: 23 Jan (3 weeks)
Apply method to #3 data
Deliverables: Code operating on
citation networks
Due: 23 Jan (3 weeks)
Feb
04
Carry out experiments (?)
Deliverables: Experiments done
Due: 20 Feb (3 weeks)
Write rest of thesis
Due: 26 Mar (9 weeks)
Mar
04
Analyse experiment data (?)
Deliverables: Results graphs,
conclusions
Due: 12 Mar (3 weeks)
Backups
• Thesis/PhD work
– ~ 900 Mb
– 3 machines: Uni, home, laptop
– Synchronised using rsync and rdiff-backup
– Fast transfers, incremental backups
• Alternatives include rsync, file-unison, cvs, etc
– Also weekly CDs...?
• Laptop
– Daily/weekly rdiff-backup of majority of system
(20 Gb) at uni and home