pchapin's CIS-5130 Analysis of Artifacts, Fall 2024

Instructor

Peter Chapin. Office: WIL-414 on the Williston campus. Phone: (802) 879-5974 (voice mail active). Email: peter.chapin@vermontstate.edu. I will usually respond to email within one business day. Email is the best way to contact me. I am also sometimes on the Libera.Chat IRC network under the nickname pcc. Some VTSU students maintain a Discord server for SE/IT classes at Vermont State University. I can usually be found there as pchapin. Use this link to join that system: https://discord.gg/rgk3vDbZwE.

Course Description

The official course outline lists high level course goals and content.

This is a course about software artifacts and their analysis. The most important artifact of any software development effort is the source code. Accordingly, in this course we will spend a significant amount of time (50% or more of the course) looking at various methods for source code analysis. However, the course also covers the analysis of other software development artifacts such as test results, benchmark results, version control commit logs, the logs of deployed programs, and other things.

Prerequisites

This is a graduate course and requires graduate standing. There is a significant amount of programming in this course, in various languages. Comfort with at least C and Java is assumed.

Resources

There is no text for this course. However, we will be reading various papers related to the topics covered. These papers will be discussed in class. This course will entail using various analysis tools. Most of these tools are open source and freely distributable. You may want to install them on your own machine (installation advice will be provided).

I have created an email distribution list for the class. I will use this list to distribute announcements and other supplementary materials. Be sure to check your mail regularly (daily) or you might miss something important. If you send a question in email directly to me, I may reply to my distribution list if I think that others would benefit from my answer. If you would rather I did not reply to the list you should say so in your message.

My home page contains various documents of general interest. You will find my office hours posted there.

Topics

Static code analysis
Dynamic code analysis
Introduction to formal verification
Analyzing and modeling requirements
Analyzing and modeling high-level design
Analyzing and modeling class designs
Analyzing and modeling protocols
Analyzing and modeling security concerns
Analyzing logging and error reports

Course Outcomes

At the end of this course, the student should be able to do the following:

Analyze source code using multiple techniques to extract relevant useful information.
Analyze software designs at multiple levels using multiple techniques to extract relevant useful information.
Analyze a requirements document to extract relevant useful information.
Analyze results of program runs, including testing, benchmarks, and logging generated by deployed applications, using multiple techniques to extract relevant useful information.
Understand when these analyses are appropriate to perform.

Grading Policy

The grade is based on participation, selected paper summaries, and the submission of selected homework assignments. The final exam will consist of an "analysis project" chosen by the student, with approval of the instructor, that exercises the concepts and methods covered in the course. Each student will do an in-class presentation on their project during the final exam period.

Late Policy

Avoid excessive lateness. While I won't specifically penalize you if your submissions are delayed, if it gets out of hand, we'll need to talk about it.

Other Matters

Students with disabilities may request accommodation as provided within federal law. All such requests should be made by first contacting disabilityservices@vermontstate.edu.