pchapin's CIS-5130 Analysis of Artifacts, Fall 2019

Instructor

Peter C. Chapin. Office: WIL-415 on the Williston campus. Office hours are by appointment. Phone: 802-879-2367 (voice mail active). Email: pchapin@vtc.edu. I will usually respond to email within 24 hours, not including weekends or holidays. Email is the best way to contact me. I am also sometimes on Skype for business, or on the FreeNode IRC network under the nickname pcc.

Course Description

The official course outline lists high level course objectives 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 artifacts of the software development process 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). Many of the tools are pre-installed on Lemuria, the department's Linux host. If you do not have an account on Lemuria, one can be created for you. Lemuria is accessible from off campus, but it uses a text-only interface so comfort with the Linux command line is needed to use it.

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

Course Outcomes

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

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 Robin Goodall, Learning Specialist, in the Center for Academic Success on the Randolph campus. She can be reached by phone at (802) 728-1278 or by email at rgoodall@vtc.edu.

The Vermont State Colleges System is committed to ensuring our campuses are safe places for students and employees. Faculty and staff are considered mandated reporters when it comes to experiences of interpersonal violence (sexual assault, sexual harassment, dating/domestic violence, and stalking). Disclosures of interpersonal violence will be reported to the Title IX Coordinator, who can help provide support and academic accommodations for students who have been impacted. More information can be found online.


Last Revised: 2019-08-21
© Copyright 2019 by Peter C. Chapin <pchapin@vtc.edu>