Aharon Abadi

Fine slicing: theory and applications for computation extraction

Software evolution often requires the untangling of code. Particularly challenging and error-prone is the task of separating computations that are intertwined in a loop. The lack of automatic tools for such transformations complicates maintenance and hinders reuse. We present a theory and implementation of fine slicing, a method for computing executable program slices that can be finely tuned, and can be used to extract non-contiguous pieces of code and untangle loops. Unlike previous solutions, it supports temporal abstraction of series of values computed in a loop in the form of newly-created sequences. Fine slicing has proved useful in capturing meaningful subprograms and has enabled the creation of an advanced computation-extraction algorithm and its implementation in a prototype refactoring tool for Cobol and Java.

Re-approaching the refactoring Rubicon

Fowler saw the availability of automated support for the Extract Method refactoring in modern IDEs as an indication for the crossing of the refactoring Rubicon. In spite of the advances in refactoring technology, it seems that this Rubicon has not yet been crossed, and refactoring support in modern IDEs leaves a lot to be desired. We performed a case study in which we converted a Java servlet to use the model-view-controller pattern, using as much automated support as available. We found that while the whole conversion could be described as a series of refactorings, most of these were inadequately supported by the IDE, and some were not supported at all. Based on these findings, we outline the requirements from a refactoring framework that will support much more of the conversion process, and will also enable the composition of small refactorings into larger ones.

Improving slice accuracy by compression of data and control flow paths

Program slicing is a useful technique in tools for program understanding and transformation. Computing correct and accurate slices for unstructured programs is particularly difficult. We present a new family of slicing algorithms that are proved correct and are more accurate than the best previous algorithms. An empirical study shows significant improvements of our algorithms on real code.

NitroGen: rapid development of mobile applications

Constructing a mobile application is expensive and time consuming. In this paper, we present NitroGen which is a platform independent tool that provides a consumable integrated set of capabilities to construct mobile solutions aiming at reducing development and maintenance costs. NitroGen is a visual, mostly codeless, cloud-based platform to construct mobile applications. It can easily connect to back-end services thus enable fast and facile development in enterprises. Evaluating NitroGen, we found among others, that participants learned it fast and found it simple and suitable for mobile applications development.

Code-motion for API migration: fixing SQL injection vulnerabilities in Java

Refactoring often requires the reordering of code fragments; such is the case when migrating from one API to another. Performing such reordering manually is complex and error-prone. A specific example in the security domain involves database query execution, in which some of the parameters come from untrusted sources. In Java, the Statement API provides opportunities for SQL injection attacks. The recommended remedy is to replace it with the secure Prepared-Statement API; however, that sometimes requires changing the order in which the query is built. We present an algorithm that performs this migration, moving code as necessary to preserve functionality while changing the structure of the original code as little as possible.

Challenges and research questions for testing in mobile development: report on a mobile testing activity

In this report we document the mobile testing activity that we facilitated as part of the Workshop on Mobile Development Life-cycle (MobileDeLi) in conjunction with SPLASH 2013. Together with the workshop attendees, we listed the challenges in mobile testing and discussed a research agenda to deal with the significant challenges.

Mobile security: challenges, tools, and techniques (panel)

During the MobileDeli’15 workshop held at the SPLASH’15 conference we facilitated a panel, comprised of four distinguished, senior participants from industry. They started by presenting their position with respect to a set of predefined questions, and then we opened the floor to questions from the audience.

Developing enterprise mobile applications the easy way

Constructing a mobile application in the enterprise is expensive and time consuming. On average, deploying a mobile application is estimated at one week of effort per screen. We present an evaluation of NitroGen, a platform-independent tool for constructing mobile solutions. The tool provides a consumable integrated set of capabilities aimed at reducing development and maintenance costs. NitroGen is a mostly codeless, cloud-based, platform for visually constructing mobile applications. We demonstrate how students with some skills in web development and no skills in mobile development have successfully learned and used NitroGen to implement a small-scale three-screen application, which uses existing back-end services—all in less than 90 minutes.

A screen-oriented representation for mobile applications

Program analysis plays an important role in a variety of software engineering processes, such as automated code refactoring, compiler optimizations, and program slicing. The internal program representation used by the program analysis algorithm affects the power and efficiency of the analysis. In particular, representations that contain data-flow information alongside control flow are known to be especially useful. While there are many popular internal program representations with data-flow information for traditional languages and platforms, few specifically target mobile applications. In this paper, we propose a new data-flow-enabled representation that addresses the screen-oriented nature of a mobile application and explores its potential. We consider a mobile application to be a reactive system whose states are the screens, and whose events are user actions, incoming communication, or anything else that causes transition from one screen to another. The resulting representation is a finite state machine extended with data-flow information. We suggest that this representation can greatly contribute to optimization, refactoring, and understanding of mobile applications.

Smoothing indoor trajectories

The indoor location market is forecasted by ABI Research to reach approximately