Haruaki Tamada

Java Birthmarks —Detecting the Software Theft—

To detect the theft of Java class files efficiently, we propose a concept of Java birthmarks, which are unique and native characteristics of every class file. For a pair of class files p and q, if q has the same birthmark as ps, q is suspected as a copy of p. Ideally, the birthmarks should satisfy the following properties: (a) preservation -- the birthmarks should be preserved even if the original class file is tampered with, and (b) distinction -- independent class files must be distinguished by completely different birthmarks. Taking (a) and (b) into account, we propose four types of birthmarks for Java class files. To show the effectiveness of the proposed birthmarks, we conduct three experiments. In the first experiment, we demonstrate that the proposed birthmarks are sufficiently robust against automatic program transformation (93.3876% of the birthmarks were preserved). The second experiment shows that the proposed birthmarks successfully distinguish non-copied files in a practical Java application (97.8005% of given class files were distinguished). In the third experiment, we exploit different Java compilers to confirm that the proposed Java birthmarks are core characteristics independent of compiler-specific issues.

Implementing integrated services of networked home appliances using service oriented architecture

This paper presents a method to implement integrated services of networked home electric appliances, which provide more convenient and comfortable living for home users. The conventional methods generally employ a home server to achieve the integrated services. The server controls all the networked appliances in a centralized manner. However, as the number of sophisticated appliances increases, the centralized server suffers from the concentration of load, as well as a decline in the reliability and interoperability. To cope with this problem, we adopt the service-oriented architecture (SOA) for the implementation of the integrated services. In the proposed framework, the appliances export own features as services, and autonomously execute the exported services one another. Thus, the appliances are loosely coupled via the exported services without any centralized home server, which enables more flexible, balanced and reliable integrated services. We first present a framework to design and implement the integrated services based on SOA, and then illustrate a prototype system developed with Web services. We also define three kinds of metrics (i.e., reliability, workload, and coupling), and conduct a comparative evaluation between the proposed and the previous systems.

Adapting Legacy Home Appliances to Home Network Systems UsingWeb Services

This paper presents a framework that adapts the conventional home electric appliances with the infrared remote controls (legacy appliances) to the emerging home network system (HNS). The proposed method extensively uses the concept of service-oriented architecture to improve programmable interoperability among multi-vendor appliances. We first prepare APIs that assist a PC to send infrared signals to the appliances. We then aggregate the APIs within self-contained service components, so that each of the component achieves a logical feature independent of device(or vendor)-specific operations. The service components are finally exported to the HNS as Web services. Thus, the legacy appliances can be used as distributed components with open interfaces. To demonstrate the effectiveness, we also implement an actual HNS and integrated services with multi-vendor legacy appliances

Defect Data Analysis Based on Extended Association Rule Mining

This paper describes an empirical study to reveal rules associated with defect correction effort. We defined defect correction effort as a quantitative (ratio scale) variable, and extended conventional (nominal scale based) association rule mining to directly handle such quantitative variables. An extended rule describes the statistical characteristic of a ratio or interval scale variable in the consequent part of the rule by its mean value and standard deviation so that conditions producing distinctive statistics can be discovered As an analysis target, we collected various attributes of about 1,200 defects found in a typical medium-scale, multi-vendor (distance development) information system development project in Japan. Our findings based on extracted rules include: (l)Defects detected in coding/unit testing were easily corrected (less than 7% of mean effort) when they are related to data output or validation of input data. (2)Nevertheless, they sometimes required much more effort (lift of standard deviation was 5.845) in case of low reproducibility, (i)Defects introduced in coding/unit testing often required large correction effort (mean was 12.596 staff-hours and standard deviation was 25.716) when they were related to data handing. From these findings, we confirmed that we need to pay attention to types of defects having large mean effort as well as those having large standard deviation of effort since such defects sometimes cause excess effort.

A Dynamic Birthmark from Analyzing Operand Stack Runtime Behavior to Detect Copied Software

Recently, software theft was continually reported. The one of technique for detecting software theft was proposed, named software birthmarks. The software birthmark extracts the set of native and unique characteristics from binary program and compares them to detect suspected copy. The software birthmark is classified by extraction methods into static birthmark and dynamic birthmark. In this paper proposed a dynamic birthmark based on operand stack runtime behaviors of Java Virtual Machine (JVM). The birthmark is originally proposed by Park et al. as a static birthmark. Contributions of this paper are (1) to port a static birthmark to a dynamic birthmark, and (2) to construct basic dynamic analysis technique based on opcode at runtime. To show the effectiveness of the proposed birthmark, we conduct three experiments. The experiments evaluate distinction performance and preservation performance of the birthmark. The preservation performance shows that the proposed birth-mark tolerates against automatic program transformation (About 90% of the birthmark is preserved). The distinction performance shows that the proposed birthmark can distinguish non-copied programs.

Robot Helps Teachers for Education of the C Language Beginners

In this paper, we propose a learning support framework for teacher and learners that achieves the following three requirements: (A) to use unaware system, (B) to support the teacher for educating learners, and (C) to support learners for solving assignments. Based on the proposed framework, we implemented a system using a robot which supports learners.

A Framework for Programming Process Measurement and Compiling Error Interpretation for Novice Programmers

This paper proposes a framework to support programming education intended for novice programmers at universities. This proposed framework entails a collection of compile errors and source codes of a student at the time such errors occur, as well as storing the learning history of the student. Programming processes can be measured and a degree of understanding can be estimated by retaining the editing history of source codes. Furthermore, the implementation of the proposed framework, which resulted in the early identification of students with problems, is presented and evaluated.

Using software birthmarks to identify similar classes and major functionalities

Software birthmarks are unique and native characteristics of every software component. Two components having similar birthmarks indicate that they are similar in functionality, structure and im-plementation. Questions addressed in this paper include: Which are similar class files? Can they be gathered into one class file? What are major functionalities among class files? To answer to these questions, this paper analyzed the similarity of birthmarks for all pairs of classes in ArgoUML, and visualized them using Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS). As a result, three pairs of very similar class files, which seem to be made by copy-and-paste programming, were identified. Also, four major functionalities were identified in the MDS space.

Phynocation: a prototyping of a teaching assistant robot for C language class

This paper shows a system that supports students who learn programing language in a class using a robot. We found out that it would help students to solve the error that the robot talks hints with gestures.

Analyzing the Decision Criteria of Software Developers Based on Prospect Theory

To enhance the quality of software, many software development support tools and software development methodologies have been proposed. However, not all proposed tools and methodologies are widely used in software development. We assume that the evaluation of tools and methodologies by developers is different from the evaluation by researchers, and that this is one of the reasons why the tools and methodologies are not widely used. We analyzed the decision criteria of software developers as applied to the tools and methodologies, to clarify whether the difference exists or not. In behavioral economics, there are theories which assume people have biases, and they do not always act reasonably. In the experiment, we made a questionnaire based on behavioral economics, and collected answers from open source software developers. The results suggest that developers do not always act to maximize expected profit because of the certainty effect and ambiguity aversion. Therefore, we should reconsider the evaluation criteria of tools such as the f-measure or AUC, which mainly focus on the expected profit.