Mitja Lenic

LISA: An Interactive Environment for Programming Language Development

The LISA system is an interactive environment for programming language development. From the formal language specifications of a particular programming language LISA produces a language specific environment that includes editors (a language-knowledgable editor and a structured editor), a compiler/interpreter and other graphic tools. The LISA is a set of related tools such as scanner generators, parser generators, compiler generators, graphic tools, editors and conversion tools, which are integrated by well-designed interfaces.

Automatic generation of language-based tools using the LISA system

Many tools have been constructed using different formal methods to process various parts of a language specification (e.g. scanner generators, parser generators and compiler generators). The automatic generation of a complete compiler was the primary goal of such systems, but researchers recognised the possibility that many other language-based tools could be generated from formal language specifications. Such tools can be generated automatically whenever they can be described by a generic fixed part that traverses the appropriate data structures generated by a specific variable part, which can be systematically derivable from the language specifications. The paper identifies generic and specific parts for various language-based tools. Several language-based tools are presented in the paper, which are automatically generated using an attribute grammar-based compiler generator called LISA. The generated tools that are described in the paper include editors, inspectors, debuggers and visualisers/animators. Because of their complexity of construction, special emphasis is given to visualisers/animators, and the unique contribution of our approach toward generating such tools.

Compiler/interpreter generator system LISA

The paper describes the LISA system which is a generic interactive environment for programming language development. From the formal language specifications of a particular programming language, LISA produces a language specific environment that includes a language-knowledgeable editor, a compiler/interpreter and other graphic tools. The paper focuses on design decisions, implementation issues and tool integration in the system LISA. The main reasons for developing a new compiler/interpreter generator system were: support for incremental language development, support for language design in a visual manner and the portability of the system and the generated environment. LISA is a set of related tools such as scanner generators, parser generators, compiler generators, graphic tools, editor and conversion tools, which are integrated by well designed interfaces. Therefore, it has the advantages of a single system and federated environment. LISA and the generated environment are written in Java which enables high portability to different platforms.

Implementation of multiple attribute grammar inheritance in the tool LISA

Multiple attribute grammar inheritance is a structural organization of attribute grammars where the attribute grammar inherits the specifications from ancestor attribute grammars, may add new specifications or may override some specifications from ancestor specifications. In the paper the implementation of multiple attribute grammar inheritance is described. The proposed approach is successfully implemented in the compiler/interpreter generator tool LISA ver. 2.0.

Evolution in Medical Decision Making

The classical approach to medical decision making can be limited by the underlying theories. The evolutionary computation is a different concept, which can find many different solutions of the problem. In medicine, this is useful because of different expectations the decision system must face. We implemented a tool for genetic induction of vector decision trees, which are a good choice for a medical decision model because of their simplicity and transparency. The vector decision tree gives multiple classifications in one single pass. Evolutionary development of such trees achieved good results when the results were statistically compared to those of other classical methods. For medical interpretation however a cooperation with doctors is needed to verify the model build.

Web process and workflow path mining using the Multimethod approach

Workflow Management Systems (WfMS) provide a fundamental technological infrastructure to define and manage business processes efficiently. WfMS logs contain valuable data that can be used to discover and extract knowledge about the execution of workflows and processes. One piece of important and useful information that can be discovered is related to the prediction of the path that will be followed during the execution of a workflow. We call this type of discovery, path mining. In this paper, we present and describe how path mining can be achieved using different data mining techniques including the Multimethod approach.

Automatic Generation of Language-based Tools

Many tools can be automatically derived from formal language definitions, such as compilers/interpreters, editors, analyzers, visualizers/animators, etc. Some examples of language-based tools generated automatically by the LISA system are described in the paper. In addition the specification of an algorithm animator and program visualizer, Alma, generated from an extended LISA input-grammar is discussed; LISA principles and code are reused in Alma implementation.

AspectCOOL: an experiment in design and implementation of aspect-oriented language

Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a promising technique helping programmers to easily reason about, develop and maintain programs. AOP improves reusability since components with a clearly defined functionality, which is not tangled with different aspects, are much easier to reuse. In order to explore different AOP concepts a general-purpose aspect-oriented language AspectCOOL has been designed and implemented. Among the different concepts, which we explored, the most important is the separate compilation of aspect and component code. Using this concept aspects can be applied on already compiled components, which improves their reusability.

Estimating Software Quality with Advanced Data Mining Techniques

Current software quality estimation models often involve the use of supervised learning methods for building a software fault prediction models. In such models, dependent variable usually represents a software quality measurement indicating the quality of a module by risk-basked class membership, or the number of faults. Independent variables include various software metrics as McCabe, Error Count, Halstead, Line of Code, etc... In this paper we present the use of advanced tool for data mining called Multimethod on the case of building software fault prediction model. Multimethod combines different aspects of supervised learning methods in dynamical environment and therefore can improve accuracy of generated prediction model. We demonstrate the use Multimethod tool on the real data from the Metrics Data Project Data (MDP) Repository. Our preliminary empirical results show promising potentials of this approach in predicting software quality in a software measurement and quality dataset.

Building Classifier Cellular Automata

Ensembles of classifiers have the ability to boost classification accuracy comparing to single classifiers and are a commonly used method in the field of machine learning. However in some cases ensemble construction algorithms do not improve the classification accuracy. Mostly ensembles are constructed using specific machine learning method or a combination of methods, the drawback being that the combination of methods or selection of the appropriate method for a specific problem must be made by the user. To overcome this problem we in-vented a novel approach where an ensemble of classifiers is constructed by a self-organizing system applying cellular automata (CA). First results are promising and show that in the iterative process of combining classifiers in the CA, a combination of methods can occur, that leads to superior accuracy.