Einladung zum UHH Informatik Kolloquium

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Speaker

Prof. Martin Robillard Ph.D.
McGill University, Canada

Date: Monday, April 22, 2013, 17:15

Place: Konrad-Zuse-Hörsaal, Informatikum

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Topic

Recommendation Systems for API Usage

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Abstract

Most software projects reuse components exposed through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Large APIs can be difficult to use effectively. To increase the usability of large and complex APIs, we are currently experimenting with recommendation systems that attempt to fulfill the information needs faced by developers who must use these APIs. In this talk, I will present a brief retrospective of recommendation systems for API usability, and then describe our on-going work in this area. API Explorer and SemDiff are two systems that deliver API usage recommendations from within the IDE. API Explorer leverages the structural relationships between API elements to recommend methods or types which, although not directly reachable from the type a developer is currently working with, may be relevant to solving a programming task. SemDiff analyzes the change history of a framework to recommend how to adapt clients to new, backward-incompatible versions of the framework. The talk will conclude with a discussion of lessons learned from the recent past and challenges for the near future of recommendation systems for API usage.

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Bio

Martin Robillard is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at McGill University. His current research focuses on the automated analysis of software development artifacts to support programming activities. He is the recipient of four ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Awards and currently holds an NSERC Discovery Accelerator Award. He recently served as the Program Co-Chair for the 20th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, and is currently serving on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering and Empirical Software Engineering. He received his Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia and a B.Eng. from Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal.

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Contact Person

Prof. Dr. Walid Maalej
Telefon: -2073
E-Mail: maalej@informatik.uni-hamburg.de