Introduction
Although I actively participated in research before, this experience validated
my decision to wanting to pursue a Ph.d and was something I wholeheartedly enjoyed.
My work was an extension of the work done by Ph.d student Dixie Hisley and
undergraduate Matt Bridges who graduated last year. Mike Tetymeyer who is in the
army has also been working on this research under my advisor,
Lori Pollock.
Even though none of the students who worked on the project were there this summer,
I believe it helped me be more independent and learn on my own. My project consists
of taking the current program slicing implementation for OpenMP shared memory parallel
programs to become user friendly. The project was loosely constructed to enable
creativity in coding and gave me the liberty to customize a design.
I started a few weeks before I went to the University of Delaware reading literary papers to gain a background and understanding of the project I would be implementing. Matt Bridges had written an honors thesis outlining the static interprocedural slicing of shared memory parallel programs which gave me a thorough comprehension of what I needed to do. I reviewed the slicer in its current status and saw that although it was powerful, there was not much accessibility or user friendliness. Testing the input and output formats, I invoked various parameters of the slicer. Then trying existing tools that perform program slicing for sequential system. Using Codesurfer, a program that they use at the hiperspace lab, I evaluated the usefulness and user-friendliness and wrote a report. This helped me establish what I needed to incorporate when creating my interface.
My Contribution
I was able to contribute to the project the second week there when I went through some of the designs I had made for ways to implement the interface. In the end many of my changes were altered numerous times. At first, I had planned to design it using a GUI using Java Swing and applets but soon decided on HTML and Perl. Instead of just making the slicer usable on Linux machines with the slicer program downloaded, HTML makes it accessible on all computers which has access to the web. I broke the project in little steps and slowly incorporated the parts in one final project. After my design was approved, I started implementing the design. Details of my revisions and tests can be found in my diary. After several weeks, my interface was written and thoroughly tested using Javascript and a wide range of test cases. Since the Krinke algorithm was the only test case we had, I could only run my test cases on it. In the future we hope to have other programs to practice the slice on. I am confident that if any program that works for the slicing algorithm, my interface implementation can handle it and all the capabilities that the original slicer is capable of.
Since features on the slicer might be extended, I created a README for someone who wanted to expand the capabilities of the slicer and its interface.
Conclusions
The experience I had this summer was deeply rewarding and influential. I’ve learned more about graduate school and about myself than I ever expected. The exquisite program that CRAW has offered has opened my eyes to the life of a graduate student and now, more than ever do I want to apply for graduate school and do research. One of the key things I’ve learned is how much more enriching a research experience will be with a good advisor. Being in the hiperspace lab and meeting Lori’s students, I saw how much they loved working with her and how it made the working environment so much more comfortable and enjoyable. An advisor should be easily accessible and helpful with brainstorming ideas. I found that Lori was also willing to give a helping hand and a smile. She was also very efficient with her valuable time and gave fabulous advice and ideas. Besides help with the project, speaking to her about graduate school was also beneficial. I would recommend the DMP program to anyone thinking about graduate school because it is an experience that deepens our appreciation of the process of research. This summer has been an invaluable experience and answered almost all of my questions about a higher education.
Powerpoint slides!
This is my Final
Project!