CSE584 (Winter 2001): Assignment #4
Assigned: 27 February 2001
Due: 13 March 2001

• See the home page for details about turning in the assignment, the specific time for the due date, the assignment's weight, etc.
• It will be immediately obvious that the form of this assignment is entirely different from Assignments #1 and #2, as I have promised.
  

The topic of the last two lectures was software tools and analysis, focused on the source code. 

In this assignment you have no choice of what to do: you made that decision in assignment #3!  You are required to do the choice other than the one you did for assignment #3.

Choice A: A brief research paper and proposal

Pick a topic related to software tools and analysis (most likely but not necessarily one covered in lecture).  Perhaps with help from me, identify a set of roughly 4-6 papers that relate to the topic.  In no more than 10 pages, present a coherent summary of these papers: this should not be primarily a "book report" on each paper, but rather you should put some structure and coherence in your paper that describes how they relate, how they differ, etc.  In 1-2 additional pages, you should identify (at a paragraph apiece) a few (at least two) open research questions related to the topic.  

Choice B: An assessment of a tool

Download a tool, for instance Jinsight or Lackwit or Daikon or another one that I approve of, that is broadly available and apply it to a public domain piece of software.  Based on your experience in applying the tool to that piece of software, write an 5-10 page report on the strengths and weaknesses of the tool, including your view of how it would apply to larger software systems.