January 20, 2010
Title: The Road Ahead for Mining Software Repositories
Abstract: Source control repositories, bug repositories, archived communications, deployment logs, and code repositories are examples of software repositories that are commonly available for most software projects. The Mining Software Repositories (MSR) field analyzes and cross-links the rich data available in these repositories to uncover interesting and actionable information about software systems. By transforming these static record-keeping repositories into active ones, we can guide decision processes in modern software projects. For example, data in source control repositories, traditionally used to archive code, could be linked with data in bug repositories to help practitioners propagate complex changes and to warn them about risky code based on prior changes and bugs. In this talk, we present a brief history of the MSR field and discuss several recent achievements and results of using MSR techniques to support software research and practice. We then discuss the various opportunities and challenges that lie in the road ahead for this important and emerging field.
Biography: Ahmed E. Hassan is the NSERC/RIM Industrial Research Chair in Software Engineering for Ultra Large Scale Systems at Queen's University. Dr. Hassan spearheaded the organization and creation of the Mining Software Repositories (MSR) conference and its research community. He co-edited special issues of the IEEE Transaction on Software Engineering and the Journal of Empirical Software Engineering on the MSR topic.
Early tools and techniques developed by Dr. Hassan's team are already integrated into products used by millions of users worldwide. Dr. Hassan industrial experience includes helping architect the Blackberry wireless platform at RIM, and working for IBM Research at the Almaden Research Lab and the Computer Research Lab at Nortel Networks. Dr. Hassan is the named inventor of patents at several jurisdictions around the world including the United States, Europe, India, Canada, and Japan.