News > 2009-04-08: Professor David Lorge Parnas氏とDr. Lillian Chik-Parnas氏をお招きして情報科学部講演会を開催します
小金井キャンパス 正門入り口

2009年4月13日(月)に法政大学 小金井キャンパスにて、コンピュータ科学の先駆者であり、ソフトウェア工学の世界的権威である Professor David Lorge Parnas氏 と Lillian Chik-Parnas氏 をお招きし、「How Precise Documentation allows Information Hiding to Reduce Software’s Complexity and Increase its Flexibility」、「Creating Systems for Delivering Individualized Advice」と題して講演会を開催いたします。情報科学部主催の公開講演会ですので、学内の関係者だけでなく学外の皆様も是非ご参加ください。

講演1

How Precise Documentation allows Information Hiding to Reduce Software’s Complexity and Increase its Flexibility

  • 講師: Professor David Lorge Parnas, McMaster University, Canada
  • 時間: 15:10 – 16:30

Abstract

When the first papers on “information Hiding” were published (1970-72), reaction was mixed:
• A (negative) reviewer wrote, “••• nobody does it that way” and recommended rejection.
• Fred Brooks called it “a recipe for disaster” (in “Mythical Man Month”).
• Another reviewer called it banal (boring and obvious}.
Ten years later, a textbook discussed those papers saying, “Parnas only wrote down what all good programmers were doing anyway”. In the 25th anniversary edition of “Mythical Man Month”, Fred Brooks indicated that his original opinion was wrong and wrote “Parnas was right”. Today, most textbooks indicate that “information hiding” (or related formulations such as structured design and object-orientation) is a good principle but industrial software developers do not do it. These, obviously contradictory,　observations all have part of “the truth” but overlook a basic fact, viz. – if you hide some information, you must give people other information to work with. Information hiding solves many problems but only if the designers pay serious attention to documentation. This talk reviews the information hiding principle, stating it more precisely than was done when it was introduced, and then illustrates how mathematical documentation can make it work.

Bio

David Lorge Parnas has been studying industrial software development and publishing widely cited papers since 1969. Many of his papers have been found to have lasting value. For example, a paper written 24 years ago, based on a study of avionics software, was just awarded a SIGSOFT IMPACT award. Last year, Parnas was proud to share the IEEE Computer Society’s one-time sixtieth anniversary award with computer pioneer Professor Maurice Wilkes of Cambridge University. Both men were honored for long records of achievement. In all, he has won more than 20 awards for his contributions.

Dave received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering – Systems and Communications Sciences from Carnegie Mellon University. and honorary doctorates from the ETH in Zurich (Switzerland), the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium), and the University of Italian Switzerland (Lugano).

Dr. Parnas is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Canadian Academy of Engineering, a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, a Fellow of the Gesellschaft für Informatik in Germany. and a Felow of the IEEE. He is licensed as a Professional Engineer in Ontario. Parnas is the author of more than 260 papers and reports. Many of his papers have been repeatedly republished and are considered classics. A collection of his papers can be found in:

Hoffman, D.M., Weiss, D.M. (eds.), “Software Fundamentals: Collected Papers by David L. Parnas”, Addison-Wesley, 2001, 664 pgs., ISBN 0-201-70369-6,.

Dr. Parnas is Professor Emeritus at McMaster University in Hamilton Canada, Adjunct Professor at Carleton University in Ottawa Canada and the University of Limerick Ireland. He is an Honorary Professor at Ji Lin University in China.

講演2

Creating Systems for Delivering Individualized Advice

  • 講師: Lillian Chik-Parnas and Professor David Lorge Parnas, University of Limerick, Ireland and McMaster University, Canada
  • 時間: 16:40 – 18:00

Abstract

This talk discusses the use of several advanced software engineering ideas to build systems that can be used to select information and present it to users who need advice.

The approach applies concepts from the areas of product lines, frameworks, and rough sets. The prototype, called Interactive Support System for Early Learning and Intervention (ISSELI), demonstrates how these concepts can be used. ISSELI is an individualized-advice system that offers helpful information to people who care for young children who may have developmental differences. It presents safe but helpful activities that can be done with the child while the caregivers are waiting for expert advice. It can be used on a stand-alone computer or over the internet.

One distinguishing property of ISSELI is that it was created by a Subject Matter Specialist (SMS) who had no knowledge of programming. The creator used a prototype framework that accepts tables of descriptive text and uses them to generate the desired system. The resulting system can be thought of as a knowledge base. It asks questions of a user who is seeking advice and uses the answers to select appropriate documents from a large set of multi-media files assembled by the SMSs. Neither the original system creation nor in service maintenance requires the intervention of someone with programming skills. The work of the computer developer is limited to building the framework.

This presentation will explain the framework, show how it was used by the SMS, and how the resulting systems can be used by the end-user. All examples are taken from ISSELI. The speaker is an Educator, not a Computer Scientist. The intended audience would include both Computer Scientists who might want to build a framework, and educators or others who might want to build an individualized-advice system. The system was the product of an interdisciplinary effort including the Department of Education and the Software Quality Research Laboratory at the University of Limerick. Participants were Lillian Chik-Parnas, Marius Dragomiriou, and David L. Parnas.