Speaker: Julia Rubin, IBM HRL
Title:
N-way Merge: Merging Multiple Models
Abstract:
Model merging is widely recognized as
an essential step in a variety of software development activities. For
instance, during the
process of combining a set of related
products into a product line or consolidating model views of multiple stakeholders
we need
to merge multiple input models into
one. Yet, most of the existing approaches are applicable to merging only
two models.
In this talk, we discuss the n-way merge
problem in detail. We show that it can be reduced to the known and widely
studied NP-hard problem
of weighted set packing. Yet, the approximation
solutions for that problem do not scale for software models of realistic
size. We thus evaluate
alternative approaches of merging models
and propose our own algorithm that considerably improves precision over
such approaches without sacrificing performance. We
then discuss further ideas for n-way merge approximation solutions, including
one from the field of gaming.
Bio: Julia Rubin is a member
of the Emerging Quality Technologies group in IBM Research - Haifa. Her
main research interests are in areas of
software engineering related to software
reuse, modeling and evolution, product line engineering, as well as model
and code analysis and management.
Julia has published numerous papers
in top scientific conferences, co-organized international workshops on
modeling and software product line
engineering, and served on several program
committees. Julia is also a PC co-chair for SPLC'14, a PC chair for the
Applications Track of ECMFA'14
and an IEEE TCSE member-at-large for
2013-2015.
