UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
		 COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM


		 "Exploiting historical information to
		 understand how software is developed"

			 Prof. Daniel M. German
		     University of Victoria, Canada

			30 November 2005 (Wednesday)

			  Lecture Theatre E350
		       Hatfield, College Lane Campus
			       3 - 4 pm

	       Coffee/tea and biscuits will be available.
			 [Catering Permitting]

		    Everyone is Welcome to Attend
			  [Space Permitting]



Abstract:

Version control repositories are a historian's dream: they keep track
of the evolution of the artifacts under their control, and can tell us
when the artifact was created, or for each of its changes: who made
it, when, and potentially what other artifacts have been changed at
the same time, etc. Combined with mailing list archives they can tell
us a lot about the evolution of a project.

In this talk I will explore the work my research group has done in the
last two years in the area of mining software repositories, the
"valuable" information we have been able to find, and the methods and
tool we have used to exploit this information.

I will discuss how version control history can be used to help
programmers in their day to day activities, help managers make
decisions, researchers do their studies, lawyers sue the right person,
and even trainees learn the "art" of programming.

--
Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium
http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/colloq