[Javapathfinder-devel] Reducing State Storage Costs by Using Network Interface to Store and Retrieve Program States Data from an External Server

[明. <li...@gm...>]

Dear Mr./Mrs.:

        I am really interest in JPF and want to participate in the
summer of code of google. My application is sumitted and my profiles
are listed as follows.

Name: Mingxin Li

Project Title (or brief description): Reducing State Storage Costs by
Using Network Interface to Store and Retrieve Program States Data from
an External Server.

Education and Software Development Experience: I'm a doctor candidates
of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT) and my
major is computer science. I have almost six years software
development experience in java including three years software
development experience as a full time developer when I graduated and
got the master degree from BUPT in 2004. In addition, I was awarded in
2006 BEA software innovation and development competition. And I have
been the main developer of Extrem Blue Porject of IBM in the summer of
2007. I got the topmost quality of national certification systems
analyst in 2006.

Why I'm interested in working on Java PathFinder: When I learn some
information about JPF through its website I think it is an amazing
project and it has good ideas to resolve the problems in the process
of software test.Therefore I decided to do some contribution to the
project.

Have you contacted anyone on the JPF Team about this proposal (if yes,
who): I didn't contacted anyone at present.

Experience with Java and object-oriented design patterns: I have
almost six years software development experience in java. And I have
good experience of object-oriented design.

Experience or knowledge of software testing and verification tools: I
am familiar with junit and have the experience of using test tools
such  as loadrunner.

Project Details: In order to resolve the issue of storing and
retrieving huge program states. The application proposes several
possible methods to deal with the hidden trouble. In my opinion, the
resolving methods are described as follows. Firstly, a large number
object of program states is serialized by java serialization
interface. Object serialization is the process of saving an object's
state to a sequence of bytes, as well as the process of rebuilding
those bytes into a live object at some future time. The Java
Serialization API provides a standard mechanism for developers to
handle object serialization. Secondly, the store formate should be
considered, for example we can refer to the design ideas of index
files in lucene. Finally, the objects of program states serialized is
stored and retrieved on/from external server by network
communications. The methods of communications can be classified as
follows. The first one is the C/S mode based on socket connections.
The communications built on the RMI technology of java is the second
method. The third method is to refer to the good design ideas of
distributed file system such as the open source project hadoop which
is a part of lucene. The last one is that setting up the C/S by jetty
which is an open source web server and designed to be a good
component. Furthermore, it can easily be embedded in an application
and set up the connection of C/S.

Deliverables: I think deliverables should at least contain analysis
documents, detailed design documents, test reports, user manuals and
codes. The new JPF version can store and retrieve program states
on/from a server, which is more easy to use JPF on huge state spaces.


                    Yours Sincerely,

                             Mingxin Li

                             2008-4-7