CS2310 Exercise 1:

The purpose of this exercise is to experiment with patterns in software engineering. (a) Use the IC cards to specify the activities involved in organizing a picnic, such as: determine the place, decide the date, organize sport events, get the food, what if it rains, and so on. (b) Can you identify certain patterns from the above activities? Describe some of the patterns you have identified. (see the article by James Coplien.)

CS2310 Exercise 2:

The purpose of this exercise is to enable the students to gain familiarity with the active index approach to active information system design. As discussed in class, the hypermedia model and the active index together can be used to model active distributed multimedia information systems. In this exercise we will first concentrate on the active index component.

Let us consider an adaptive distance learning system. The distance learning materials are organized into a hypermedia structure. A student user can browse through these multimedia documents and follow the links to access related multimedia documents. As such, the hypermedia structure is passive, waiting to be accessed by the user.

We can make the hypermedia structure active by associating index cells with selected multimedia documents. The idea is to designate a special document so that when many students access this document, it means they have reached a certain level of proficiency and therefore the learning materials should be adjusted to become more difficult. Likewise when many students access a special document indicating deficiency, it means they have problems and therefore the learning materials should be made simpler. The following index cell types are specified:

Proficiency-level index cell: The proficiency-level index cell is associated with a certain specific multimedia document (such as doc-1, usually reacheable only by proficient students). When this index cell is triggered, it will increase the proficiency-level by 1. When the proficiency-level has reached a predefined threshold (such as 3), it will send message to the instructor, informing the instructor that a sufficient number of students have reached this level of proficiency. It will also send messages to certain documents (such as doc-3, doc-4, doc-5) to become harder.

Deficiency-level index cell: The deficiency-level index cell is associated with a certain specific multimedia document (such as doc-2, usually reacheable only by deficient students). When this index cell is triggered, it will increase the deficiency-level by 1. When the deficiency-level has reached a predefined threshold (such as 2), it will send message to the instructor, informing the instructor that a significant number of students have reached this level of deficiency. It will also send messages to certain documents (such as doc-3, doc-4, doc-5) to become easier.

Self-adjustment index cell: This self-adjustment index cell is associated with multimedia documents containing learning materials (such as doc-3, doc-4 and doc-5). When it receives a "harder" message, it upgrades the learning materials to become harder. Likewise, when it receives a "easier" message, it downgrades the learning materials to become easier.

The above are three index cell types. The instances can be associated with individual multimedia documents (such as doc-1, ..., doc-5). There is also a home page (such as doc-0), with links to the other documents (such as doc-1, ..., doc-5).

(a) Draw state-transition diagrams to define graphically the three index cell types.

(b) Specify the three index cell types formally using mathematical notations ic = (X, Y, S, s_o, A, t_max, f, g).

(c) Draw a diagram showing a few multimedia documents (such as doc-1, ..., doc-5) enhanced with the index cells to illustrate how these index cells work together to form an active index system.

(d) Use the IC Builder to construct the three index cell types. The output from IC Builder, together with the appropriate actions (C functions) and specification of input message space, output message space, will become input to the IC Compiler to generate the IC Manager.

How to download the IC Builder: There are four files in the directory http://www.cs.pitt.edu/~chang/231/ictools/IC_Builder: README, IC Builder Manual, ictapp.zip and ictype.zip. Unzip and install under Windows. To run IC Builder under new Windows, follow instructions in xicbuilder.

Additional Explanation: For this exercise there is NO NEED to write any C functions. The assignment can be handed in either as a hard copy or via the Internet. For the part where you use IC_Builder to construct IC types, you can turn in the output file(s) generated by the IC_Builder, which are ascii files X.in. If you cannot creat X.in, read this. You can also provide screen dumps captured during the construction process. If you use Internet, it will be the best if you can give me URL so that I can browse the web pages containing the solutions. In other words, please prepare a set of web pages and figures can be embedded as gif/jpg files. This will be the easiest for other people to read. It will also be useful when you later develop a presentation based upon such materials.

(d) Following the discussion on the concept of patterns, define more clearly the pattern(s) you have identified. If you feel the patterns you have identified are lacking in certain respect, you may replace them by some new patterns. A visual specification of the identified pattern(s) should be included, using for example visual grammar rules. Remember Alexander's dictum: "If you can't draw a picture of it, it isn't a pattern.")

CS2310 Exercise 3:

The purpose of this exercise is to understand the relationship between active index and Petri nets. Both are tools for the modeling of distributed multimedia systems. Active index cells are added incrementally to build a dynamic index, and the connections can also change dynamically. However, if the massages passed between index cells are deterministically routed, then it is possible to convert active index into a Petri net. Otherwise you must use a Petri net with conditions (predicates) associated with the transitions, or an Evaluation Net (E-net).

(a) Convert the active index you constructed in Exercise #2 into a Petri net (or an E-net).

(b) Take the diagram you drew in part (c) of Exercise #2. Redraw it here (because you may want to make some changes), and now use the marked Petri net to illustrate the scenario. You can draw a sequence of marked Petri net to show how the system works.

Additional Explanation: (a) If we consider how the active index system passes messages and reaches equilibrium state (if one exists), this leads to a formal study using, for instance, the Petri net model. (b) Notice this is the beginning of a systematical approach to build prototypes for active distributed multimedia systems. Can we create a new systematic approach, i.e., a new software process model, for distributed multimedia systems design? (c) The index cells could span several nodes. Therefore, the active index system is a distributed index. The IC Managers must also be distributed to the nodes in the networks.

CS2310 Exercise 4:

The purpose of this exercise is to apply multimedia functional dependency to multimedia applications design. Given an application (its requirements), design the multimedia database using multimedia functional dependency theory. Then specify the patterns (IC cards) associated with the multimedia database. The application is the distance learning system that allows the user to access related multimedia documents. A new classification scheme based upon the audio content of the multimedia documents is to be introduced. This would allow users to search for multimedia titles similar to a known audio search key (such as the voice of a certain author). Your task is to design the multimedia database and associate patterns (IC cards), which can in turn be transformed into IC index and finally an implementation.

CS2310 Exercise 4:

The purpose of this exercise is to experiment with the prototyping tool for distributed multimedia computing. First, you need to compile the index cell specifications using the IC_Compiler to create the customized IC_Manager. This customized IC_Manager becomes the CGI program to be invoked when the user clicks on the Web pages. Then, you build the HTML pages for the active index system for distance learning you did in exercise #2. The end result should be a demonstration. If you do it on a Unix workstation, you only need to e-mail your URL to me so that the TA and I can try your demo. If you do this exercise on a PC, please set up a time with the teaching assistant, so that you can demo to the TA on a PC.

All the necessary files are available under the sub-directory called "ictools". The most important document for you to read first is the MICE Developer's Guide.

How to do this exercise on a Unix workstation: You should put your html pages under the public web pages directory, and your cgi programs under the cgi-bin directory. After that you can set up your working directory, by creating two subdirectories called "TAOML" and "source", and then copying all the files from the three directories IC_Compiler, IC_Manager and IC_Taoml to this "source" directory. Then you can follow the steps spelled out in MICE Application Development Steps. You may find the following tips useful.

How to download the PC version of the IC Compiler: You can also do this exercise on a PC. To do that, you need to download a zip file in the directory http://www.cs.pitt.edu/~chang/231/ictools/IC_Manager/ icm.zip and unzip and install under Windows. Follow the ICM.ReadMe file to set up the PC version of the IC Compiler. An example of the ic.dat and the test.in is included, which relays a single-click or a double-click to the ic_manager. There is also a Corba Unix version for distributed IC manager, which can be used for more advanced projects. However you don't need it for this exercise.

CS2310 Project Milestone #1:

When the nature of the project is clear, a project milestone will be posted. For programming projects, this project milestone is for the delivery of the most essential programs. Since this is a class project, programming should be kept straightforward. Remember, the goal is to prove it can be done. Please observe the KISS (Keep it simple stupid) principle. If the program works, you have accomplished the objective. For theoretical projects, this project milestone is for the clear formulation of the problem. All definitions should be clearly worked out by this milestone.

CS2310 Project Milestone #2:

For programming projects, this project milestone is for the delivery of all programs, ready for testing. For theoretical projects, this project milestone is for the completion of formulation of the algorithms.