Thesis (D. Ed.)--Ball State University, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Nov. 12, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 148-159).

A Domain-Specific Modeling Approach This study has presented a component-based domain modeling approach that provides an environment for simplifying and accelerating software development and analysis, and improves software reusability, maintainability, and productivity. With highlevel design abstraction, constraints of application domains, and the guidance of domain rules, the proposed component-based framework offers an effective solution to modeling and automating the development and deployment of software application. Meta-modeling will be used in this study to define the domain notations, rules, and constraints for component composition within a specific domain context. A domain-specific graphical design environment will also be proposed to simplify and accelerate the software development by simply dragging and dropping pre-built components with minimal programming effort. The modeling of components can be further extended with the specification of their dependability and real-time constraints. / Related work -- Component composition -- Domain-specific modeling -- Model-based component composition environment for a specific domain -- Mobile service creation framework (MCSF) -- A model-driven approach to implementing dependable component-based mobile services -- A model-driven approach to implementing component-based real-time mobile services / Related work -- Component composition -- Domain-specific modeling -- Model-based component composition environment for a specific domain -- Mobile service creation framework (MCSF) -- A model-driven approach to implementing dependable component-based mobile services -- A model-driven approach to implementing component-based real-time mobile services. / Department of Computer Science

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2007. / Additional advisors: Barrett R. Bryant, Marjan Mernik, Mikhail Auguston, Chengcui Zhang, Brian Toone. Description based on contents viewed Feb. 8, 2008; title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references (p. 143-151).

Thesis (M.S.)--Rutgers University, 2007. / "Graduate Program in Computer Science." Includes bibliographical references (p. 46).

Thesis (M. S. in Computer Science)--Vanderbilt University, May 2005. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. S.)--Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009. / Committee Chair: Paredis, Chris; Committee Member: McGinnis, Leon; Committee Member: Schaefer, Dirk.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2007. / Additional advisors: Marjan Mernik, Jeffrey G. Gray, Alan P. Sprague, Elliot J. Lefkowitz. Description based on contents viewed May 29, 2008; title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references (p. 140-152).

Programming is a key skill in many domains outside computer science. When used judiciously, programming can empower people to accomplish what might be impossible or difficult with traditional methods. Unfortunately, students, especially non-CS majors, frequently have trouble while learning to program. This work reports on the challenges and opportunities faced by Physical Chemistry (PChem) students at Cal Poly, SLO as they learn to program in MATLAB. We assessed the PChem students through a multiple-choice concept inventory, as well as through “think-aloud” interviews. Additionally, we examined the students’ perceptions of and attitudes towards programming. We found that PChem students are adept at applying programming to a subset of problems, but their knowledge is fragile; like many intro CS students, they struggle to transfer their knowledge to different contexts and often express misconceptions about programming. However, they differ in that the PChem students are first and foremost Chemistry students, and so struggle to recognize appropriate applications of programming without scaffolding. Further, many students do not perceive themselves as competent general- purpose programmers. These factors combine to discourage students from applying programming to novel problems, even though it may be greatly beneficial to them. We leveraged this data to create a workshop with the goal of helping PChem students recognize their programming knowledge as a tool that they can apply to various contexts. This thesis presents a framework for addressing challenges and providing opportunities in domain-specific CS education.

Experimental game theory is the use of game theoretic abstractions—games, players, and strategies—in experiments and simulations. It is often used in cases where traditional, analytical game theory fails or is difficult to apply. This thesis collects three previously published papers that provide domain-specific language (DSL) support for defining and executing these experiments, and for explaining their results. Despite the widespread use of software in this field, there is a distinct lack of tool support for common tasks like modeling games and running simulations. Instead, most experiments are created from scratch in general-purpose programming languages. We have addressed this problem with Hagl, a DSL embedded in Haskell that allows the concise, declarative definition of games, strategies, and executable experiments. Hagl raises the level of abstraction for experimental game theory, reducing the effort to conduct experiments and freeing experimenters to focus on hard problems in their domain instead of low-level implementation details. While analytical game theory is most often used as a prescriptive tool, a way to analyze a situation and determine the best course of action, experimental game theory is often applied descriptively to explain why agents interact and behave in a certain way. Often these interactions are complex and surprising. To support this explanatory role, we have designed visual DSL for explaining the interaction of strategies for iterated games. This language is used as a vehicle to introduce the notational quality of traceability and the new paradigm of explanation-oriented programming. / Graduation date: 2012

Design synthesis is a fundamental engineering task that involves the creation of structure from a desired functional specification; it involves both creating a system topology as well as sizing the system's components. Although the use of computer tools is common throughout the design process, design synthesis is often a task left to the designer. At the synthesis stage of the design process, designers have an extensive choice of design alternatives that need to be considered and evaluated. Designers can benefit from computational synthesis methods in the creative phase of the design process. Recent increases in computational power allow automated synthesis methods for rapidly generating a large number of design solutions. Combining an automated synthesis method with an evaluation framework allows for a more thorough exploration of the design space as well as for a reduction of the time and cost needed to design a system. To facilitate computational synthesis, knowledge about feasible system configurations must be captured. Since it is difficult to capture such synthesis knowledge about any possible system, a design domain must be chosen. In this thesis, the design domain is hydraulic systems. In this thesis, Model-Driven Software Development concepts are leveraged to create a framework to automate the synthesis of hydraulic systems will be presented and demonstrated. This includes the presentation of a domain specific language to describe the function and structure of hydraulic systems as well as a framework for synthesizing hydraulic systems using graph grammars to generate system topologies. Also, a method using graph grammars for generating analysis models from the described structural system representations is presented. This approach fits in the context of Model-Based Systems Engineering where a variety of formal models are used to represent knowledge about a system. It uses the Systems Modeling Language developed by The Object Management Group (OMG SysML™) as a unifying language for model definition.