James Cordy

James Cordy
Born
James Reginald Cordy

(1950-01-02) January 2, 1950 (age 74)
CitizenshipCanada
Alma materVictoria College
University of Toronto
Known forTuring, TXL, S/SL, NICAD clone detector
AwardsACM Distinguished Scientist (2008)
IBM CAS Faculty Fellow of the Year (2008, 2013)
CS-Can/Info-Can Lifetime Achievement Award (2019)
Scientific career
FieldsComputer Science
InstitutionsUniversity of Toronto
Queen's University
Doctoral advisorRichard C. Holt

James Reginald Cordy (born January 2, 1950) is a Canadian computer scientist and educator who is Professor Emeritus in the School of Computing at Queen's University. As a researcher he is most recently active in the fields of source code analysis and manipulation, software reverse and re-engineering, and pattern analysis and machine intelligence. He has a long record of previous work in programming languages, compiler technology, and software architecture.

He is best known for his work on the TXL source transformation language,[1] a parser-based framework and functional programming language designed to support software analysis and transformation tasks originally developed with M.Sc. student Charles Halpern-Hamu in 1985 as a tool for experimenting with programming language design.[2] His recent work on the NICAD clone detector[3] with Ph.D. student Chanchal Roy, the Recognition Strategy Language[4] with Ph.D. student Richard Zanibbi and Dorothea Blostein, the Cerno[5] lightweight natural language understanding system with John Mylopoulos and others at the University of Trento, and the SIMONE model clone detector with Manar Alalfi, Thomas R. Dean, Matthew Stephan and Andrew Stevenson[6] is based on TXL.

The 1995 paper A Syntactic Theory of Software Architecture[7] with Ph.D. student Thomas R. Dean has been widely cited as a seminal work in the area, and led to his work with Thomas R. Dean, Kevin A. Schneider and Andrew J. Malton on legacy systems analysis.[8]

Work in programming languages included the design of Concurrent Euclid[9] (1980) and Turing[10][11] (1983), with R.C. Holt, and the implementation of the Euclid[12] (1978) and SP/k[13] (1974) languages with R.C. Holt, D.B. Wortman, D.T. Barnard and others. As part of these projects he developed the S/SL compiler technology[14] with R.C. Holt and D.B. Wortman based on his M.Sc. thesis work[15] and the orthogonal code generation method based on his Ph.D. thesis work.[16]

He has co-authored or co-edited the books The Turing Programming Language: Design and Definition[17] (1988), Introduction to Compiler Construction Using S/SL[18] (1986), The Smart Internet[19] (2010), and The Personal Web[20] (2013).

From 2002 to 2007 he was the Director of the Queen's School of Computing. In 2008 he was elected a Distinguished Scientist of the Association for Computing Machinery.[21] He is a prolific academic supervisor and in 2008 was recognized with the Queen's University Award of Excellence in Graduate Supervision.[22] In 2016 he won the Queen's University Prize for Excellence in Research.[23] In 2019 he was recognized with the CS-Can/Info-Can Lifetime Achievement Award.[24]

  1. ^ J.R. Cordy, "The TXL Source Transformation Language", Science of Computer Programming 61,3 (August 2006), pp. 190-210
  2. ^ J.R. Cordy, C.D. Halpern and E. Promislow, TXL: A Rapid Prototyping System for Programming Language Dialects, Computer Languages 16,1 (January 1991), pp. 97-107
  3. ^ C.K. Roy and J.R. Cordy, NICAD: Accurate Detection of Near-miss Clones Using Flexible Pretty-printing and Code Normalization, Proc. ICPC 2008, IEEE International Conference on Program Comprehension, Amsterdam, June 2008, pp. 172-181
  4. ^ R. Zanibbi, D. Blostein and J.R. Cordy, "The Recognition Strategy Language", Proc. ICDAR 2005 - IAPR 8th Intl. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition, Seoul, Korea, August 2005, pp. 565-569
  5. ^ N. Kiyavitskaya, N. Zeni, J.R. Cordy, L. Mich and J. Mylopoulos, Cerno: Light-Weight Tool Support for Semantic Annotation of Textual Documents, Data & Knowledge Engineering 68,12 (Dec. 2009), pp. 1470-1492
  6. ^ M.H. Alalfi, J.R. Cordy, T.R. Dean, M. Stephan and A. Stevenson, "Models are Code Too: Near-miss Clone Detection for Simulink Models", Proc. ICSM 2012 - IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, Riva del Garda, Italy, September 2012, pp. 295-304
  7. ^ T.R. Dean and J.R. Cordy, "A Syntactic Theory of Software Architecture", IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 21,4 (January 1995), pp. 302-313.
  8. ^ T.R. Dean, J.R. Cordy, K.A. Schneider and A.J. Malton, "Experience Using Design Recovery Techniques to Transform Legacy Systems", Proc. ICSM 2001 - IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, Florence, Nov. 2001, pp. 622-631
  9. ^ J.R. Cordy and R.C. Holt, The Concurrent Euclid Report, Technical Reports CSRI-115 and CSRI-133, Computer Systems Research Institute, University of Toronto, July 1980
  10. ^ R.C. Holt and J.R. Cordy, "The Turing Language Report", Technical Report CSRI-153, Computer Systems Research Institute, University of Toronto, December 1983
  11. ^ R.C. Holt and J.R. Cordy, The Turing Programming Language, Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery 31,12 (December 1988), pp. 1410-1423
  12. ^ D.B. Wortman and J.R. Cordy, Early Experiences with Euclid, Proc. ICSE-5, IEEE 5th International Conference on Software Engineering, San Diego, March 1981, pp. 27-32
  13. ^ R.C. Holt, D.B. Wortman, D.T. Barnard and J.R. Cordy, "SP/k: A System for Teaching Computer Programming", Comm. of the Association for Computing Machinery 20,5 (May 1977), pp. 301-309.
  14. ^ R.C. Holt, J.R. Cordy and D.B. Wortman, An Introduction to S/SL: Syntax/Semantic Language, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 4,2 (April 1982), pp. 149-178
  15. ^ J.R. Cordy, R.C. Holt and D.B. Wortman, Semantic Charts: A Diagrammatic Approach to Semantic Processing, Proc. ACM 1979 SIGPLAN Symposium on Compiler Construction, ACM SIGPLAN Notices Vol. 14, No. 8, August 1979, pp. 39-49
  16. ^ J.R. Cordy and R.C. Holt, "Code Generation Using an Orthogonal Model", Software-Practice and Experience 20,3 (March 1990), pp. 301-320
  17. ^ R.C. Holt, P.A. Matthews, J.A. Rosselet and J.R. Cordy, The Turing Programming Language: Design and Definition, Prentice-Hall, 1988
  18. ^ J.R. Cordy, Introduction to Compiler Construction Using S/SL : the Syntax/Semantic Language, Queen's University, 1986, (5th edition, August 2006)
  19. ^ M. Chignell, J.R. Cordy, J. Ng and Y. Yesha (eds.), The Smart Internet: Current Research and Future Applications, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6400, Springer Verlag, 2010
  20. ^ M. Chignell, J.R. Cordy, R.Kealey, J. Ng and Y. Yesha (eds.), The Personal Web: A Research Agenda, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 7855, Springer Verlag, 2013
  21. ^ "ACM Awards". Archived from the original on 2012-04-02. Retrieved 2011-03-31.
  22. ^ "University Wide Awards | Centre for Teaching and Learning". Archived from the original on 2015-10-01.
  23. ^ "Prizes for Excellence in Research | Queen's University".
  24. ^ "James R. Cordy".