1,016 research outputs found
Consistency in Multi-Viewpoint Architectural Design of Enterprise Information Systems
Different stakeholders in the design of an enterprise information system have their own view on that design. To help produce a coherent design this paper presents a framework that aids in specifying relations between such views. To help produce a consistent design the framework also aids in specifying consistency rules that apply to the view relations and in checking the consistency according to those rules. The framework focuses on the higher levels of abstraction in a design, we refer to design at those levels of abstraction as architectural design. The highest level of abstraction that we consider is that of business process design and the lowest level is that of software component design. The contribution of our framework is that it provides a collection of basic concepts that is common to viewpoints in the area of enterprise information systems. These basic concepts aid in relating viewpoints by providing: (i) a common terminology that helps stakeholders to understand each others concepts; and (ii) a basis for defining re-usable consistency rules. In particular we define re-usable rules to check consistency between behavioural views that overlap or are a refinement of each other. We also present an architecture for a tool suite that supports our framework. We show that our framework can be applied, by performing a case study in which we specify the relations and consistency rules between the RM-ODP enterprise, computational and information viewpoints
Towards a Formal Verification of Process Model's Properties - SimplePDL and TOCL Case Study
International audienceMore and more, models, through Domain Specific Languages (DSL), tend to be the solution to define complex systems. Expressing properties specific to these metamodels and checking them appear as an urgent need. Until now, the only complete industrial solutions that are available consider structural properties such as the ones that could be expressed in OCL. There are although some attempts on behavioural properties for DSL. This paper addresses a method to specify and then check temporal properties over models. The case study is SimplePDL, a process metamodel. We propose a way to use a temporal extension of OCL, TOCL, to express properties. We specify a models transformation to Petri Nets and LTL formulae for both the process model and its associated temporal properties. We check these properties using a model checker and enrich the model with the analysis results. This work is a first step towards a generic framework to specify and effectively check temporal properties over arbitrary models
CABS: a case-based and graphical requirements capture, formalisation and verification system
The use of formal specifications based on varieties of mathematical logic is becoming common in the process of designing and implementing safety critical systems and practices for hardware design. Formal methods are usually intended to include in the specification, all the important details of the final system in the specification, with the aim of proving that the specification possesses certain properties and lacks other unwanted properties. In large, complex systems, this task requires sophisticated theorem proving, which can be difficult and complicated. Telecommunications systems are large and complex, making detailed formal specification impractical given current technology. However, formal âsketchesâ of the behaviours the services provide can be produced, and these can be very helpful in locating which service might be relevant to a given problem.This thesis describes CABS, a case-based approach that uses coarse-grained graphical requirements specification sketches, to outline the basic behaviour of the system's funcÂtional modules (called services), thereby allowing us to identify, re-use and adapt reÂquirements (from cases stored in a library), to construct new cases. The matching algorithm identifies similar behaviour between the input examples and the cases stored in the case library. By using cases that have already been tested, integrated and im Âplemented, less effort is needed to produce requirements specifications on a large scale. Using a hypothetical telecommunications system as an example, it will be shown that a comparatively simple logic can be used to capture coarse-grained behaviour and how a case-based approach benefits from this. The input from the examples is used both to identify the cases whose behaviour corresponds most closely to the designer's intentions, and also in the process of adapting, validating and, finally, verifying the proposed solution against the examples
A Framework for Evaluating Model-Driven Self-adaptive Software Systems
In the last few years, Model Driven Development (MDD), Component-based
Software Development (CBSD), and context-oriented software have become
interesting alternatives for the design and construction of self-adaptive
software systems. In general, the ultimate goal of these technologies is to be
able to reduce development costs and effort, while improving the modularity,
flexibility, adaptability, and reliability of software systems. An analysis of
these technologies shows them all to include the principle of the separation of
concerns, and their further integration is a key factor to obtaining
high-quality and self-adaptable software systems. Each technology identifies
different concerns and deals with them separately in order to specify the
design of the self-adaptive applications, and, at the same time, support
software with adaptability and context-awareness. This research studies the
development methodologies that employ the principles of model-driven
development in building self-adaptive software systems. To this aim, this
article proposes an evaluation framework for analysing and evaluating the
features of model-driven approaches and their ability to support software with
self-adaptability and dependability in highly dynamic contextual environment.
Such evaluation framework can facilitate the software developers on selecting a
development methodology that suits their software requirements and reduces the
development effort of building self-adaptive software systems. This study
highlights the major drawbacks of the propped model-driven approaches in the
related works, and emphasise on considering the volatile aspects of
self-adaptive software in the analysis, design and implementation phases of the
development methodologies. In addition, we argue that the development
methodologies should leave the selection of modelling languages and modelling
tools to the software developers.Comment: model-driven architecture, COP, AOP, component composition,
self-adaptive application, context oriented software developmen
Proceedings of the Workshop on Models and Model-driven Methods for Enterprise Computing (3M4EC 2008)
An approach to enacting business process models in support of the life cycle of integrated manufacturing systems
The complexity of enterprise engineering processes requires the application of
reference architectures as means of guiding the achievement of an adequate level of
business integration. This research aims to address important aspects of this
requirement by associating the formalism of reference architectures to various life cycle
phases of integrating manufacturing systems (IMS) and enabling their use in addressing
contemporary system engineering issues.
In pursuit of this aim, the following research activities were carried out: (1) to
devise a framework which supports key phases of the IMS life cycle and (2) to populate
part of this framework with an initial combination of architectures which can be
encapsulated into a computer-aided systems engineering environment. This has led to
the creation of a workbench capable of providing support for modelling, analysis,
simulation, rapid-prototyping, configuration and run-time operation of an IMS, based
on a consistent set of models associated with the engineering processes involved. The
research effort concentrated on selecting and investigating the use of appropriate
formalisms which underpin a selection of architectures and tools (i. e. CIM-OSA, Petrinets,
object-oriented methods and CIM-BIOSYS), this by designing, implementing,
applying and testing the workbench.
The main contribution of this research is to demonstrate that it is possible to
retain an adequate level of formalism, via computational structures and models, which
extend through the IMS life cycle from a conceptual description of the system through
to actions that the system performs when operating. The underlying methodology
which supported this contribution is based on enacting models of system behaviour
which encode important coordination aspects of manufacturing systems. The strategy
for demonstrating the incorporation of formalism to the IMS life cycle was to enable
the aggregation into a workbench of knowledge of 'what' the system is expected to
achieve (i. e. 'problems' to be addressed) and 'how' the system can achieve it (i. e
possible 'solutions'). Within the workbench, such a knowledge is represented through
an amalgamation of business process modelling and object-oriented modelling
approaches which, when adequately manipulated, can lead to business integration
A Property-Driven Approach to Formal Verification of Process Models
Enterprise Information Systems, 9th International Conference, ICEIS 2007, Funchal, Madeira, June 12-16, 2007, Revised Selected PapersInternational audienceMore and more, models, through Domain Specific Languages (DSL), tend to be the solution to define complex systems. Expressing properties specific to these metamodels, and checking them, appear as an urgent need. Until now, the only complete industrial solutions that are available consider structural properties such as the ones that could be expressed in OCL. There are although some attempts on behavioural properties for DSL. This paper addresses a method to specify and then check temporal properties over models. The case study is SimplePDL, a process metamodel. We propose a way to use a temporal extension of OCL, TOCL, to express properties. We specify a models transformation to Petri Nets and LTL formulae for both the process model and its associated temporal properties. We check these properties using a model checker and enrich the model with the analysis results. This work is a first step towards a generic framework to specify and effectively check temporal properties over arbitrary models
Integrating behavioural design into the virtual environment development process
A number of specifications formalisms have been developed (or applied) to support the abstract design of the behavioural component of the virtual environment interface. These formalisms subscribe to the philosophy that virtual environments should be viewed as hybrid systems which combine discrete and continuous behaviour. A significant deficiency in designing behaviour in this way is that the designs cannot be directly executed and explored in the same manner as an implementation. This limitation makes it di#cult for a designer to evaluate the suitability of designs. The thesis presents the Marigold toolset which supports two approaches to evaluating behaviour described using the Flownet hybrid formalism
Machine learning for emergent middleware
Highly dynamic and heterogeneous distributed systems are challenging today's middleware technologies. Existing middleware paradigms are unable to deliver on their most central promise, which is offering interoperability. In this paper, we argue for the need to dynamically synthesise distributed system infrastructures according to the current operating environment, thereby generating "Emergent Middleware'' to mediate interactions among heterogeneous networked systems that interact in an ad hoc way. The paper outlines the overall architecture of Enablers underlying Emergent Middleware, and in particular focuses on the key role of learning in supporting such a process, spanning statistical learning to infer the semantics of networked system functions and automata learning to extract the related behaviours of networked systems
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