TURTLE-P: a UML profile for the formal validation of critical and distributed systems

The timed UML and RT-LOTOS environment, or TURTLE for short, extends UML class and activity diagrams with composition and temporal operators. TURTLE is a real-time UML profile with a formal semantics expressed in RT-LOTOS. Further, it is supported by a formal validation toolkit. This paper introduces TURTLE-P, an extended profile no longer restricted to the abstract modeling of distributed systems. Indeed, TURTLE-P addresses the concrete descriptions of communication architectures, including quality of service parameters (delay, jitter, etc.). This new profile enables co-design of hardware and software components with extended UML component and deployment diagrams. Properties of these diagrams can be evaluated and/or validated thanks to the formal semantics given in RT-LOTOS. The application of TURTLE-P is illustrated with a telecommunication satellite system

Expressing Measurement Uncertainty in OCL/UML Datatypes

Uncertainty is an inherent property of any measure or estimation performed in any physical setting, and therefore it needs to be considered when modeling systems that manage real data. Although several modeling languages permit the representation of measurement uncertainty for describing certain system attributes, these aspects are not normally incorporated into their type systems. Thus, operating with uncertain values and propagating uncertainty are normally cumbersome processes, di cult to achieve at the model level. This paper proposes an extension of OCL and UML datatypes to incorporate data uncertainty coming from physical measurements or user estimations into the models, along with the set of operations de ned for the values of these types.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Model-driven engineering approach to design and implementation of robot control system

In this paper we apply a model-driven engineering approach to designing domain-specific solutions for robot control system development. We present a case study of the complete process, including identification of the domain meta-model, graphical notation definition and source code generation for subsumption architecture -- a well-known example of robot control architecture. Our goal is to show that both the definition of the robot-control architecture and its supporting tools fits well into the typical workflow of model-driven engineering development.Comment: Presented at DSLRob 2011 (arXiv:cs/1212.3308

Verifying service continuity in a satellite reconfiguration procedure: application to a satellite

The paper discusses the use of the TURTLE UML profile to model and verify service continuity during dynamic reconfiguration of embedded software, and space-based telecommunication software in particular. TURTLE extends UML class diagrams with composition operators, and activity diagrams with temporal operators. Translating TURTLE to the formal description technique RT-LOTOS gives the profile a formal semantics and makes it possible to reuse verification techniques implemented by the RTL, the RT-LOTOS toolkit developed at LAAS-CNRS. The paper proposes a modeling and formal validation methodology based on TURTLE and RTL, and discusses its application to a payload software application in charge of an embedded packet switch. The paper demonstrates the benefits of using TURTLE to prove service continuity for dynamic reconfiguration of embedded software

UML-F: A Modeling Language for Object-Oriented Frameworks

The paper presents the essential features of a new member of the UML language family that supports working with object-oriented frameworks. This UML extension, called UML-F, allows the explicit representation of framework variation points. The paper discusses some of the relevant aspects of UML-F, which is based on standard UML extension mechanisms. A case study shows how it can be used to assist framework development. A discussion of additional tools for automating framework implementation and instantiation rounds out the paper.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figure

Collaborative Verification-Driven Engineering of Hybrid Systems

Hybrid systems with both discrete and continuous dynamics are an important model for real-world cyber-physical systems. The key challenge is to ensure their correct functioning w.r.t. safety requirements. Promising techniques to ensure safety seem to be model-driven engineering to develop hybrid systems in a well-defined and traceable manner, and formal verification to prove their correctness. Their combination forms the vision of verification-driven engineering. Often, hybrid systems are rather complex in that they require expertise from many domains (e.g., robotics, control systems, computer science, software engineering, and mechanical engineering). Moreover, despite the remarkable progress in automating formal verification of hybrid systems, the construction of proofs of complex systems often requires nontrivial human guidance, since hybrid systems verification tools solve undecidable problems. It is, thus, not uncommon for development and verification teams to consist of many players with diverse expertise. This paper introduces a verification-driven engineering toolset that extends our previous work on hybrid and arithmetic verification with tools for (i) graphical (UML) and textual modeling of hybrid systems, (ii) exchanging and comparing models and proofs, and (iii) managing verification tasks. This toolset makes it easier to tackle large-scale verification tasks

A methodological proposal and tool support for the HL7 standards compliance in the development of health information systems

Health information systems are increasingly complex, and their development is presented as a challenge for software development companies offering quality, maintainable and interoperable products. HL7 (Health level 7) International, an international non-profit organization, defines and maintains standards related to health information systems. However, the modelling languages proposed by HL7 are far removed from standard languages and widely known by software engineers. In these lines, NDT is a software development methodology that has a support tool called NDT-Suite and is based, on the one hand, on the paradigm of model-driven engineering and, on the other hand, in UML that is a widely recognized standard language. This paper proposes an extension of the NDT methodology called MoDHE (Model Driven Health Engineering) to offer software engineers a methodology capable of modelling health information systems conforming to HL7 using UML domain models