Using formal methods to support testing

Formal methods and testing are two important approaches that assist in the development of high quality software. While traditionally these approaches have been seen as rivals, in recent years a new consensus has developed in which they are seen as complementary. This article reviews the state of the art regarding ways in which the presence of a formal specification can be used to assist testing

Automatic translation of formal data specifications to voice data-input applications.

This thesis introduces a complete solution for automatic translation of formal data specifications to voice data-input applications. The objective of the research is to automatically generate applications for inputting data through speech from specifications of the structure of the data. The formal data specifications are XML DTDs. A new formalization called Grammar-DTD (G-DTD) is introduced as an extended DTD that contains grammars to describe valid values of the DTD elements and attributes. G-DTDs facilitate the automatic generation of Voice XML applications that correspond to the original DTD structure. The development of the automatic application-generator included identifying constraints on the G-DTD to ensure a feasible translation, using predicate calculus to build a knowledge base of inference rules that describes the mapping procedure, and writing an algorithm for the automatic translation based on the inference rules.Dept. of Computer Science. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2006 .H355. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-01, page: 0354. Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2006

Controlled Natural Language Generation from a Multilingual FrameNet-based Grammar

This paper presents a currently bilingual but potentially multilingual FrameNet-based grammar library implemented in Grammatical Framework. The contribution of this paper is two-fold. First, it offers a methodological approach to automatically generate the grammar based on semantico-syntactic valence patterns extracted from FrameNet-annotated corpora. Second, it provides a proof of concept for two use cases illustrating how the acquired multilingual grammar can be exploited in different CNL applications in the domains of arts and tourism

Working Notes from the 1992 AAAI Workshop on Automating Software Design. Theme: Domain Specific Software Design

The goal of this workshop is to identify different architectural approaches to building domain-specific software design systems and to explore issues unique to domain-specific (vs. general-purpose) software design. Some general issues that cut across the particular software design domain include: (1) knowledge representation, acquisition, and maintenance; (2) specialized software design techniques; and (3) user interaction and user interface

ONTOGENERATION: Reusing Domain and Linguistic Ontologies for Spanish Text Generation

A significant problem facing the reuse of ontologies is to make their content more widely accessible to any potential user. Wording all the information represented in an ontology is the best way to ease the retrieval and understanding of its contents. This article proposes a general approach to reuse domain and linguistic ontologies with natural language generation technology, describing a practical system for the generation of Spanish texts in the domain of chemical substances. For this purpose the following steps have been taken: (a) an ontology in the chemicals domain developed under the METHONTOLOGY framework and the Ontology Design Environment (ODE) has been taken as knowledge source; (b) the linguistic ontology GUM (Generalized Upper Model) used in other languages has been extended and modified for Spanish; (c) a Spanish grammar has been built following the systemic-functional model by using the KPML (Komet-Penman Multilingual) environment. As result, the final system named Ontogeneration permits the user to consult and retrieve all the information of the ontology in Spanish

Clafer: Lightweight Modeling of Structure, Behaviour, and Variability

Embedded software is growing fast in size and complexity, leading to intimate mixture of complex architectures and complex control. Consequently, software specification requires modeling both structures and behaviour of systems. Unfortunately, existing languages do not integrate these aspects well, usually prioritizing one of them. It is common to develop a separate language for each of these facets. In this paper, we contribute Clafer: a small language that attempts to tackle this challenge. It combines rich structural modeling with state of the art behavioural formalisms. We are not aware of any other modeling language that seamlessly combines these facets common to system and software modeling. We show how Clafer, in a single unified syntax and semantics, allows capturing feature models (variability), component models, discrete control models (automata) and variability encompassing all these aspects. The language is built on top of first order logic with quantifiers over basic entities (for modeling structures) combined with linear temporal logic (for modeling behaviour). On top of this semantic foundation we build a simple but expressive syntax, enriched with carefully selected syntactic expansions that cover hierarchical modeling, associations, automata, scenarios, and Dwyer's property patterns. We evaluate Clafer using a power window case study, and comparing it against other notations that substantially overlap with its scope (SysML, AADL, Temporal OCL and Live Sequence Charts), discussing benefits and perils of using a single notation for the purpose