Modeling and Generating Tailored Distribution Middleware for Embedded Real-Time Systems

International audienceDistributed real-time embedded (DRE) systems are becoming increasingly complex. They have to meet more and more stringent requirements, either functional or non-functional. Because of this, DRE systems development makes use of formal methods for verification; and, in some cases, generation of proven code. The distribution aspects are typically handled by a middleware, which must meet the system constraints. In this article, we describe our approach to model and generate middleware-based distributed systems for DRE applications. Our methodology is a three-step approach. First, we model the high-level inter-component interactions using connectors. We then use the Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL) as a pre-implementation description language to capture all the non-functional aspects of the system. Finally, we generate actual application code and the appropriate middleware from the AADL description. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, we created an application generator, Gaia. It is part of the Ocarina AADL tool suite and generates application source code for use with the PolyORB middleware

GiD 2008. 4th Conference on advances and applications of GiD

The extended use of simulation programs has leaned on the advances in user-friendly interfaces and in the capability to generate meshes for any generic complex geometry. More than ten years of development have made Gid grow to become one of the more popular pre ans postprocessing systems at international level. The constant dialogue between the GiD development team and the users has guided the development of giD to cover the pre-post needs of many disciplines in science and engineering. Following gthis philosophy, the biannual GiD Conference has become an important forum for discussion and interchange of experiences among the GiD community. This monograph includes the contributions of the participants to the fourth edition of the GiD Conference held in the island of Ibiza from 8-9 May 2008

Debugging Techniques for Locating Defects in Software Architectures

The explicit design of the architecture for a software product is a well established part of development projects. As the software architecture descriptions are becoming larger and more complex, there is more likelihood of defects being present in the software architecture. Studies have shown that a defect in the software architecture that has propagated to the development phase is very expensive to fix. To prevent such propagation of defects, this research proposes to provide debugging support for software architecture design. Debugging is commonly used in programming languages to effectively find the cause of a failure and locate the error to provide a fix. The same should be accomplished in software architectures to debug architecture failures. Without debugging support, the software architect is unable to quickly locate and determine the source of an error. In our work, we define a process for debugging software architecture and provide analysis techniques to locate defects in a software architecture that fails to meet functional and non-functional requirements. We have implemented the techniques and provide an evaluation of the techniques based on examples using an industry standard architecture definition language, Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL)

Level-Set-Segmentierung von Rattenhirn-MRTs

In dieser Arbeit wird die Segmentierung von Gehirngewebe aus magnet-resonanz-tomographischen Kopfaufnahmen von Ratten mittels Level-Set-Methoden vorgestellt. Dieses so genannte Skull-Stripping stellt einen wichtigen Vorverarbeitungsschritt für quantitative, morphometrische Untersuchungen oder aber Visualisierungsaufgaben dar. Ein kontrastbasierter Segmentierungsalgorithmus wird von einem Pseudo-3DAnsatz in einen echt-dreidimensionalen Segmentierer überführt. Die durch die Level-Set-Funktion beschriebene Kontur wird mittels einer partiellen Differentialgleichung iterativ deformiert und den Grenzen des zu segmentierenden Objektes angenähert. Die Geschwindigkeitsfunktion, welche lokale Kontraste auf der Konturnormalen auswertet und so die Oberflächenentwicklung bestimmt, wird untersucht und das lokale Signal adaptiert. Hierzu wird eine Glättung des Signals eingeführt, die sowohl in Richtung der Konturnormalen als auch parallel dazu wirkt. Zusätzlich wird eine varianzbasierte Kontrastverstärkung des lokalen Signals entwickelt. Daraus resultieren insbesondere in Bildbereichen mit geringem Signal-zu-Rausch-Verhältnis erheblich robustere und exaktere Segmentierungsergebnisse. Diese Leistungsfähigkeit wird an vorliegenden Rattenhirn-MRTs demonstriert

Model-based tool support for Tactical Data Links: an experience report from the defence domain

The Tactical Data Link (TDL) allows the exchange of information between cooperating platforms as part of an integrated command and control (C2) system. Information exchange is facilitated by adherence to a complex, message-based protocol defined by document-centric standards. In this paper, we report on a recent body of work investigating migration from a document-centric to a model-centric approach within the context of the TDL domain, motivated by a desire to achieve a positive return on investment. The model-centric approach makes use of the Epsilon technology stack and provides a significant improvement to both the level of abstraction and rigour of the network design. It is checkable by a machine and, by virtue of an MDA-like approach to the separation of domains and model transformation between domains, is open to integration with other models to support more complex workflows, such as by providing the results of interoperability analyses in human-readable domain-specific reports conforming to an accepted standard

Development of a static analysis tool to find securty vulnerabilities in java applications

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Computer Engineering, Izmir, 2010Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 57-60)Text in English Abstract: Turkish and Englishix, 77 leavesThe scope of this thesis is to enhance a static analysis tool in order to find security limitations in java applications. This will contribute to the removal of some of the existing limitations related with the lack of java source codes. The generally used tools for a static analysis are FindBugs, Jlint, PMD, ESC/Java2, Checkstyle. In this study, it is aimed to utilize PMD static analysis tool which already has been developed to find defects Possible bugs (empty try/catch/finally/switch statements), Dead code (unused local variables, parameters and private methods), Suboptimal code (wasteful String/StringBuffer usage), Overcomplicated expressions (unnecessary if statements for loops that could be while loops), Duplicate code (copied/pasted code means copied/pasted bugs). On the other hand, faults possible unexpected exception, length may be less than zero, division by zero, stream not closed on all paths and should be a static inner class cases were not implemented by PMD static analysis tool. PMD performs syntactic checks and dataflow analysis on program source code.In addition to some detection of clearly erroneous code, many of the .bugs. PMD looks for are stylistic conventions whose violation might be suspicious under some circumstances. For example, having a try statement with an empty catch block might indicate that the caught error is incorrectly discarded. Because PMD includes many detectors for bugs that depend on programming style, PMD includes support for selecting which detectors or groups of detectors should be run. While PMD.s main structure was conserved, boundary overflow vulnerability rules have been implemented to PMD

Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience

In recent years, a considerable amount of effort has been devoted, both in industry and academia, to the development, validation and verification of critical systems, i.e. those systems whose malfunctions or failures reach a critical level both in terms of risks to human life as well as having a large economic impact.Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience documents the main insights on Cost Effective Verification and Validation processes that were gained during work in the European Research Project CECRIS (acronym for Certification of Critical Systems). The objective of the research was to tackle the challenges of certification by focusing on those aspects that turn out to be more difficult/important for current and future critical systems industry: the effective use of methodologies, processes and tools.The CECRIS project took a step forward in the growing field of development, verification and validation and certification of critical systems. It focused on the more difficult/important aspects of critical system development, verification and validation and certification process. Starting from both the scientific and industrial state of the art methodologies for system development and the impact of their usage on the verification and validation and certification of critical systems, the project aimed at developing strategies and techniques supported by automatic or semi-automatic tools and methods for these activities, setting guidelines to support engineers during the planning of the verification and validation phases

Complexity in artificial life

Master'sMASTER OF SCIENC