Model consistency management for systems engineering

Um der Komplexität der interdisziplinären Entwicklung moderner technischer Systeme Herr zu werden, findet die Entwicklung heutzutage meist modellbasiert statt. Dabei werden zahlreiche verschiedene Modelle genutzt, die jeweils unterschiedliche Gesichtspunkte berücksichtigen und sich auf verschiedenen Abstraktionsebenen befinden. Wenn die hierbei auftretenden Inkonsistenzen zwischen den Modellen ungelöst bleiben, kann dies zu Fehlern im fertigen System führen. Modelltransformations- und -synchronisationstechniken sind ein vielversprechender Ansatz, um solche Inkonsistenzen zu erkennen und aufzulösen. Existierende Modellsynchronisationstechniken sind allerdings nicht mächtig genug, um die komplexen Beziehungen in so einem Entwicklungsszenario zu unterstützen. In dieser Arbeit wird eine neue Modellsynchronisationstechnik präsentiert, die es erlaubt, Modelle verschiedener Sichten und Abstraktionsebenen zu synchronisieren. Dabei werden Metriken zur Erhöhung des Automatisierungsgrads eingesetzt, die Expertenwissen abbilden. Der Ansatz erlaubt unterschiedliche Grade an Benutzerinteraktion, von vollautomatischer Funktionsweise bis zu feingranularen manuellen Entscheidungen.The development of complex mechatronic systems requires the close collaboration of different disciplines, like mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, control engineering, and software engineering. To tackle the complexity of such systems, such a development is heavily based on models. Engineers use several models on different abstraction levels, for different purposes and with different view-points. Usually, a discipline-spanning system model is developed during the first, interdisciplinary system design phase. For the implementation phase, the disciplines use different models and tools to develop the discipline-specific aspects of the system. During such a model-based development, inconsistencies between the different discipline-specific models and the discipline-spanning system model are likely to occur, because changes to discipline-specific models may affect the discipline-spanning system model and models of other disciplines. These inconsistencies lead to increased development time and costs if they remain unresolved. Model transformation and synchronization are promising techniques to detect and resolve such inconsistencies. However, existing model synchronization solutions are not powerful enough to support the complex consistency relations of such an application scenario. In this thesis, we present a novel model synchronization technique that allows for synchronized models with multiple views and abstraction levels. To minimize the information loss and improve automation during the synchronization, it employs metrics to encode expert knowledge. The approach can be customized to allow different amounts of user interaction, from full automation to fine-grained manual decisions.Tag der Verteidigung: 24.10.2014Paderborn, Univ., Diss., 201

A Scenario-directed Computational Framework To Aid Decision-making And Systems Development

Scenarios are narratives that illustrate future possibilities or existing systems, and help policy makers and system designers choose among alternative courses of action. Scenario-based decision-making crosses many domains and multiple perspectives. Domain-specic techniques for encoding, simulating, and manipulating scenarios exist, however there is no general-purpose scenario representation capable of supporting the wide spectrum of formality from executable simulation programs to free-form text to streaming media descriptions. The claim of this research is that there is a computer readable scenario framework that can capture the semantics of a problem domain and make scenarios an active part of decision making. The challenge is to define a representation for scenarios that supports a wide range of discussion and comprehension activities while remaining independent of content and access mechanisms. This dissertation describes a scenario ontology derived by examining alternate forms of narrative: thought experiments, mental models, case-based reasoning, use cases, design patterns, screenwriting, film-editing, intelligent agents, and other narrative domains. The scenario conceptual model was based on an analysis of forms of narrative and the activities of storytelling. This method separates what a narrative is from how it is used. The research contribution is the development of the hyperscenario framework. A hyperscenario is a scenario representation containing link structures for navigation between scenario elements. The hyperscenario framework consists of the scenario ontology, scenario grammar, and a scenario specification called Scenario Markup Language (SCML). The results of the web-enabled simulation experiment validate the improvement on decision-making due to the hyperscenario framework.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Moore, Melody; Committee Member: Dampier, David; Committee Member: Harrold, Mary Jean; Committee Member: Mark, Leo; Committee Member: Rugaber, Spence

Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering, FASE 2021, which took place during March 27–April 1, 2021, and was held as part of the Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2021. The conference was planned to take place in Luxembourg but changed to an online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 16 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 52 submissions. The book also contains 4 Test-Comp contributions

INTEGRATING SOFTWARE BEHAVIOR INTO DYNAMIC PROBABILISTIC RISK ASSESSMENT

Software plays an increasingly important role in modern safety-critical systems. Although research has been done to integrate software into the classical Probability Risk Assessment (PRA) framework, current PRA practice overwhelmingly neglects the contribution of software to system risk. The objective of this research is to develop a methodology to integrate software contributions in the Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment (DPRA) environment. DPRA is considered to be the next generation of PRA techniques. It is a set of methods and techniques in which simulation models that represent the behavior of the elements of a system are exercised in order to identify risks and vulnerabilities of the system. DPRA allows consideration of dynamic interactions of system elements and physical variables. The fact remains, however, that modeling software for use in the DPRA framework is also quite complex and very little has been done to address the question directly and comprehensively. This dissertation describes a framework and a set of techniques to extend the DPRA approach to allow consideration of the software contributions on system risk. The framework includes a software representation, an approach to incorporate the software representation into the DPRA environment SimPRA, and an experimental demonstration of the methodology. This dissertation also proposes a framework to simulate the multi-level objects in the simulation based DPRA environment. This is a new methodology to address the state explosion problem. The results indicate that the DPRA simulation performance is improved using the new approach. The entire methodology is implemented in the SimPRA software. An easy to use tool is developed to help the analyst to develop the software model. This study is the first systematic effort to integrate software risk contributions into the dynamic PRA environment

Survey of Template-Based Code Generation

L'automatisation de la génération des artefacts textuels à partir des modèles est une étape critique dans l'Ingénierie Dirigée par les Modèles (IDM). C'est une transformation de modèles utile pour générer le code source, sérialiser les modèles dans de stockages persistents, générer les rapports ou encore la documentation. Parmi les différents paradigmes de transformation de modèle-au-texte, la génération de code basée sur les templates (TBCG) est la plus utilisée en IDM. La TBCG est une technique de génération qui produit du code à partir des spécifications de haut niveau appelées templates. Compte tenu de la diversité des outils et des approches, il est nécessaire de classifier et de comparer les techniques de TBCG existantes afin d'apporter un soutien approprié aux développeurs. L'objectif de ce mémoire est de mieux comprendre les caractéristiques des techniques de TBCG, identifier les tendances dans la recherche, et éxaminer l'importance du rôle de l'IDM par rapport à cette approche. J'évalue également l'expressivité, la performance et la mise à l'échelle des outils associés selon une série de modèles. Je propose une étude systématique de cartographie de la littérature qui décrit une intéressante vue d'ensemble de la TBCG et une étude comparitive des outils de la TBCG pour mieux guider les dévloppeurs dans leur choix. Cette étude montre que les outils basés sur les modèles offrent plus d'expressivité tandis que les outils basés sur le code sont les plus performants. Enfin, Xtend2 offre le meilleur compromis entre l'expressivité et la performance.A critical step in model-driven engineering (MDE) is the automatic synthesis of a textual artifact from models. This is a very useful model transformation to generate application code, to serialize the model in persistent storage, generate documentation or reports. Among the various model-to-text transformation paradigms, Template-Based Code Generation (TBCG) is the most popular in MDE. TBCG is a synthesis technique that produces code from high-level specifications, called templates. It is a popular technique in MDE given that they both emphasize abstraction and automation. Given the diversity of tools and approaches, it is necessary to classify and compare existing TBCG techniques to provide appropriate support to developers. The goal of this thesis is to better understand the characteristics of TBCG techniques, identify research trends, and assess the importance of the role of MDE in this code synthesis approach. We also evaluate the expressiveness, performance and scalability of the associated tools based on a range of models that implement critical patterns. To this end, we conduct a systematic mapping study of the literature that paints an interesting overview of TBCG and a comparative study on TBCG tools to better guide developers in their choices. This study shows that model-based tools offer more expressiveness whereas code-based tools performed much faster. Xtend2 offers the best compromise between the expressiveness and the performance

The Montclarion, February 5, 2015

Student Newspaper of Montclair State Universityhttps://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/montclarion/2038/thumbnail.jp

Improving the estimation, contingency planning and tracking of agile software development projects

The technological advances that have brought us computers in our homes, our cars and our telephones have also brought about changes to the way that very same technology is developed. The abundance of computer power has enabled a new way of developing software that relies on components, prototyping and short development cycles, rather than on the more traditional analysis, design and build phases of not that long ago. This new way of developing software is called Agile development. This research looks into three distinct, but related, aspects of the management of Agile projects: (1) estimating software size with the purpose of planning a project, (2) monitoring development activities, and (3) calculating and administering contingency funds, and proposes new methods for addressing them. Software sizing provides the foundation for estimating effort and project duration, and so the importance of credible and reliable size estimates cannot be overstated. To address the issue of estimation, the thesis proposes a modified Paired Comparison method to support expert judgement, the prevailing sizing method used in industry. In this method, the total number of comparisons, which is a factor limiting the scalability of the method, is reduced almost by half using incomplete cyclic designs (ICD) to select suitable pairs of entities to be compared. Monitoring a project, is the process of comparing how far it has come relative to where it was supposed to be according to its plan, for the purpose of deciding what, if any, actions are necessary to complete it as planned. This thesis proposes and demonstrates the use of a modified line of balance (LOB) indicator to gain insights into the roject’s progress not provided by burn-down charts and cumulative flow diagrams, the two most common indicators used in Agile projects. The contribution of the thesis can be measured not only in terms of the novelty of the application of the LOB indicator to software development projects, but also in the replacement of the original plan-based lead-time calculations with dynamic information extracted from a control version system. Contingency is defined by the Project Management Institute as the amount of funds needed above the estimate to reduce the risk of overruns to a level acceptable to the organization. This thesis postulates: 1) that a realistic calculation of these funds should be based on the cost of keeping the project on-schedule, and not on what it would have cost had the work been planned from the beginning, and proposes a quantitative model which takes into account the size of the project, the time at which the underestimation is acknowledged and the process losses associated with the recovery actions, and 2) that these funds ought to be administered above the project level to preserve the premise that their use is probabilistic. The model’s outputs enable the exploration of the costs and benefits of several management options. The three methods presented will be of interest to project managers, software engineers and others involved in planning and risk management activities. While the examples used to illustrate and explain the concepts correspond to projects using Agile approaches, such as Scrum and Feature-Driven Development, the methods proposed are applicable to other types of development as well

Proceedings of Monterey Workshop 2001 Engineering Automation for Sofware Intensive System Integration

The 2001 Monterey Workshop on Engineering Automation for Software Intensive System Integration was sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Army Research Office and the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency. It is our pleasure to thank the workshop advisory and sponsors for their vision of a principled engineering solution for software and for their many-year tireless effort in supporting a series of workshops to bring everyone together.This workshop is the 8 in a series of International workshops. The workshop was held in Monterey Beach Hotel, Monterey, California during June 18-22, 2001. The general theme of the workshop has been to present and discuss research works that aims at increasing the practical impact of formal methods for software and systems engineering. The particular focus of this workshop was "Engineering Automation for Software Intensive System Integration". Previous workshops have been focused on issues including, "Real-time & Concurrent Systems", "Software Merging and Slicing", "Software Evolution", "Software Architecture", "Requirements Targeting Software" and "Modeling Software System Structures in a fastly moving scenario".Office of Naval ResearchAir Force Office of Scientific Research Army Research OfficeDefense Advanced Research Projects AgencyApproved for public release, distribution unlimite