1,253 research outputs found
Semantic Component Composition
Building complex software systems necessitates the use of component-based
architectures. In theory, of the set of components needed for a design, only
some small portion of them are "custom"; the rest are reused or refactored
existing pieces of software. Unfortunately, this is an idealized situation.
Just because two components should work together does not mean that they will
work together.
The "glue" that holds components together is not just technology. The
contracts that bind complex systems together implicitly define more than their
explicit type. These "conceptual contracts" describe essential aspects of
extra-system semantics: e.g., object models, type systems, data representation,
interface action semantics, legal and contractual obligations, and more.
Designers and developers spend inordinate amounts of time technologically
duct-taping systems to fulfill these conceptual contracts because system-wide
semantics have not been rigorously characterized or codified. This paper
describes a formal characterization of the problem and discusses an initial
implementation of the resulting theoretical system.Comment: 9 pages, submitted to GCSE/SAIG '0
On Modelling and Analysis of Dynamic Reconfiguration of Dependable Real-Time Systems
This paper motivates the need for a formalism for the modelling and analysis
of dynamic reconfiguration of dependable real-time systems. We present
requirements that the formalism must meet, and use these to evaluate well
established formalisms and two process algebras that we have been developing,
namely, Webpi and CCSdp. A simple case study is developed to illustrate the
modelling power of these two formalisms. The paper shows how Webpi and CCSdp
represent a significant step forward in modelling adaptive and dependable
real-time systems.Comment: Presented and published at DEPEND 201
Principles of Component-Based Design of Intelligent Agents
Compositional multi-agent system design is a methodological perspective on multiagent system design based on the software engineering principles process and knowledge abstraction, compositionality, reuse, specification and verification. This pape
Refinement and verification of concurrent systems specified in Object-Z and CSP
The formal development of large or complex systems can often be facilitated by the use of more than one formal specification language. Such a combination of languages is particularly suited to the specification of concurrent or distributed systems, where both the modelling of processes and state is necessary. This paper presents an approach to refinement and verification of specifications written using a combination of Object-Z and CSP. A common semantic basis for the two languages enables a unified method of refinement to be used, based upon CSP refinement. To enable state-based techniques to be used for the Object-Z components of a specification we develop state-based refinement relations which are sound and complete with respect to CSP refinement. In addition, a verification method for static and dynamic properties is presented. The method allows us to verify properties of the CSP system specification in terms of its component Object-Z classes by using the laws of the CSP operators together with the logic for Object-Z
Linear Logic for Meaning Assembly
Semantic theories of natural language associate meanings with utterances by
providing meanings for lexical items and rules for determining the meaning of
larger units given the meanings of their parts. Meanings are often assumed to
combine via function application, which works well when constituent structure
trees are used to guide semantic composition. However, we believe that the
functional structure of Lexical-Functional Grammar is best used to provide the
syntactic information necessary for constraining derivations of meaning in a
cross-linguistically uniform format. It has been difficult, however, to
reconcile this approach with the combination of meanings by function
application. In contrast to compositional approaches, we present a deductive
approach to assembling meanings, based on reasoning with constraints, which
meshes well with the unordered nature of information in the functional
structure. Our use of linear logic as a `glue' for assembling meanings allows
for a coherent treatment of the LFG requirements of completeness and coherence
as well as of modification and quantification.Comment: 19 pages, uses lingmacros.sty, fullname.sty, tree-dvips.sty,
latexsym.sty, requires the new version of Late
cmUML - A UML based framework for formal specification of concurrent, reactive systems
Complex software systems possess concurrent and reactive behaviors requiring precise specifications prior to development. Lamport's transition axiom method is a formal specification method which combines axiomatic and operational approaches. On the other hand Unified Modeling Language (UML), a de facto industry standard visual language, lacks suitable constructs and semantics regarding concurrency aspects. Though UML includes action semantics, its higher level constructs and object semantics are inconsistent. Motivated by Lamport's approach, this paper proposes a UML based specification framework 'cmUML' ('cm' for concurrent modules) for formal specification of concurrent, reactive systems without object level diagrams and OCL. The framework integrates higher level diagrams of UML and addresses various concurrency issues including exception handling. It combines UML-RT and UML// SPT profile as the latter defines a core package for concurrency and causality. Further the framework includes the characteristic safety and liveness aspects of concurrent systems. The proposed framework is in contrast with existing approaches based on low level primitives (semaphore, monitors). The paper includes several specification examples validating the proposed framework
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