401 research outputs found
A Model-Based Approach to Impact Analysis Using Model Differencing
Impact analysis is concerned with the identification of consequences of
changes and is therefore an important activity for software evolution. In
modelbased software development, models are core artifacts, which are often
used to generate essential parts of a software system. Changes to a model can
thus substantially affect different artifacts of a software system. In this
paper, we propose a modelbased approach to impact analysis, in which explicit
impact rules can be specified in a domain specific language (DSL). These impact
rules define consequences of designated UML class diagram changes on software
artifacts and the need of dependent activities such as data evolution. The UML
class diagram changes are identified automatically using model differencing.
The advantage of using explicit impact rules is that they enable the
formalization of knowledge about a product. By explicitly defining this
knowledge, it is possible to create a checklist with hints about development
steps that are (potentially) necessary to manage the evolution. To validate the
feasibility of our approach, we provide results of a case study.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, In: Proceedings of the 8th International
Workshop on Software Quality and Maintainability (SQM), ECEASST Journal, vol.
65 201
Designing Improved Sediment Transport Visualizations
Monitoring, or more commonly, modeling of sediment transport in the coastal environment is a critical task with relevance to coastline stability, beach erosion, tracking environmental contaminants, and safety of navigation. Increased intensity and regularity of storms such as Superstorm Sandy heighten the importance of our understanding of sediment transport processes. A weakness of current modeling capabilities is the ability to easily visualize the result in an intuitive manner. Many of the available visualization software packages display only a single variable at once, usually as a two-dimensional, plan-view cross-section. With such limited display capabilities, sophisticated 3D models are undermined in both the interpretation of results and dissemination of information to the public. Here we explore a subset of existing modeling capabilities (specifically, modeling scour around man-made structures) and visualization solutions, examine their shortcomings and present a design for a 4D visualization for sediment transport studies that is based on perceptually-focused data visualization research and recent and ongoing developments in multivariate displays. Vector and scalar fields are co-displayed, yet kept independently identifiable utilizing human perception\u27s separation of color, texture, and motion. Bathymetry, sediment grain-size distribution, and forcing hydrodynamics are a subset of the variables investigated for simultaneous representation. Direct interaction with field data is tested to support rapid validation of sediment transport model results. Our goal is a tight integration of both simulated data and real world observations to support analysis and simulation of the impact of major sediment transport events such as hurricanes. We unite modeled results and field observations within a geodatabase designed as an application schema of the Arc Marine Data Model. Our real-world focus is on the Redbird Artificial Reef Site, roughly 18 nautical miles offshor- Delaware Bay, Delaware, where repeated surveys have identified active scour and bedform migration in 27 m water depth amongst the more than 900 deliberately sunken subway cars and vessels. Coincidently collected high-resolution multibeam bathymetry, backscatter, and side-scan sonar data from surface and autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) systems along with complementary sub-bottom, grab sample, bottom imagery, and wave and current (via ADCP) datasets provide the basis for analysis. This site is particularly attractive due to overlap with the Delaware Bay Operational Forecast System (DBOFS), a model that provides historical and forecast oceanographic data that can be tested in hindcast against significant changes observed at the site during Superstorm Sandy and in predicting future changes through small-scale modeling around the individual reef objects
Assisted Specification of Code Using Search
We describe an intelligent assistant based on mining existing software
repositories to help the developer interactively create checkable
specifications of code. To be most useful we apply this at the subsystem level,
that is chunks of code of 1000-10000 lines that can be standalone or integrated
into an existing application to provide additional functionality or
capabilities. The resultant specifications include both a syntactic description
of what should be written and a semantic specification of what it should do,
initially in the form of test cases. The generated specification is designed to
be used for automatic code generation using various technologies that have been
proposed including machine learning, code search, and program synthesis. Our
research goal is to enable these technologies to be used effectively for
creating subsystems without requiring the developer to write detailed
specifications from scratch
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 Comparison Tool For Quality Software Requirement Specification
Most of the problems in software development come from a bad requirement specification. Failure on the requirements gathering phase is usually caused by unclear, ambiguous, inconsistent or incomplete requirements [1]. Thus, many researchers work on how to improve the quality of requirement specification. Even this is not the largest task of a project, it is really important to provide a flawless requirement specificatio
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