Separating Agent-Functioning and Inter-Agent Coordination by Activated Modules: The DECOMAS Architecture

The embedding of self-organizing inter-agent processes in distributed software applications enables the decentralized coordination system elements, solely based on concerted, localized interactions. The separation and encapsulation of the activities that are conceptually related to the coordination, is a crucial concern for systematic development practices in order to prepare the reuse and systematic integration of coordination processes in software systems. Here, we discuss a programming model that is based on the externalization of processes prescriptions and their embedding in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). One fundamental design concern for a corresponding execution middleware is the minimal-invasive augmentation of the activities that affect coordination. This design challenge is approached by the activation of agent modules. Modules are converted to software elements that reason about and modify their host agent. We discuss and formalize this extension within the context of a generic coordination architecture and exemplify the proposed programming model with the decentralized management of (web) service infrastructures

An overview of Mirjam and WeaveC

In this chapter, we elaborate on the design of an industrial-strength aspectoriented programming language and weaver for large-scale software development. First, we present an analysis on the requirements of a general purpose aspect-oriented language that can handle crosscutting concerns in ASML software. We also outline a strategy on working with aspects in large-scale software development processes. In our design, we both re-use existing aspect-oriented language abstractions and propose new ones to address the issues that we identified in our analysis. The quality of the code ensured by the realized language and weaver has a positive impact both on maintenance effort and lead-time in the first line software development process. As evidence, we present a short evaluation of the language and weaver as applied today in the software development process of ASML

Dura

The reactive event processing language, that is developed in the context of this project, has been called DEAL in previous documents. When we chose this name for our language it has not been used by other authors working in the same research area (complex event processing). However, in the meantime it appears in publications of other authors and because we have not used the name in publications yet we cannot claim that we were the first to use it. In order to avoid ambiguities and name conflicts in future publications we decided to rename our language to Dura which stands for “Declarative uniform reactive event processing language”. Therefore the title of this deliverable has been updated to “Dura – Concepts and Examples”

Stochastic kinetic models: Dynamic independence, modularity and graphs

The dynamic properties and independence structure of stochastic kinetic models (SKMs) are analyzed. An SKM is a highly multivariate jump process used to model chemical reaction networks, particularly those in biochemical and cellular systems. We identify SKM subprocesses with the corresponding counting processes and propose a directed, cyclic graph (the kinetic independence graph or KIG) that encodes the local independence structure of their conditional intensities. Given a partition $[A,D,B]$ of the vertices, the graphical separation $A\perp B|D$ in the undirected KIG has an intuitive chemical interpretation and implies that $A$ is locally independent of $B$ given $A\cup D$. It is proved that this separation also results in global independence of the internal histories of $A$ and $B$ conditional on a history of the jumps in $D$ which, under conditions we derive, corresponds to the internal history of $D$. The results enable mathematical definition of a modularization of an SKM using its implied dynamics. Graphical decomposition methods are developed for the identification and efficient computation of nested modularizations. Application to an SKM of the red blood cell advances understanding of this biochemical system.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOS779 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Aspect Oriented Behavioral Synthesis

Modern modularization techniques such as Aspect Orientation require powerful and expressive enough specification languages in order to conceive the development of a system as the combination of the different views it is composed of. In this work we present FVS as an aspect oriented language where the composition of individual aspects is achieved employing behavioral synthesis. As a distinctive feature, our approach can handle properties denoted by non deterministic Büchi automata. A case of study is introduced to show our approach in action.XVI Workshop Ingeniería de Software.Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informátic

Aspect Oriented Behavioral Synthesis

Modern modularization techniques such as Aspect Orientation require powerful and expressive enough specification languages in order to conceive the development of a system as the combination of the different views it is composed of. In this work we present FVS as an aspect oriented language where the composition of individual aspects is achieved employing behavioral synthesis. As a distinctive feature, our approach can handle properties denoted by non deterministic Büchi automata. A case of study is introduced to show our approach in action.XVI Workshop Ingeniería de Software.Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informátic

Aspect Oriented Behavioral Synthesis

Modern modularization techniques such as Aspect Orientation require powerful and expressive enough specification languages in order to conceive the development of a system as the combination of the different views it is composed of. In this work we present FVS as an aspect oriented language where the composition of individual aspects is achieved employing behavioral synthesis. As a distinctive feature, our approach can handle properties denoted by non deterministic Büchi automata. A case of study is introduced to show our approach in action.XVI Workshop Ingeniería de Software.Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informátic

Formal Specification and Verification for Automated Production Systems

Complex industrial control software often drives safety- and mission-critical systems, like automated production plants or control units embedded into devices in automotive systems. Such controllers have in common that they are reactive systems, i.e., that they periodically read sensor stimuli and cyclically execute the same program to produce actuator signals. The correctness of software for automated production is rarely verified using formal techniques. Although, due to the Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR4.0), the impact and importance of software have become an important role in industrial automation. What is used instead in industrial practice today is testing and simulation, where individual test cases are used to validate an automated production system. Three reasons why formal methods are not popular are: (a) It is difficult to adequately formulate the desired temporal properties. (b) There is a lack of specification languages for reactive systems that are both sufficiently expressive and comprehensible for practitioners. (c) Due to the lack of an environment model the obtained results are imprecise. Nonetheless, formal methods for automated production systems are well studied academically---mainly on the verification of safety properties via model checking. In this doctoral thesis we present the concept of (1) generalized test tables (GTTs), a new specification language for functional properties, and their extension (2) relational test tables (RTTs) for relational properties. The concept includes the syntactical notion, designed for the intuition of engineers, and the semantics, which are based on game theory. We use RTTs for a novel confidential property on reactive systems, the provably forgetting of information. Moreover, for regression verification, an important relational property, we are able to achieve performance improvements by (3) creating a decomposing rule which splits large proofs into small sub-task. We implemented the verification procedures and evaluated them against realistic case studies, e.g., the Pick-and-Place-Unit from the Technical University of Munich. The presented contribution follows the idea of lowering the obstacle of verifying the dependability of reactive systems in general, and automated production systems in particular for the engineer either by introducing a new specification language (GTTs), by exploiting existing programs for the specification (RTTs, regression verification), or by improving the verification performance