Erweiterung und formale Verifikation von dynamischen objektorientierten Modellierungsansätze auf Basis höherer Petri-Netze

Short Summary The design of complex distributed embedded computer systems is often a big challenge because they are large and contain many parallel working components under real time conditions. The dynamic diagrams like Sequence Diagrams, State Charts and Activity Diagrams are often not sufficient to model the high complexity of these computer systems. There is no transformation possibility from one description type into another. There are no or only limited possibilities for formal analysis of system properties. Coloured dynamic Sequence Diagrams, State Charts and Activity Diagrams will be developed in this work to integrate the well-known object oriented modelling techniques into the design process of complex distributed real time systems. Coloured diagrams derive from folding several simple diagrams which are executed autonomously or influence each other in some parts. The coloured diagram types have sufficient means for the clear and unique description of the composition of several simple diagrams and some additional mechanisms for description of the dependencies and connections between the separate objects. A transformation of these diagrams into one another which allows a parallel use of similar description means will be developed. The colours which essentially model the different similar components will be kept up the transformation of these diagram types into Coloured Petri Nets as a temporary notation and will be kept up the transformation in other diagram types. They are responsible for the clear assignment and the identification of the several components of a model during the whole design process. The transformation via Coloured Petri Nets is effective because they also use the colour concept and they integrate the basic concepts of the initial diagrams. The verification method for Coloured Time Interval Petri Nets designed in this work allows assertions about the fulfilment of time restrictions and about reachability of markings, liveness, about absence of conflicts, boundedness and dynamic conflicts. The usability of these extensions will be demonstrated with a real modelling example.Der Entwurf von komplexen verteilten eingebetteten Rechnersystemen ist aufgrund der Größe und Vielzahl von parallel unter Echtzeitbedingungen arbeitenden Komponenten häufig eine große Herausforderung. Die dynamischen Diagramme, wie Message Sequence Charts (Sequenzdiagramme), State Charts (Zustandsdiagramme) und Activity Diagrams (Aktivitätsdiagramme) können häufig nicht die hohe Komplexität der zu modellierenden verteilten eingebetteten Rechnersysteme bewältigen und dabei die Übersichtlichkeit der Entwurfsmodelle gewährleisten. Es existiert auch keine Überführungsmöglichkeit von einem Beschreibungstyp in einen anderen. Die Möglichkeiten zur formalen Analyse der Systemeigenschaften nicht oder nur eingeschränkt gegeben. Für die Einbindung der bekannten objektorientierten Modellierungstechniken in den Entwurfsprozess von komplexen verteilten Echtzeitsystemen sind die in dieser Arbeit entwickelten gefärbten dynamischen Sequenzdiagramme, Zustandsdiagramme und Aktivitätsdiagramme für die Modellierung von komplexen verteilten Echtzeitsystemen effektiv einsetzbar. Gefärbte Diagramme entstehen durch Faltung von mehreren einfachen Diagrammen, die voneinander unabhängig ausgeführt werden, oder sich in einigen Teilen beeinflussen. Die gefärbten Diagrammtypen verfügen über ausreichende Mittel für die übersichtliche und eindeutige Darstellung der Komposition von mehreren einfachen Diagrammen und einige zusätzliche Mechanismen für die Abbildung der Abhängigkeiten und Beziehungen zwischen den einzelnen Objekten. Die Transformation dieser Diagrammtypen ineinander erlaubt es, ähnliche Beschreibungsmittel parallel nutzbar zu machen. Die Farben, die im wesentlichen verschiedene ähnliche Teilkomponenten modellieren, werden bei der Umwandlung in Gefärbte Petri-Netze, die bei der Transformation dieser Diagrammtypen ineinander als Zwischennotation genutzt werden, und weiterhin bei der Transformation in andere Diagrammtypen beibehalten und dienen der übersichtlichen Zuordnung und Identifizierung der einzelnen Komponenten eines Modells während des gesamten Entwurfsprozesses. Die Transformation über Gefärbte Petri-Netze ist effektiv, da diese auch das Farbkonzept unterstützen und die Grundkonzepte der Ausgangsdiagramme als Teilmenge implizit besitzen. Die entwickelte Verifikationsmethode für Gefärbte Zeitintervall-Petri-Netze ermöglicht sowohl Aussagen über die Erfüllung von zeitlichen Restriktionen als auch über die Erreichbarkeit von Markierungen, Lebendigkeit, Konfliktfreiheit, Beschränktheit und dynamische Konflikte. Die Anwendbarkeit dieser Erweiterungen lässt sich an einem realen Modellierungsbeispiel nachweisen

A Model Driven Approach to the Analysis of Timeliness Properties

Abstract. The need for a design language that is rigorous but accessible and intuitive is often at odds with the formal and mathematical nature of languages used for analysis. UML and Petri Nets are a good example of this dichotomy. UML is a widely accepted modelling language capable of modelling the structural and behavioural aspects of a system. However UML lacks the mathematical foundation that is required for rigorous analysis. Petri Nets on the other hand have a strong mathematical base that is well suited for analysis of a system but lacks the appeal and ease-of-use of UML. Design in UML languages such as Sequence Diagrams and analysis in Petri Nets require on one hand some expertise in potentially two incompatible systems and their tools, and on the other a seamless transition from one system to the other. One way of addressing this impediment is to focus the software development mainly on the design language system and to facilitate the transition to the formal analysis by means of a combination of automation and tool support. The aim of this paper is to present a transformation system, which takes UML Sequence Diagrams augmented with time constraints and generates semantically equivalent Petri Nets that preserve the timing requirements. A case study on a small network is used in order to illustrate the proposed approach and in particular the design, the transformation and the analysis processes.

Model interoperability via model driven development

It is widely recognised that software development is a complex process. Among the factors that contribute to its inherent complexity is the gap between the design and the formal analysis domains. Software design is often considered a human oriented task while the analysis phase draws on formal representation and mathematical foundations. An example of this dichotomy is the use of UML for the software design phase and Petri Nets for the analysis; a separation of concerns that leads to the creation of heterogeneous models. Although UML is widely accepted as a language that can be used to model the structural and behavioural aspects of a system, its lack of mathematical foundations is seen as a serious impediment to rigorous analysis. Petri Nets on the other hand have a strong mathematical basis that is well suited for formal analysis; they lack however the appeal and the easeof-use of UML. A pressing concern for software developers is how to bridge the gap between these domains and allow for model interoperability and the integration of different toolsets across them, and thus reduce the complexity of the software development process. The aim of this paper is to present a Model Driven Development (MDD) model transformation which supports a seamless transition between UML and Petri Nets. This is achieved by model interoperability between UML Sequenc

A model driven approach to analysis and synthesis of sequence diagrams

Software design is a vital phase in a software development life cycle as it creates a blueprint for the implementation of the software. It is crucial that software designs are error-free since any unresolved design-errors could lead to costly implementation errors. To minimize these errors, the software community adopted the concept of modelling from various other engineering disciplines. Modelling provides a platform to create and share abstract or conceptual representations of the software system – leading to various modelling languages, among them Unified Modelling Language (UML) and Petri Nets. While Petri Nets strong mathematical capability allows various formal analyses to be performed on the models, UMLs user-friendly nature presented a more appealing platform for system designers. Using Multi Paradigm Modelling, this thesis presents an approach where system designers may have the best of both worlds; SD2PN, a model transformation that maps UML Sequence Diagrams into Petri Nets allows system designers to perform modelling in UML while still using Petri Nets to perform the analysis. Multi Paradigm Modelling also provided a platform for a well-established theory in Petri Nets – synthesis to be adopted into Sequence Diagram as a method of putting-together different Sequence Diagrams based on a set of techniques and algorithms

An Executable System Architecture Approach to Discrete Events System Modeling Using SysML in Conjunction with Colored Petri Net

This paper proposes an executable system architecting paradigm for discrete event system modeling and analysis through integration of a set of architecting tools, executable modeling tools, analytical tools, and visualization tools. The essential step is translating SysML-based specifications into colored Petri nets (CPNs) which enables rigorous static and dynamic system analysis as well as formal verification of the behavior and functionality of the SysML-based design. A set of tools have been studied and integrated that enable a structured architecture design process. Some basic principles of executable system architecture for discrete event system modeling that guide the process of executable architecture specification and analysis are discussed. This paradigm is aimed at general system design. Its feasibility was demonstrated with a C4- type network centric system as an example. The simulation results was used to check the overall integrity and internal consistency of the architecture models, refine the architecture design, and, finally, verify the behavior and functionality of the system being modeled

Some rules to transform sequence diagrams into coloured Petri nets

This paper presents a set of rules that allows software engineers to transform the behavior described by a UML 2.0 Sequence Diagram (SD) into a Colored Petri Net (CPN). SDs in UML 2.0 are much richer than in UML 1.x, namely by allowing several traces to be combined in a unique diagram, using high-level operators over interactions. The main purpose of the transformation is to allow the development team to construct animations based on the CPN that can be shown to the users or the clients in order to reproduce the expected scenarios and thus validate them. Thus, non-technical stakeholders are able to discuss and validate the captured requirements. The usage of animation is an important topic in this context, since it permits the user to discuss the system behavior using the problem domain language. A small control application from industry is used to show the applicability of the suggested rules

Evaluation of software architecture using fuzzy colored Petri nets

Software Architecture (SA) is one of the most important artifacts for life cycle of a software system because it incorporates some important decisions and principles for the system development. On the other hand, developing the systems based on uncertain and ambiguous requirement has been increased, significantly. Therefore, there have been significant attentions on SA requirements. In this paper, we present a new method for evaluation of performance characteristics based on a use case, response time, and queue length of SA. Since there are some ambiguities associated with considered systems, we use the idea of Fuzzy UML (F-UML) diagrams. In addition, these diagrams have been enriched with performance annotations using proposed Fuzzy-SPT sub profile, the extended version of SPT profile proposed by OMG. Then, these diagrams are mapped into an executable model based on Fuzzy Colored Petri Nets (FCPN) and finally the performance metrics are calculated using the proposed algorithms. We have implemented CPN-Tools for creating and evaluating the FCPN model

Validation of scenario-based business requirements with Coloured Petri Nets

A scenario can be used to describe a possible instantiation of a given business use case and can be expressed for example as a list of steps written in natural language, or by an interaction diagram. This paper discusses how a collection of scenarios, all expressed as UML2 sequence diagrams, can be described for validation purposes by a single model, written in the Coloured Petri Nets (CPN) modelling language. Due to the support for parallelism given by the CPN language, the obtained CPN model can: (1) simultaneously execute several scenarios; and (2) elegantly represent the parallel activities inside a scenario. This two-level parallelism is crucial during validation, since it allows one to detect problems that are only evident when several scenarios are in simultaneous execution and may affect each other. We exemplify our approach in a system that has a rich set of interactions with its users.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - bolsa SFRH/BD/19718/2004, programa PTDC/EIA/70271/2006 “AMADEUS: Aspects and Compiler Optimizations for Matlab System Development

Validation of reactive software from scenario-based models

This thesis proposal suggests a model-based approach to obtain, from a set of behavioural scenarios of a given reactive software system, a graphical animation for reproducing that set of scenarios for validation purposes. The approach assumes that the requirements of the system are described by a use case diagram, being the behaviour of each use case detailed by a collection of scenario descriptions. These use cases and scenarios are transformed into a Coloured Petri Net (CPN) model, which is next complemented with animation-specific elements. By executing the CPN model, it is possible to animate the scenarios in a user-friendly way and thus ensuring an effective involvement of the users in the system’s validation. The CPN model is enforced to be (1) parametric, allowing an easy modification of the initial conditions of the scenarios, (2) environment-descriptive, meaning that it includes the state of the relevant elements of the environment, and (3) animation-separated, implying that the elements related to animation are clearly separated from the other ones. We validate our approach based on its application to two examples of reactive systems

Profiling the publish/subscribe paradigm for automated analysis using colored Petri nets

UML sequence diagrams are used to graphically describe the message interactions between the objects participating in a certain scenario. Combined fragments extend the basic functionality of UML sequence diagrams with control structures, such as sequences, alternatives, iterations, or parallels. In this paper, we present a UML profile to annotate sequence diagrams with combined fragments to model timed Web services with distributed resources under the publish/subscribe paradigm. This profile is exploited to automatically obtain a representation of the system based on Colored Petri nets using a novel model-to-model (M2M) transformation. This M2M transformation has been specified using QVT and has been integrated in a new add-on extending a state-of-the-art UML modeling tool. Generated Petri nets can be immediately used in well-known Petri net software, such as CPN Tools, to analyze the system behavior. Hence, our model-to-model transformation tool allows for simulating the system and finding design errors in early stages of system development, which enables us to fix them at these early phases and thus potentially saving development costs