Construction and Analysis of Petri Net Model for Distributed Cyber Physical Systems

A Distributed Cyber-Physical System (DCPS) composition poses challenges in determining its emergent behaviour. These challenges occur due to (1) the appearance of causal loops of information and energy flow through cyber and physical channels and (2) inherent non-determinism in the temporally ordered flow of events within independently evolving interacting processes of Constituent Systems (CSs). Hence, there is a need to construct a model of the envisaged schematic of DCPS composition for analysis and verification of its significant properties in the conceptual design stage of the system development life cycle. This paper presents a procedure to construct DCPS composition models in Petri net formalism using distributed abstractions. The model for each CS is obtained from elementary constructs using compositional operators. The interaction among CSs occurs through channels obtained by connecting send and receive constructs of two CSs participating in an interaction. The internal processing within a CS characterizing its primary function is abstracted in a generic passthrough construct. Representing these constructs with compositional operators results in the complete DCPS model in Petri net formalism. A toolchain with Reference net workshop (Renew) as an integrated Petri net editing and analysis platform is configured to support DCPS modelling, simulation and analysis. The Renew tool functionality has been enhanced with a plugin designed and developed by authors to facilitate the drawing of the distributed composition model. A low-level Petri net analysis (Lola) v2.0 plugin is employed to verify the Petri net and temporal properties of the modelled DCPS scenarios. The properties of the resultant model are verified using well-established algorithms to analyze Petri nets. Further, system properties specified using temporal logic can be verified using model-checking algorithms for Petri nets. A moderately complex scenario involving interactions among six CSs illustrates the presented approach

Behavioral Constraints for Services

Recently, we introduced the concept of an operating guideline of a service as a structure that characterizes all its properly interacting partner services. The hitherto considered correctness criterion is deadlock freedom of the composition of both services. In practice, there are intended and unintended deadlock-freely interacting partners of a service. In this paper, we provide a formal approach to express intended and unintended behavior as behavioral constraints. With such a constraint, unintended partners can be “filtered" yielding a customized operating guideline. Customized operating guidelines can be applied to validate a service and for service discovery

Efficient almost wait-free parallel accesible dynamic hashtables

Abstract In multiprogrammed systems, synchronization often turns out to be a performance bottleneck and the source of poor fault-tolerance. Wait-free and lock-free algorithms can do without locking mechanisms, and therefore do not suffer from these problems. We present an efficient almost wait-free algorithm for parallel accessible hashtables, which promises more robust performance and reliability than conventional lock-based implementations. Our solution is as efficient as sequential hashtables. It can easily be implemented using C-like languages and requires on average only constant time for insertion, deletion or accessing of elements. Apart from that, our new algorithm allows the hashtables to grow and shrink dynamically when needed. A true problem of lock-free algorithms is that they are hard to design correctly, even when apparently straightforward. Ensuring the correctness of the design at the earliest possible stage is a major challenge in any responsible system development. Our algorithm contains 81 atomic statements. In view of the complexity of the algorithm and its correctness properties, we turned to the interactive theorem prover PVS for mechanical support. We employ standard deductive verification techniques to prove around 200 invariance properties of our almost wait-free algorithm, and describe how this is achieved using the theorem prover PVS. CR Subject Classification (1991): D.1 Programming techniques AMS Subject Classification (1991): 68Q22 Distributed algorithms, 68P20 Information storage and retrieval Keywords & Phrases: Hashtables, Distributed algorithms, Lock-free, Wait-fre

Active – Passive: On Preconceptions of Testing, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2011, nr 3

In telecommunications and software engineering, testing is normally understood to be essentially active: a tester is said to stimulate, control, and enforce. Passive testing does not fit this paradigm and thus remains the niche research subject, which bears on the scope and depth of the obtained results. It is argued that such limited understanding of testing is one of its many community-bound preconceptions. It may be acceptable in the current engineering approach to testing, but can and should be challenged in order to converge on the core concepts of the proposed science of testing (“testology”). This methodological work aims at establishing that there are no fundamental reasons for admitting the dominant role of the active element in testing. To show this, external (also extra- technical) areas are consulted for insight, direct observations, and metaphors. The troublesome distinction between (passive) testing and monitoring, as well as unclear relations between testing and measurements, are also addressed

Mapping programs to equations

Extracting the function of a program from a static analysis of its source code is a valuable capability in software engineering; at a time when there is increasing talk of using AI (Artificial Intelligence) to generate software from natural language specifications, it becomes increasingly important to determine the exact function of software as written, to figure out what AI has understood the natural language specification to mean. For all its criticality, the ability to derive the domain-to-range function of a program has proved to be an elusive goal, due primarily to the difficulty of deriving the function of iterative statements. Several automated tools obviate this difficulty by unrolling the loops; but this is clearly an imperfect solution, especially in light of the fact that loops capture most of the computing power of a program, are the locus of most of its complexity, and the source of most of its faults. This dissertation investigates a three-step process to map a program written in a C-like language into a function from inputs to outputs, or from initial states to final states. The semantics of iterative statements are captured (while loops, repeat loops, for loops), including nested iterative statements, by means of the concept of invariant relation; an invariant relation is a reflexive transitive relation that links program states separated by an arbitrary number of iterations. But the function derived for large and complex programs may be too unwieldy to be useful, not unlike drinking from a fire hose. In order to enable the user to query the program at scale, four functions are proposed. We propose four functions: Assume(), which enables the user to make assumptions about program states or program parts; Capture(), which enables the user to capture the state of the program at some label of the function of some program part; Verify(), which enables the user to verify a unary assertion about the state of the program at some label, or a binary assertion about a program part; and Establish(), which is envisioned to use program repair techniques to modify the program so as to make a Verify() query return true