SES and Ecore for Ontology-based Scenario Modeling in Aviation Scenario Definition Language (ASDL)

The Aviation Scenario Definition Language (ASDL) is a domain-specific language proposal which aims to provide a standard aviation scenario specification mechanism and enable the reuse of scenario generation methods among different simulators. This paper presents a model-based scenario development approach that exploits Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) core (Ecore) and System Entity Structure (SES) for metamodeling and modeling these elements. The construction of the ASDL metamodel using both platforms is described to illustrate the processes. As a result of comparing two approaches, it is concluded that they follow a similar structure in the hierarchical definition of modeled elements despite there being different toolsets available in each method. Thereby, each metamodel can be easily converted into the other type using transformations. As an application use case, the use of the proposed ontology-based scenario development in the aviation domain is discussed, where a training tool is being developed that utilizes SES/Ecore approach to build a scenario-driven training tool for air traffic controllers

MATURE: A Model Driven bAsed Tool to Automatically Generate a langUage That suppoRts CMMI Process Areas spEcification

Many companies have achieved a higher quality in their processes by using CMMI. Process definition may be efficiently supported by software tools. A higher automation level will make process improvement and assessment activities easier to be adapted to customer needs. At present, automation of CMMI is based on tools that support practice definition in a textual way. These tools are often enhanced spreadsheets. In this paper, following the Model Driven Development paradigm (MDD), a tool that supports automatic generation of a language that can be used to specify process areas practices is presented. The generation is performed from a metamodel that represents CMMI. This tool, differently from others available, can be customized according to user needs. Guidelines to specify the CMMI metamodel are also provided. The paper also shows how this approach can support other assessment method

Using domain specific languages to capture design knowledge for model-based systems engineering

Design synthesis is a fundamental engineering task that involves the creation of structure from a desired functional specification; it involves both creating a system topology as well as sizing the system's components. Although the use of computer tools is common throughout the design process, design synthesis is often a task left to the designer. At the synthesis stage of the design process, designers have an extensive choice of design alternatives that need to be considered and evaluated. Designers can benefit from computational synthesis methods in the creative phase of the design process. Recent increases in computational power allow automated synthesis methods for rapidly generating a large number of design solutions. Combining an automated synthesis method with an evaluation framework allows for a more thorough exploration of the design space as well as for a reduction of the time and cost needed to design a system. To facilitate computational synthesis, knowledge about feasible system configurations must be captured. Since it is difficult to capture such synthesis knowledge about any possible system, a design domain must be chosen. In this thesis, the design domain is hydraulic systems. In this thesis, Model-Driven Software Development concepts are leveraged to create a framework to automate the synthesis of hydraulic systems will be presented and demonstrated. This includes the presentation of a domain specific language to describe the function and structure of hydraulic systems as well as a framework for synthesizing hydraulic systems using graph grammars to generate system topologies. Also, a method using graph grammars for generating analysis models from the described structural system representations is presented. This approach fits in the context of Model-Based Systems Engineering where a variety of formal models are used to represent knowledge about a system. It uses the Systems Modeling Language developed by The Object Management Group (OMG SysML™) as a unifying language for model definition.M.S.Committee Chair: Paredis, Chris; Committee Member: McGinnis, Leon; Committee Member: Schaefer, Dir

Industrialising Software Development in Systems Integration

Compared to other disciplines, software engineering as of today is still dependent on craftsmanship of highly-skilled workers. However, with constantly increasing complexity and efforts, existing software engineering approaches appear more and more inefficient. A paradigm shift towards industrial production methods seems inevitable. Recent advances in academia and practice have lead to the availability of industrial key principles in software development as well. Specialization is represented in software product lines, standardization and systematic reuse are available with component-based development, and automation has become accessible through model-driven engineering. While each of the above is well researched in theory, only few cases of successful implementation in the industry are known. This becomes even more evident in specialized areas of software engineering such as systems integration. Today’s IT systems need to quickly adapt to new business requirements due to mergers and acquisitions and cooperations between enterprises. This certainly leads to integration efforts, i.e. joining different subsystems into a cohesive whole in order to provide new functionality. In such an environment. the application of industrial methods for software development seems even more important. Unfortunately, software development in this field is a highly complex and heterogeneous undertaking, as IT environments differ from customer to customer. In such settings, existing industrialization concepts would never break even due to one-time projects and thus insufficient economies of scale and scope. This present thesis, therefore, describes a novel approach for a more efficient implementation of prior key principles while considering the characteristics of software development for systems integration. After identifying the characteristics of the field and their affects on currently-known industrialization concepts, an organizational model for industrialized systems integration has thus been developed. It takes software product lines and adapts them in a way feasible for a systems integrator active in several business domains. The result is a three-tiered model consolidating recurring activities and reducing the efforts for individual product lines. For the implementation of component-based development, the present thesis assesses current component approaches and applies an integration metamodel to the most suitable one. This ensures a common understanding of systems integration across different product lines and thus alleviates component reuse, even across product line boundaries. The approach is furthermore aligned with the organizational model to depict in which way component-based development may be applied in industrialized systems integration. Automating software development in systems integration with model-driven engineering was found to be insufficient in its current state. The reason herefore lies in insufficient tool chains and a lack of modelling standards. As an alternative, an XML-based configuration of products within a software product line has been developed. It models a product line and its products with the help of a domain-specific language and utilizes stylesheet transformations to generate compliable artefacts. The approach has been tested for its feasibility within an exemplarily implementation following a real-world scenario. As not all aspects of industrialized systems integration could be simulated in a laboratory environment, the concept was furthermore validated during several expert interviews with industry representatives. Here, it was also possible to assess cultural and economic aspects. The thesis concludes with a detailed summary of the contributions to the field and suggests further areas of research in the context of industrialized systems integration

A metamodel-based ASN.1 editor and compiler for the implementation of communication protocols

In der Software-Industrie sind viele metamodell-basierte Werkzeuge entwickelt worden, um die Erstellung von Programmiersprachen und insbesondere domänenspezifischen Sprachen (DSL ) zu unterstützen. Ein Beispiel für diese Werkzeuge ist Eclipse Xtext, welches eine große Popularität im Bereich der modellgetriebenen Softwareentwicklung (MDSE ) besitzt. In diesem Beitrag untersuchen wir, inwieweit Xtext und andere metamodell-basierte Ansätze zur Implementierung eines Editors und Compilers für die ASN.1 Spezifikation, welche von der ITU-T standardisiert wurde, verwendet werden können. Der metamodell-basierte Ansatz zur Implementierung der ASN.1 Spezifikation ermöglicht es, ASN.1-Dokumente softwaretechnisch wie ein Modell behandeln zu können, sodass dieses ASN.1-Modell mit anderen Softwaremodellen (z. B. Zustandsmaschinen)verknüpft werden kann. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass mit relativ geringem Aufwand eine Basisimplementierung von ASN.1 zu erreichen ist, die bereits eine gute Werkzeugunterstützung liefert. Bei einigen Details der Implementierung gerät man allerdings an die Grenze des Machbaren und diese sind daher sehr schwer zu realisieren. Dies betrifft insbesondere den Parser-Generator und das komplexe Metamodell.In the software industry many metamodel-based tools and approaches have been developed to support the creation of programming and especially domain specific languages (DSL). An example of these tools is eclipse Xtext, which has gained much popularity in the model-driven software engineering (MDSE) community. In this article we investigate whether Xtext and related metamodel-based approaches can also be used to implement the ASN.1 specification that was standardized by the ITU-T. The metamodel-based approach for the implementation of the ASN.1 specification allows to treat ASN.1 documents as software models, so that these ASN.1 models can be interrelated with other models (e.g. state machines). Our results show that relatively little efforts are required to create a basic implementation of this standard with good tool support. However, some details of the implementation are quite difficult to realize because they touch the limits of feasibility. This concerns in particular the parser generator and the complex metamodel

The OpenESEA Modeling Language and Tool for Ethical, Social, and Environmental Accounting

Assessing business operations’ ethical, social, and environmental impacts is a key practice for establishing sustainable development. There is a multitude of methods that describes how to perform such assessments. Often these methods are supported by an ICT tool. In most cases, the tools are developed to support a single method only and do not allow any tailoring. Therefore, they are rigid and inflexible. In this article, we present a novel model-driven approach for alleviating managerial issues that arise as a consequence of the complex landscape of ethical, social, and environmental accounting methods and tools. We have developed an open-source, model-driven tool, called openESEA. OpenESEA parses and interprets textual models, that are specified according to a domain-specific language (DSL). We have performed another iteration of the DSL engineering process, which is in line with the design science paradigm. We have validated the new DSL version by means of a user study. As a result, we present a new version of the openESEA modeling language and interpreter. The results of the user study with regards to performance, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use of modeling language are encouraging and provide us with a basis to continue developing new versions with more functionalities. The contributions of this work include a new version of the modeling language, a new version of the interpreter, knowledge surrounding the development of these artifacts, and a protocol for evaluating the quality of textual DSLs. The modeling language and interpreter are relevant for sustainability practitioners and consultants since our tool support has the potential to reduce redundancy in ethical, social, and environmental accounting. Our work is valuable to researchers that aim to assess and reduce the complexity of their modeling languages

FV-RAD : a practical framework for rapid application development

Estágio realizado na OPT-Optimização e Planeamento de Transportes, S.ATese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

Aligning OCL with Domain-Specific Languages to Support Instance-Level Model Queries

The Object Constraint Language (OCL) provides a set of powerful facilities for navigating and querying models in the MOF metamodelling architecture. Currently, OCL queries can be expressed only in the context of MOF metamodels and UML models. This adds an additional burden to the development and use of Domain Specific Languages, which can also benefit from an instance-level querying mechanism. In an effort to address this issue, we report on ongoing work on defining a rigorous approach for aligning the OCL querying and navigation facilities with arbitrary Domain Specific Languages to support instance-level queries. We present a case-study that demonstrates the usefulness and practicality of this approach