Modeling and Reasoning over Distributed Systems using Aspect-Oriented Graph Grammars

Aspect-orientation is a relatively new paradigm that introduces abstractions to modularize the implementation of system-wide policies. It is based on a composition operation, called aspect weaving, that implicitly modifies a base system by performing related changes within the system modules. Aspect-oriented graph grammars (AOGG) extend the classic graph grammar formalism by defining aspects as sets of rule-based modifications over a base graph grammar. Despite the advantages of aspect-oriented concepts regarding modularity, the implicit nature of the aspect weaving operation may also introduce issues when reasoning about the system behavior. Since in AOGGs aspect weaving is characterized by means of rule-based rewriting, we can overcome these problems by using known analysis techniques from the graph transformation literature to study aspect composition. In this paper, we present a case study of a distributed client-server system with global policies, modeled as an aspect-oriented graph grammar, and discuss how to use the AGG tool to identify potential conflicts in aspect weaving

Metamodel Instance Generation: A systematic literature review

Modelling and thus metamodelling have become increasingly important in Software Engineering through the use of Model Driven Engineering. In this paper we present a systematic literature review of instance generation techniques for metamodels, i.e. the process of automatically generating models from a given metamodel. We start by presenting a set of research questions that our review is intended to answer. We then identify the main topics that are related to metamodel instance generation techniques, and use these to initiate our literature search. This search resulted in the identification of 34 key papers in the area, and each of these is reviewed here and discussed in detail. The outcome is that we are able to identify a knowledge gap in this field, and we offer suggestions as to some potential directions for future research.Comment: 25 page

On semantic annotation of decision models

The growth of service sector in recent years has led to renewed research interests in the design and management of service systems. Decision support systems (DSS) play an important role in supporting this endeavor, through management of organizational resources such as models and data, thus forming the “back stage” of service systems. In this article, we identify the requirements for semantically annotating decision models and propose a model representation scheme, termed Semantically Annotated Structure Modeling Markup Language (SA-SMML) that extends Structure Modeling Markup Language (SMML) by incorporating mechanisms for linking semantic models such as ontologies that represent problem domain knowledge concepts. This model representation format is also amenable to a scalable Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) for managing models in distributed environments. The proposed model representation technique leverages recent advances in the areas of semantic web, and semantic web services. Along with design considerations, we demonstrate the utility of this representation format with an illustrative usage scenarios with a particular emphasis on model discovery and composition in a distributed environment

Application-oriented spatial graph grammars

The Reserved Graph Grammar (RGG) is a general graph grammar formalism that expresses a wide range of visual languages. This paper presents an extension to RGG with the capability of spatial specification. Graph transformation satisfying the spatial specification can be performed in the process of parsing. The RGG with spatial specification can be applied to various types of applications. The paper demonstrates an example for mathematical expression recognition