3,067 research outputs found
An approach to relate business and application services using ISDL
This paper presents a service-oriented design approach that allows one to relate services modelled at different levels of granularity during a design process, such as business and application services. To relate these service models we claim that a 'concept gap' and an 'abstraction gap' need to be bridged. The concept gap represents the difference between the conceptual models used to construct service models by different stakeholders involved in the design process. The abstraction gap represents the difference in abstraction level at which service models are defined. Two techniques are presented that bridge these gaps. Both techniques are based on the Interaction System Design Language (ISDL). The paper illustrates the use of both techniques through an example
Deep Modeling through Structural Decomposition
In some applications, traditional metamodeling in two levels gets to its limits when model elements of a domain should be described as instances of other model elements. In architecture description languages, components may be instances of their component types. Although workarounds exist, these require many validation constraints and imply a cumbersome interface. To obtain more elegant metamodels that require less constraints, deep modeling seeks ways to represent non-transitive instantiation chains. However, these concepts often make existing techniques for model transformation and analysis obsolete as these languages have to be adapted. In this paper, we present an approach to realize deep modeling only through structural decomposition, which can be implemented as a non-invasive extension to meta-metamodels similar to Ecore. As a consequence, existing tools need not be adapted. We validate our concept by creating a deep modeling architecture description language and demonstrate its advantages by modeling a synthetic web application
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The uses of process modeling : a framework for understanding modeling formalisms
There is wide-spread recognition of the urgent need to improve software processes in order to improve the performance of software organizations. Process models are essential in achieving understanding and visibility of processes and are important for other uses including the analysis of processes for improvement. It has been increasingly difficult to compare and evaluate the variety of process modeling formalisms that have appeared in recent years without a clear understanding of precisely for what they will be used. The contribution of this paper is to provide an understanding and a fairly comprehensive catalog of the applications of process modeling for which formalisms may be used. The primary mechanism for doing this is a guided tour of the literature on process modeling supplemented by recent industrial experience. In the paper, basic definitions concerning processes, process descriptions and process modeling are reviewed and then uses of process modeling are surveyed under the following headings: communication among process participants, construction of new processes, control of processes, process· analysis, and process support by automation. Comments are offered on paradigms for process modeling formalisms and directions for future work to permit evolution of a discipline of process engineering are given
Towards Method Component Contextualization
International audienceMethod Engineering (ME) is a discipline which aims to bring effective solutions to the construction, improvement and modification of the methods used to develop Information Systems (IS). Situational Method Engineering (SME) promotes the idea of retrieving, adapting and tailoring components, rather than complete methodologies, to the specific context. Existing SME approaches use the notion of context for characterizing situations of IS development projects and for guiding the method components selection from a repository. However, in the reviewed literature, there is no proposed approach to specify the specific context of method components. This paper provides a detailed vision of context and a process for contextualizing methods in the IS domain. This proposal is illustrated with three case studies: scenario conceptualization, project portfolio management, and decision-making
SAGA: A project to automate the management of software production systems
The Software Automation, Generation and Administration (SAGA) project is investigating the design and construction of practical software engineering environments for developing and maintaining aerospace systems and applications software. The research includes the practical organization of the software lifecycle, configuration management, software requirements specifications, executable specifications, design methodologies, programming, verification, validation and testing, version control, maintenance, the reuse of software, software libraries, documentation, and automated management
Building Specifications in the Event-B Institution
This paper describes a formal semantics for the Event-B specification
language using the theory of institutions. We define an institution for
Event-B, EVT, and prove that it meets the validity requirements for
satisfaction preservation and model amalgamation. We also present a series of
functions that show how the constructs of the Event-B specification language
can be mapped into our institution. Our semantics sheds new light on the
structure of the Event-B language, allowing us to clearly delineate three
constituent sub-languages: the superstructure, infrastructure and mathematical
languages. One of the principal goals of our semantics is to provide access to
the generic modularisation constructs available in institutions, including
specification-building operators for parameterisation and refinement. We
demonstrate how these features subsume and enhance the corresponding features
already present in Event-B through a detailed study of their use in a worked
example. We have implemented our approach via a parser and translator for
Event-B specifications, EBtoEVT, which also provides a gateway to the Hets
toolkit for heterogeneous specification.Comment: 54 pages, 25 figure
Event-B in the Institutional Framework: Defining a Semantics, Modularisation Constructs and Interoperability for a Specification Language
Event-B is an industrial-strength specification language for verifying
the properties of a given system’s specification. It is supported by its
Eclipse-based IDE, Rodin, and uses the process of refinement to model
systems at different levels of abstraction. Although a mature formalism,
Event-B has a number of limitations. In this thesis, we demonstrate that
Event-B lacks formally defined modularisation constructs. Additionally,
interoperability between Event-B and other formalisms has been
achieved in an ad hoc manner. Moreover, although a formal language,
Event-B does not have a formal semantics. We address each of these
limitations in this thesis using the theory of institutions.
The theory of institutions provides a category-theoretic way of representing
a formalism. Formalisms that have been represented as institutions
gain access to an array of generic specification-building operators
that can be used to modularise specifications in a formalismindependent
manner. In the theory of institutions, there are constructs
(known as institution (co)morphisms) that provide us with the facility to
create interoperability between formalisms in a mathematically sound
way.
The main contribution of this thesis is the definition of an institution
for Event-B, EVT, which allows us to address its identified limitations.
To this end, we formally define a translational semantics from Event-
B to EVT. We show how specification-building operators can provide
a unified set of modularisation constructs for Event-B. In fact, the institutional
framework that we have incorporated Event-B into is more
accommodating to modularisation than the current state-of-the-art for
Rodin. Furthermore, we present institution morphisms that facilitate interoperability between the respective institutions for Event-B and UML.
This approach is more generic than the current approach to interoperability
for Event-B and in fact, allows access to any formalism or logic
that has already been defined as an institution. Finally, by defining
EVT, we have outlined the steps required in order to include similar
formalisms into the institutional framework. Hence, this thesis acts as a
template for defining an institution for a specification language
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