Measuring software technology

Results are reported from a series of investigations into the effectiveness of various methods and tools used in a software production environment. The basis for the analysis is a project data base, built through extensive data collection and process instrumentation. The project profiles become an organizational memory, serving as a reference point for an active program of measurement and experimentation on software technology

Cogent: uniqueness types and certifying compilation

This paper presents a framework aimed at significantly reducing the cost of proving functional correctness for low-level operating systems components. The framework is designed around a new functional programming language, Cogent. A central aspect of the language is its uniqueness type system, which eliminates the need for a trusted runtime or garbage collector while still guaranteeing memory safety, a crucial property for safety and security. Moreover, it allows us to assign two semantics to the language: The first semantics is imperative, suitable for efficient C code generation, and the second is purely functional, providing a user-friendly interface for equational reasoning and verification of higher-level correctness properties. The refinement theorem connecting the two semantics allows the compiler to produce a proof via translation validation certifying the correctness of the generated C code with respect to the semantics of the Cogent source program. We have demonstrated the effectiveness of our framework for implementation and for verification through two file system implementations

A software technology evaluation program

A set of quantitative approaches is presented for evaluating software development methods and tools. The basic idea is to generate a set of goals which are refined into quantifiable questions which specify metrics to be collected on the software development and maintenance process and product. These metrics can be used to characterize, evaluate, predict, and motivate. They can be used in an active as well as passive way by learning form analyzing the data and improving the methods and tools based upon what is learned from that analysis. Several examples were given representing each of the different approaches to evaluation. The cost of the approaches varied inversely with the level of confidence in the interpretation of the results

Study of fault-tolerant software technology

Presented is an overview of the current state of the art of fault-tolerant software and an analysis of quantitative techniques and models developed to assess its impact. It examines research efforts as well as experience gained from commercial application of these techniques. The paper also addresses the computer architecture and design implications on hardware, operating systems and programming languages (including Ada) of using fault-tolerant software in real-time aerospace applications. It concludes that fault-tolerant software has progressed beyond the pure research state. The paper also finds that, although not perfectly matched, newer architectural and language capabilities provide many of the notations and functions needed to effectively and efficiently implement software fault-tolerance

Payload software technology: Software technology development plan

Programmatic requirements for the advancement of software technology are identified for meeting the space flight requirements in the 1980 to 1990 time period. The development items are described, and software technology item derivation worksheets are presented along with the cost/time/priority assessments

Modeling and Testing Implementations of Protocols with Complex Messages

This paper presents a new language called APSL for formally describing protocols to facilitate automated testing. Many real world communication protocols exchange messages whose structures are not trivial, e.g. they may consist of multiple and nested fields, some could be optional, and some may have values that depend on other fields. To properly test implementations of such a protocol, it is not sufficient to only explore different orders of sending and receiving messages. We also need to investigate if the implementation indeed produces correctly formatted messages, and if it responds correctly when it receives different variations of every message type. APSL's main contribution is its sublanguage that is expressive enough to describe complex message formats, both text-based and binary. As an example, this paper also presents a case study where APSL is used to model and test a subset of Courier IMAP email server

Having Fun in Learning Formal Specifications

There are many benefits in providing formal specifications for our software. However, teaching students to do this is not always easy as courses on formal methods are often experienced as dry by students. This paper presents a game called FormalZ that teachers can use to introduce some variation in their class. Students can have some fun in playing the game and, while doing so, also learn the basics of writing formal specifications in the form of pre- and post-conditions. Unlike existing software engineering themed education games such as Pex and Code Defenders, FormalZ takes the deep gamification approach where playing gets a more central role in order to generate more engagement. This short paper presents our work in progress: the first implementation of FormalZ along with the result of a preliminary users' evaluation. This implementation is functionally complete and tested, but the polishing of its user interface is still future work

Reusable Software Technology

The objective of the Reusable Software System (RSS) is to provide NASA Langley Research Center and its contractor personnel with a reusable software technology through the Internet. The RSS is easily accessible, provides information that is extractable, and the capability to submit information or data for the purpose of scientific research at NASA Langley Research Center within the Atmospheric Science Division

Towards a directed homotopy type theory

In this paper, we present a directed homotopy type theory for reasoning synthetically about (higher) categories, directed homotopy theory, and its applications to concurrency. We specify a new `homomorphism' type former for Martin-L\"of type theory which is roughly analogous to the identity type former originally introduced by Martin-L\"of. The homomorphism type former is meant to capture the notions of morphism (from the theory of categories) and directed path (from directed homotopy theory) just as the identity type former is known to capture the notions of isomorphism (from the theory of groupoids) and path (from homotopy theory). Our main result is an interpretation of these homomorphism types into Cat, the category of small categories. There, the interpretation of each homomorphism type hom(a,b) is indeed the set of morphisms between the objects a and b of a category C. We end the paper with an analysis of the interpretation in Cat with which we argue that our homomorphism types are indeed the directed version of Martin-L\"of's identity types

Highly Relevant Routing Recommendation Systems for Handling Few Data Using MDL Principle and Embedded Relevance Boosting Factors

A route recommendation system can provide better recommendation if it also takes collected user reviews into account, e.g. places that generally get positive reviews may be preferred. However, to classify sentiment, many classification algorithms existing today suffer in handling small data items such as short written reviews. In this paper we propose a model for a strongly relevant route recommendation system that is based on an MDL-based (Minimum Description Length) sentiment classification and show that such a system is capable of handling small data items (short user reviews). Another highlight of the model is the inclusion of a set of boosting factors in the relevance calculation to improve the relevance in any recommendation system that implements the model.Comment: ACM SIGIR 2018 Workshop on Learning from Limited or Noisy Data for Information Retrieval (LND4IR'18), July 12, 2018, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, 8 pages, 9 figure