Developing and integrating tools in Eclipse/PCTE

The whole area of software engineering environments is an emerging one. Such environments have become necessary due to the rapid changes which have occurred in the software industry in the last twenty years. The desire is to produce products of high quality and at a reasonable cost. Unfortunately history shows that, in general, software systems rarely met the specific need for which they were developed and were often unreliable, inefficient , poorly documented and required considerable maintenance. One of the main areas of research into increasing both the productivity and the quality of software has been the use of software engineering environments. The area of software engineering environments is a changing one with evolving definitions. What can be stated is that a key objective of software engineering environments is the support of software process from requirements definition through to system maintenance. Such support can only be provided through the development of integrated sets of tools each supporting various aspects of the software development process. In order for tools to be fully integrated and have the same ’look and feel’ it is necessary that they are developed on a common platform, providing all the facilities needed for tool development and integration. Such a platform is the Eclipse tool builder’s kit based on the Portable Common Tool Environment (PCTE). The work in this thesis was based on an evaluation of this development platform for developing and integrating software tools, particularly real-time telecommunications software tools. The work in this thesis was carried out as part of the European Community’s RACE programme. The project was called SPECS 1. The SPECS project is outlined in chapter one of this thesis along with a brief history of the research into software engineering environments to date. The work which I was responsible for involved both the integration of existing toolsets and tools, developed by other partners in the SPECS project, as well as the development of new "native" tools within Eclipse/PCTE. This work was necessary so that the SPECS project could produce an integrated set of tools at the end of its research. It was my job to evaluate the potential of Eclipse/PCTE as a basis for this integration

Model-Based Test Selection for Infinite-State Reactive Systems

International audienceThis paper addresses the problem of off-line selection of test cases for testing the conformance of a black-box implementation with respect to a specification, in the context of reactive systems. Efficient solutions to this problem have been proposed in the context of finite-state models, based on the ioco conformance testing theory. An extension of these is proposed in the context of infinite-state specifications, modelled as automata extended with variables. One considers the selection of test cases according to test purposes describing abstract scenarios that one wants to test. The selection of program test cases then consists in syntactical transformations of the specification model, using approximate analyses

Proceedings of Junior Researcher Workshop on Real-Time Computing

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to Junior Researcher Workshop on Real-Time Computing 2007, which is held conjointly with the 15th conference on Real-Time and Network Systems (RTNS'07). The first successful edition was held conjointly with the French Summer School on Real-Time Systems 2005 (http://etr05.loria.fr). Its main purpose is to bring together junior researchers (Ph.D. students, postdoc, ...) working on real-time systems. This workshop is a good opportunity to present our works and share ideas with other junior researchers and not only, since we will present our work to the audience of the main conference. In response to the call for papers, 14 papers were submitted and the international Program Committee provided detailed comments to improve these work-in-progress papers. We hope that our remarks will help the authors to submit improved long versions of theirs papers to the next edition of RTNS. JRWRTC'07 would not be possible without the generous contribution of many volunteers and institutions which supported RTNS'07. First, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to our sponsors for their financial support : Conseil Général de Meuthe et Moselle, Conseil Régional de Lorraine, Communauté Urbaine du Grand Nancy, Université Henri Poincaré, Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine and LORIA and INRIA Lorraine. We are thankful to Pascal Mary for authorizing us to use his nice picture of “place Stanislas” for the proceedings and web site (many others are available at www.laplusbelleplacedumonde.com). Finally, we are most grateful to the local organizing committee that helped to organize the conference

Design and Implementation of a Tool for Hierarchical Graphical Specification of Real-Time Systems

Práce je zaměřena na návrh a implementaci univerzálního nástroje schopného graficky popsat systémy pracující s reálným časem. Tento nástroj dále umožňuje použít libovolný verifikační přístupu pro ověření výsledného modelu. Je proveden souhrn základních formálních metod popisu systémů založený na matematické logice. Jsou přiblíženy přístupy schopné hierarchicky popsat systémy pracující s reálným časem. Byly navrženy vhodné úlohy pro následné ověření funkčnosti vytvářeného systému.This thesis is aimed to specify and implement multi-purpose framework able to deal with graphical real-time system specification. This tool allows to use arbitrary verification approach to resulting system model check. Description of basic formal specification methods based on mathematic logic is done. Some well-known hierarchical graphical specifications for real-time systems are depictured. Author proposed suitable cases for functionality examination of resulting framework.

The Oracle Problem in Software Testing: A Survey

Testing involves examining the behaviour of a system in order to discover potential faults. Given an input for a system, the challenge of distinguishing the corresponding desired, correct behaviour from potentially incorrect behavior is called the “test oracle problem”. Test oracle automation is important to remove a current bottleneck that inhibits greater overall test automation. Without test oracle automation, the human has to determine whether observed behaviour is correct. The literature on test oracles has introduced techniques for oracle automation, including modelling, specifications, contract-driven development and metamorphic testing. When none of these is completely adequate, the final source of test oracle information remains the human, who may be aware of informal specifications, expectations, norms and domain specific information that provide informal oracle guidance. All forms of test oracles, even the humble human, involve challenges of reducing cost and increasing benefit. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of current approaches to the test oracle problem and an analysis of trends in this important area of software testing research and practice

Hybrid Multiresolution Simulation & Model Checking: Network-On-Chip Systems

abstract: Designers employ a variety of modeling theories and methodologies to create functional models of discrete network systems. These dynamical models are evaluated using verification and validation techniques throughout incremental design stages. Models created for these systems should directly represent their growing complexity with respect to composition and heterogeneity. Similar to software engineering practices, incremental model design is required for complex system design. As a result, models at early increments are significantly simpler relative to real systems. While experimenting (verification or validation) on models at early increments are computationally less demanding, the results of these experiments are less trustworthy and less rewarding. At any increment of design, a set of tools and technique are required for controlling the complexity of models and experimentation. A complex system such as Network-on-Chip (NoC) may benefit from incremental design stages. Current design methods for NoC rely on multiple models developed using various modeling frameworks. It is useful to develop frameworks that can formalize the relationships among these models. Fine-grain models are derived using their coarse-grain counterparts. Moreover, validation and verification capability at various design stages enabled through disciplined model conversion is very beneficial. In this research, Multiresolution Modeling (MRM) is used for system level design of NoC. MRM aids in creating a family of models at different levels of scale and complexity with well-formed relationships. In addition, a variant of the Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) formalism is proposed which supports model checking. Hierarchical models of Network-on-Chip components may be created at different resolutions while each model can be validated using discrete-event simulation and verified via state exploration. System property expressions are defined in the DEVS language and developed as Transducers which can be applied seamlessly for model checking and simulation purposes. Multiresolution Modeling with verification and validation capabilities of this framework complement one another. MRM manages the scale and complexity of models which in turn can reduces V&V time and effort and conversely the V&V helps ensure correctness of models at multiple resolutions. This framework is realized through extending the DEVS-Suite simulator and its applicability demonstrated for exemplar NoC models.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Computer Science 201