Remedy of Mixed Initiative Conflicts in Model-based System Engineering

SPACE is a technique for model-driven engineering of reactive distributedsystems. One of the strengths of its tool-set Arctis is that the system engineercan formally analyze the models for design errors such that these can becorrected early in the development process. In this paper, we go a step further andintroduce a technique that refines the fault detection and, in addition, offers a highlyautomatic mechanism to remedy the errors. For that, we combine model checking,the already existing analysis method of Arctis, with graph transformation. Usinggraph rewriting rules, we can analyze the state space graph of a system for the exact reason of an error as well as remove the erroneous parts of a model by changing themodel description. We exemplify the approach by envisaging the detection and remedyof mixed initiatives, a quite common cause for faulty behavior in event-drivensystems that often is overlooked in system development

Engineering security into distributed systems: a survey of methodologies

Rapid technological advances in recent years have precipitated a general shift towards software distribution as a central computing paradigm. This has been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the dangers of security breaches, often causing security attributes to become an inhibiting factor for use and adoption. Despite the acknowledged importance of security, especially in the context of open and collaborative environments, there is a growing gap in the survey literature relating to systematic approaches (methodologies) for engineering secure distributed systems. In this paper, we attempt to fill the aforementioned gap by surveying and critically analyzing the state-of-the-art in security methodologies based on some form of abstract modeling (i.e. model-based methodologies) for, or applicable to, distributed systems. Our detailed reviews can be seen as a step towards increasing awareness and appreciation of a range of methodologies, allowing researchers and industry stakeholders to gain a comprehensive view of the field and make informed decisions. Following the comprehensive survey we propose a number of criteria reflecting the characteristics security methodologies should possess to be adopted in real-life industry scenarios, and evaluate each methodology accordingly. Our results highlight a number of areas for improvement, help to qualify adoption risks, and indicate future research directions.Anton V. Uzunov, Eduardo B. Fernandez, Katrina Falkne