A Dual Language Approach Extension to UML for the Development of Time-Critical Component-Based Systems

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A Property-Driven Approach to Formal Verification of Process Models

Enterprise Information Systems, 9th International Conference, ICEIS 2007, Funchal, Madeira, June 12-16, 2007, Revised Selected PapersInternational audienceMore and more, models, through Domain Specific Languages (DSL), tend to be the solution to define complex systems. Expressing properties specific to these metamodels, and checking them, appear as an urgent need. Until now, the only complete industrial solutions that are available consider structural properties such as the ones that could be expressed in OCL. There are although some attempts on behavioural properties for DSL. This paper addresses a method to specify and then check temporal properties over models. The case study is SimplePDL, a process metamodel. We propose a way to use a temporal extension of OCL, TOCL, to express properties. We specify a models transformation to Petri Nets and LTL formulae for both the process model and its associated temporal properties. We check these properties using a model checker and enrich the model with the analysis results. This work is a first step towards a generic framework to specify and effectively check temporal properties over arbitrary models

Clafer: Lightweight Modeling of Structure, Behaviour, and Variability

Embedded software is growing fast in size and complexity, leading to intimate mixture of complex architectures and complex control. Consequently, software specification requires modeling both structures and behaviour of systems. Unfortunately, existing languages do not integrate these aspects well, usually prioritizing one of them. It is common to develop a separate language for each of these facets. In this paper, we contribute Clafer: a small language that attempts to tackle this challenge. It combines rich structural modeling with state of the art behavioural formalisms. We are not aware of any other modeling language that seamlessly combines these facets common to system and software modeling. We show how Clafer, in a single unified syntax and semantics, allows capturing feature models (variability), component models, discrete control models (automata) and variability encompassing all these aspects. The language is built on top of first order logic with quantifiers over basic entities (for modeling structures) combined with linear temporal logic (for modeling behaviour). On top of this semantic foundation we build a simple but expressive syntax, enriched with carefully selected syntactic expansions that cover hierarchical modeling, associations, automata, scenarios, and Dwyer's property patterns. We evaluate Clafer using a power window case study, and comparing it against other notations that substantially overlap with its scope (SysML, AADL, Temporal OCL and Live Sequence Charts), discussing benefits and perils of using a single notation for the purpose

ECL: the Event Constraint Language, an Extension of OCL with Events

The Clock Constraint Specification Language (\ccsl) has been informally introduced in the specifications of the \uml Profile for Modeling and Analysis of Real-Time and Embedded systems (MARTE). In a previous report entitled ''Syntax and Semantics of the Clock Constraint Specification Language'', we equipped a kernel of \ccsl with an operational semantics. In the present report we pursue this clarification effort by giving a mathematical characterization to each \ccsl constructs.On utilise souvent un metamodèle pour spécifier les concepts et les relations d'un langage de modélisation dédié à un domaine particulier. Lorsque cela est nécessaire, on peut ajouter des règles de bonne formation structurelles en OCL (Object Constraint Language). OCL permet également de donner des pré et des post conditions sur l'execution de méthodes. Cependant, OCL et les techniques de métamodélisation existantes ne sont pas suffisantes pour exprimer le parallélisme, les causalités et les comportements temporels d'un modèle. Dans ce rapport nous présentons une approches basée sur les modèles pour exprimer le parallélisme, les causalités et les comportements temporels d'une manière formelle et explicite, directement au sein d'un modèle. Afin de s'intégrer facilement dans un flôt de conception et de bénéficier de l'outillage existant, l'approche est une extension du langage OCL. Notre approche permet alors la spécification d'invariants comportementaux. Des examples simples permettent d'illustrer l'approche

A Model-Driven Approach to Offline Trace Checking of Temporal Properties

Offline trace checking is a procedure for evaluating requirements over a log of events produced by a system. The goal of this thesis is to present a practical and scalable solution for the offline checking of the temporal requirements of a system, which can be used in contexts where model-driven engineering is already a practice, where temporal specifications should be written in a domain-specific language not requiring a strong mathematical background, and where relying on standards and industry-strength tools for property checking is a fundamental prerequisite. The main contributions of this thesis are: i) the TemPsy (Temporal Properties made easy) language, a pattern-based domain-specific language for the specification of temporal properties; ii) a model-driven trace checking procedure, which relies on an optimized mapping of temporal requirements written in TemPsy into Object Constraint Language (OCL) constraints on a conceptual model of execution traces; iii) a model-driven approach to violation information collection, which relies on the evaluation of OCL queries on an instance of the trace model; iv) three publicly-available tools: 1) TemPsy-Check and 2) TemPsy-Report, implementing, respectively, the trace checking and violation information collection procedures; 3) an interactive visualization tool for navigating and analyzing the violation information collected by TemPsy-Report; v) an evaluation of the scalability of TemPsy-Check and TemPsy-Report, when applied to the verification of real properties. The proposed approaches have been applied to and evaluated on a case study developed in collaboration with a public service organization, active in the domain of business process modeling for eGovernment. The experimental results show that TemPsy-Check is able to analyze traces with one million events in about two seconds, and TemPsy-Report can collect violation information from such large traces in less than ten seconds; both tools scale linearly with respect to the length of the trace

Approche de métamodélisation pour la simulation et la vérification de modèle. Application à l'ingénierie des procédés

Nous proposons dans cette thèse une démarche permettant de décrire un DSML (Domain Specific Modeling Language) et les outils nécessaires à l'exécution, la vérification et la validation des modèles. La démarche que nous proposons offre une architecture générique de la syntaxe abstraite du DSML pour capturer les informations nécessaires à l'exécution d'un modèle et définir les propriétés temporelles qui doivent être vérifiées. Nous nous appuyons sur cette architecture pour expliciter la sémantique de référence et l'implanter. Plus particulièrement, nous étudions les moyens : – d'exprimer et de valider la définition d'une traduction vers un domaine formel dans le but de réutiliser des outils de model-checking. – de compléter la syntaxe abstraite par le comportement ; et profiter d'outils génériques pour pouvoir simuler les modèles construits. Enfin, de manière à valider les différentes sémantiques implantées vis-à-vis de la sémantique de référence, nous proposons un cadre formel de métamodélisation. ABSTRACT : We propose in this thesis a specific taxonomy of the mechanisms allowing to express an execution semantics for Domain Specific Modeling Languages (DSMLs). Then, we integrate these different mechanisms within a comprehensive approach describing DSMLs and tools required for model execution, verification and validation. The proposed approach provides a rigorous and generic architecture for DSML abstract syntax in order to capture the information required for model execution. We rely on this generic architecture to make the reference semantics explicit and implement it. More specifically, we study the means : – to express and validate the definition of a translation into a formal domain in order to re-use model-checking techniques. – to enrich the abstract syntax with the definition of the DSML behaviour and take advantage of generic tools so to simulate the built models. Finally, for the purpose of validating the equivalence of different semantics implemented according to the reference semantics, we also propose a formal metamodeling framewor

Towards OCL/RT

An extension of the “Object Constraint Language” (OCL) for modeling real-time and reactive systems in the “Unified Modeling Language” (UML) is proposed, called OCL/RT. A general notion of events that may carry time stamps is introduced providing means to describe the detailed dynamic and timing behaviour of UML software models. OCL is enriched by satisfaction operators @η for referring to the value in the history of an expression at the instant when event η occurred, as well as the modalities always and sometime. The approach is illustrated by several examples. Finally, an operational semantics of OCL/RT is given