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

On the use of programming languages for textual specification of Petri Net Models

O presente artigo revê e aprofunda o artigo intitulado Towards a Human-Friendly Textual Language for Petri Nets, apresentado no Workshop on Petri Net Standards 2007.As a general interchange format for Petri net models, the Petri Net Markup Language (PNML) allows the specification of Petri net models for all Petri net classes. Those models are typically generated by graphical editors for each Petri net type. Yet, there is no general way to specify Petri net models in a human-friendly textual notation. Instead of proposing a standard for such textual notation, this paper proposes the use of popular general purpose programming languages for the creation and modification of net models defined using PNML. To that end, the paper presents a model for the concepts, and the respective inter- relations, that should be available to define Petri net models in a compact textual format. After, it presents a general framework to specify model composition, using node fusion, for any Petri net class. The framework allows the specification of node fusions and node refinements based on the specification of fusions for each node and net label. The labels’ fusions are defined through the implementation of an abstract data type for the respective Petri net type definition. This allows a general support for model structuring, where several well-known graphical conveniences, e.g. node references and synchronous channels, can be supported and seen as particular cases

Discovering semantic aspects of socially constructed knowledge hierarchy to boost the relevance of Web searching

The research intends to boost the relevance of Web search results by classifyingWebsnippet into socially constructed hierarchical search concepts, such as the mostcomprehensive human edited knowledge structure, the Open Directory Project (ODP). Thesemantic aspects of the search concepts (categories) in the socially constructed hierarchicalknowledge repositories are extracted from the associated textual information contributed bysocieties. The textual information is explored and analyzed to construct a category-documentset, which is subsequently employed to represent the semantics of the socially constructedsearch concepts. Simple API for XML (SAX), a component of JAXP (Java API for XMLProcessing) is utilized to read in and analyze the two RDF format ODP data files, structure.rdfand content.rdf. kNN, which is trained by the constructed category-document set, is used tocategorized the Web search results. The categorized Web search results are then ontologicallyfiltered based on the interactions of Web information seekers. Initial experimental resultsdemonstrate that the proposed approach can improve precision by 23.5%

Early aspects: aspect-oriented requirements engineering and architecture design

This paper reports on the third Early Aspects: Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Architecture Design Workshop, which has been held in Lancaster, UK, on March 21, 2004. The workshop included a presentation session and working sessions in which the particular topics on early aspects were discussed. The primary goal of the workshop was to focus on challenges to defining methodical software development processes for aspects from early on in the software life cycle and explore the potential of proposed methods and techniques to scale up to industrial applications

On the semantics of redefinition, specialization and subsetting of associations in UML (extended version)

The definition of the exact meaning of conceptual modeling concepts is considered a relevant issue since it enhances their effective and appropriate use by designers and facilitates the automatic processing of the models where they are included. Three related concepts that permit to improve the definition of an association in UML and which still lack of a formal semantic definition are: association redefinition, association specialization and association subsetting. This paper formalizes their semantics and points out the similarities and differences that exist among them. The formalization we propose is based on the meta-modelling approach and a semantic domain composed of a set of basic UML concepts and OCL expressions, which have a previous formal definition in the literature and which are well-understood.Preprin

UML Based Requirement Management Process in Mobile Multimedia Software Projects

Requirements management is an important sub-process in software development lifecycle. Its purpose is to assure that the project outcome meets the expectations of the customers and other internal or external stakeholders. Without a proper requirement management projects will certainly fail to deliver within the promised time, budget, scope and quality. To better cope with the requirement related challenges extended Unified Modeling Language (UML) methodologies were studied. These UML extensions can be used to model the business processes and requirements. Currently the UML is extensively used in the industry to design software systems. But when used also to model the business processes and requirements a number of benefits over the tradional way of managing requirements result: tracebility from requirements to design and to implementation is much easier, communication of complex issues and their relation to requirements is much enhanced, understanding of the system behaviour is distributed in the project team and the system model describing the product is more complete, integrated and accurate. As a result of this thesis new type of requirement management process was created. This process is embeddable and applicable to any implementation language and many types of development processes and projects. To succesfully deploy such a process one has to have the necessary tool support and the organisation must be UML literate.Vaatimushallinta on tärkeä aliprosessi ohjelmistojen kehityksessä. Sen tarkoituksena on varmistaa, että projektin tuotos vastaa asiakkaan ja muiden sisäisten ja ulkoisten projektiin osallisten sovittuja odotuksia. Ilman toimivaa vaatimushallintaprosessia projektit eivät onnistu pysymään luvatuissa aika, budjetti, laajuus ja laatukehyksissään. Vaatimuksiin liittyvien haasteiden ratkaisemiseksi tutkittiin viimeaikaisia laajennuksia UML kuvauskieleen. Näitä UML laajennuksia käyttämällä voidaan mallintaa asiakkaan liiketoimintaprosessit ja vaatimukset. Nykyisin UML:ää käytetään laajasti ohjelmistonsuunnittelussa. Mutta kun sitä käytetään myös mallintamaan liiketoimintaprosesesseja ja vaatimuksia siitä seuraa useita parannuksia perinteiseen tapaan hallita vaatimuksia: vaatimusten jäljittäminen toteutukseen on paljon helpompaa, ongelmallisten asioiden ja niiden vaatimusrelaation kommunikointi on tehokkaampaa, järjestelmän kokonaisuuden hahmottaminen on jakautunut laajemmalle projektitiimissä ja toimitettavaa järjestelmää kuvaavasta mallista tulee kattavampi, integroiduimpi ja enemmän todellisuutta vastaava. Tutkimuksen tuotoksena on uudentyyppinen vaatimushallintaprosessi. Tämä aliprosessi on sulautettavissa ja sovellettavissa mille tahansa ohjelmointikielelle. Se sopii monentyyppisiin ohjelmistonkehitysprosesseihin ja projekteihin. Organisaation täytyy myös hallita UML ja siihen liittyvien työkalujen käyttö

Web service composition: A survey of techniques and tools

Web services are a consolidated reality of the modern Web with tremendous, increasing impact on everyday computing tasks. They turned the Web into the largest, most accepted, and most vivid distributed computing platform ever. Yet, the use and integration of Web services into composite services or applications, which is a highly sensible and conceptually non-trivial task, is still not unleashing its full magnitude of power. A consolidated analysis framework that advances the fundamental understanding of Web service composition building blocks in terms of concepts, models, languages, productivity support techniques, and tools is required. This framework is necessary to enable effective exploration, understanding, assessing, comparing, and selecting service composition models, languages, techniques, platforms, and tools. This article establishes such a framework and reviews the state of the art in service composition from an unprecedented, holistic perspective

Analytical method of CIM to PIM transformation in Model Driven Architecture (MDA)

Information system’s models on higher level of abstraction have become a daily routine in many software companies. The concept of Model Driven Architecture (MDA) published by standardization body OMG1 since 2001 has become a concept for creation of software applications and information systems. MDA specifies four levels of abstraction: top three levels are created as graphical models and the last one as implementation code model. Many research works of MDA are focusing on the lower levels and transformations between each other. The top level of abstraction, called Computation Independent Model (CIM) and its transformation to the lower level called Platform Independent Model (PIM) is not so extensive research topic. Considering to a great importance and usability of this level in practice of IS2Keywords: transformation, MDA, CIM, PIM, UML, DFD. development now our research activity is focused to this highest level of abstraction – CIM and its possible transformation to the lower PIM level. In this article we are presenting a possible solution of CIM modeling and its analytic method of transformation to PIM