Önellenőrzés és futásidejű verifikáció számítógépes programokban = Self-checking and run-time verification in computer programs

A kutatás eredménye egy olyan, futásidejű hibadetektálásra alkalmas módszerkészlet kidolgozása számítógépes programokhoz, amely formálisan megalapozott és illeszkedik a modell alapú tervezési folyamathoz. A futásidejű verifikáció matematikai alapja egy általunk definiált, UML állapottérképekhez illesztett temporális logikai nyelv (SC-LTL) valamint az ehhez kidolgozott gyors és kis erőforrásigényű ellenőrzési algoritmus. Az ellenőrzést megvalósító forráskód részletek (assertions) generálására automatikus kódgenerátort fejlesztettünk. A módszerkészlet alapján a futásidejű verifikáció két szinten végezhető el: (1) A fejlesztés korai fázisaiban (a követelményanalízis után) a tervező a program biztonságos működéséhez tartozó követelményeket formalizálja az SC-LTL temporális logika segítségével. Ezeket futásidőben a programba illesztett kódrészletek segítségével ellenőrizzük. Így a későbbi fejlesztési fázisokban előforduló tervezési hibák következményei is kimutathatók. (2) A fejlesztés előrehaladtával rendelkezésre álló részletes viselkedési modell mint referencia alapján történik a program állapot- és akciószekvenciáinak teljes ellenőrzése, a modellből szintén automatikusan generált, futásidejű monitorozást biztosító úgynevezett watchdog kód segítségével. Ennek célja elsősorban az implementációs hibák és a működési hibák (tranziens hardver hibák) felderítése. A hibadetektálás módszerkészletét kiegészítettük a hibakezelés modellezésére és verifikációjára szolgáló eljárásokkal. | The main result of the research is the elaboration of a set of methods that can be applied for the run-time verification of computer programs. These methods are formally proven and fit well to the model based software development process. The mathematical basis of run-time verification is our temporal logic language (SC-LTL) that is based on UML statechart diagrams, and the corresponding fast and low resource-demanding checker algorithm. To derive the assertions (i.e., the program code snippets that implement the checking), we have developed an automatic source code generator. On the basis of this set of methods, run-time checking of program execution is supported at two levels: (1) In the early phases of development the designer can formalize the program safety and liveness requirements using SC-LTL. These requirements are checked in run-time by the automatically generated assertions. This way design errors introduced in later design phases can also be detected. (2) The full checking of the state- and action sequences of program execution is based on a detailed design model constructed in the last development phases. The run-time monitoring is performed by a so-called watchdog code that is generated from the fully elaborated statechart model automatically. This is able to detect both implementation and operational errors. To complete the error detection framework, we proposed a statechart based method for the modeling and verification of run-time exception handling

Assured and Correct Dynamic Update of Controllers

We present a general approach to specifying correctness criteria for dynamic update and a technique for automatically computing a controller that handles the transition from the old to the new specification, assuring that the system will reach a state in which such a transition can correctly occur. Indeed, using controller synthesis we show how to automatically build a controller that guarantees both progress towards update and safe update.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO

Assured and Correct Dynamic Update of Controllers

We present a general approach to specifying correctness criteria for dynamic update and a technique for automatically computing a controller that handles the transition from the old to the new specification, assuring that the system will reach a state in which such a transition can correctly occur. Indeed, using controller synthesis we show how to automatically build a controller that guarantees both progress towards update and safe update.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO

Effecting Runtime Reconfiguration in Managed Execution Environments

Managed execution environments such as Microsoftäó»s Common Language Runtime (CLR) and Sun Microsystemsäó» Java Virtual Machine (JVM) provide a number of services äóñ including but not limited to application isolation, security sandboxing, garbage collection and structured exception handling äóñ that are aimed primarily at enhancing the robustness of managed applications. However, none of these services directly enables performing reconfigurations, repairs or diagnostics on the managed applications and/or its constituent subsystems and components. In this paper we examine how the facilities of a managed execution environment can be leveraged to support runtime system adaptations, such as reconfigurations and repairs. We describe an adaptation framework we have developed, which uses these facilities to dynamically attach/detach an engine capable of performing reconfigurations and repairs on a target system while it executes. Our adaptation framework is lightweight, and transparent to the application and the managed execution environment: it does not require recompilation of the application nor specially compiled versions of the managed execution runtime. Our prototype was implemented for the CLR. To evaluate our framework beyond toy examples, we searched on SourceForge for potential target systems already implemented on the CLR that might benefit from runtime adaptation. We report on our experience using our prototype to effect runtime reconfigurations in a system that was developed and is in use by others: the Alchemi enterprise Grid Computing System developed at the University of Melbourne, Australia

Assured and Correct Dynamic Update of Controllers

We present a general approach to specifying correctness criteria for dynamic update and a technique for automatically computing a controller that handles the transition from the old to the new specification, assuring that the system will reach a state in which such a transition can correctly occur. Indeed, using controller synthesis we show how to automatically build a controller that guarantees both progress towards update and safe update.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO

An Architectural Approach to the Design and Analysis of Cyber-Physical Systems

This paper presents an extension of existing software architecture tools to model physical systems, their interconnections, and the interactions between physical and cyber components. A new CPS architectural style is introduced to support the principled design and evaluation of alternative architectures for cyber-physical systems (CPSs). The implementation of the CPS architectural style in AcmeStudio includes behavioral annotations on components and connectors using either finite state processes (FSP) or linear hybrid automata (LHA) with plug-ins to perform behavior analysis using the Labeled Transition System Analyzer (LTSA) or Polyhedral Hybrid Automata Verifier (PHAVer), respectively. The CPS architectural style and analysis plug-ins are illustrated with an example

Diseño e implementación de un navegador de conceptos enlazados en el dominio de Ciencias de la computación

En la actualidad, la World Wide Web es una de las fuentes principales de información, siendo un espacio que se encuentra en constante crecimiento, puesto que cada vez mas personas cuentan con acceso a internet. Sin embargo, esto genera múltiples problemas entre los que podemos mencionar como la duplicidad de información, que dificulta la búsqueda de información relevante a los usuarios, quienes utilizan herramientas como motores de búsqueda para esta tarea. Ante esta situación surgió la Web Semántica, extensión de la Web tradicional, en donde la información es comprensible tanto para las personas como para las máquinas. Para publicar información en este espacio existen un conjunto de prácticas conocido como Linked Data, que permiten que la información se estructure según su significado y relación entre los datos que la componen, lo que facilita la labor de búsqueda y permite el descubrimiento de nueva información, generando valor a usuarios como investigadores, que constantemente se encuentran en búsqueda de conocimientos. Toda la información en constante crecimiento contenida en la Web Semántica puede ser accedida simplemente mediante navegadores convencionales; sin embargo, esta se encuentra en su mayoría en formato RDF, por lo que el usuario común no podrá comprender su contenido. Para que la información pueda ser de utilidad, se necesitan conocimientos en conceptos como RDF y XML, lo que limita gran parte del potencial actual de la Web Semántica a los especialistas en dicha área. El presente proyecto implementa un navegador de Linked Data, mediante el cual los usuarios pueden consultar información en el dominio de las ciencias de la computación, dicha información es obtenida de la Web Semántica, permitiendo el descubrimiento de información relevante, contribuyendo así a la expansión de dicha tecnología, que busca unificar y estructurar toda la información contenida en la web. Para la elaboración del proyecto, se implementó un módulo de procesamiento de consultas, en donde el usuario ingresa una cadena de búsqueda, al igual que en un motor de búsqueda tradicional y mediante esta cadena se obtienen posibles propiedades, que son enviadas a manera de consultas en lenguaje SPARQL, a partir de cuyos resultados se construyen estructuras RDFs que muestran los conceptos y la información presentada en una interfaz gráfica para que el usuario pueda visualizarla y navegar a través de dichos conceptos, permitiendo el descubrimiento de información relevante.Tesi

Mobile Service Clouds: A self-managing infrastructure for autonomic mobile computing services

Abstract. We recently introduced Service Clouds, a distributed infrastructure designed to facilitate rapid prototyping and deployment of autonomic communication services. In this paper, we propose a model that extends Service Clouds to the wireless edge of the Internet. This model, called Mobile Service Clouds, enables dynamic instantiation, composition, configuration, and reconfiguration of services on an overlay network to support mobile computing. We have implemented a prototype of this model and applied it to the problem of dynamically instantiating and migrating proxy services for mobile hosts. We conducted a case study involving data streaming across a combination of PlanetLab nodes, local proxies, and wireless hosts. Results are presented demonstrating the effectiveness of the prototype in establishing new proxies and migrating their functionality in response to node failures.

Using Abstraction in Modular Verification of Synchronous Adaptive Systems

Self-adaptive embedded systems autonomously adapt to changing environment conditions to improve their functionality and to increase their dependability by downgrading functionality in case of fail- ures. However, adaptation behaviour of embedded systems significantly complicates system design and poses new challenges for guaranteeing system correctness, in particular vital in the automotive domain. Formal verification as applied in safety-critical applications must therefore be able to address not only temporal and functional properties, but also dynamic adaptation according to external and internal stimuli. In this paper, we introduce a formal semantic-based framework to model, specify and verify the functional and the adaptation behaviour of syn- chronous adaptive systems. The modelling separates functional and adap- tive behaviour to reduce the design complexity and to enable modular reasoning about both aspects independently as well as in combination. By an example, we show how to use this framework in order to verify properties of synchronous adaptive systems. Modular reasoning in com- bination with abstraction mechanisms makes automatic model checking efficiently applicable

Towards architecture-level middleware-enabled exception handling of component-based systems

Exception handling is a practical and important way to improve the availability and reliability of a component-based system. The classical code-level exception handling approach is usually applied to the inside of a component, while some exceptions can only or properly be handled outside of the components. In this paper, we propose a middleware-enabled approach for exception handling at architecture level. Developers specify what exceptions should be handled and how to handle them with the support of middleware in an exception handling model, which is complementary to software architecture of the target system. This model will be interpreted at runtime by a middleware-enabled exception handling framework, which is responsible for catching and handling the specified exceptions mainly based on the common mechanisms provided by the middleware. The approach is demonstrated in JEE application servers and benchmarks. ? 2011 ACM.EI