Towards a method for rigorous development of generic requirements patterns

We present work in progress on a method for the engineering, validation and verification of generic requirements using domain engineering and formal methods. The need to develop a generic requirement set for subsequent system instantiation is complicated by the addition of the high levels of verification demanded by safety-critical domains such as avionics. Our chosen application domain is the failure detection and management function for engine control systems: here generic requirements drive a software product line of target systems. A pilot formal specification and design exercise is undertaken on a small (twosensor) system element. This exercise has a number of aims: to support the domain analysis, to gain a view of appropriate design abstractions, for a B novice to gain experience in the B method and tools, and to evaluate the usability and utility of that method.We also present a prototype method for the production and verification of a generic requirement set in our UML-based formal notation, UML-B, and tooling developed in support. The formal verification both of the structural generic requirement set, and of a particular application, is achieved via translation to the formal specification language, B, using our U2B and ProB tools

Historical roots of Agile methods: where did “Agile thinking” come from?

The appearance of Agile methods has been the most noticeable change to software process thinking in the last fifteen years [16], but in fact many of the “Agile ideas” have been around since 70’s or even before. Many studies and reviews have been conducted about Agile methods which ascribe their emergence as a reaction against traditional methods. In this paper, we argue that although Agile methods are new as a whole, they have strong roots in the history of software engineering. In addition to the iterative and incremental approaches that have been in use since 1957 [21], people who criticised the traditional methods suggested alternative approaches which were actually Agile ideas such as the response to change, customer involvement, and working software over documentation. The authors of this paper believe that education about the history of Agile thinking will help to develop better understanding as well as promoting the use of Agile methods. We therefore present and discuss the reasons behind the development and introduction of Agile methods, as a reaction to traditional methods, as a result of people's experience, and in particular focusing on reusing ideas from histor

A formal verification framework and associated tools for enterprise modeling : application to UEML

The aim of this paper is to propose and apply a verification and validation approach to Enterprise Modeling that enables the user to improve the relevance and correctness, the suitability and coherence of a model by using properties specification and formal proof of properties

An Exercise in Reverse Engineering for Safety-Critical Systems: An Experience for the Classroom

Since the Y2K crisis, reverse engineering has become a major area of work in industrial software application development, but lacks emphasis in US academia. This issue is exemplified by the high demand for software systems in new and expanding software application areas, which has resulted in systems being implemented before the requirements and design phases have been completed. Towards the maintenance of such systems, it is necessary to conducted reverse engineering for the derivation of software documentation for requirements and high-level and low-level design. When this scenario exists in the domain of safety-critical system, particularly in the aviation industry, reverse engineering takes on greater value because such software systems have to undergo development regulations and certification restrictions. This work reports on the pedagogical revelations gained from conducting reverse engineering on a software system that was developed and deployed for use in managing the assignment of commercial aircrafts to airport terminal gates. The software system incorporated genetic algorithms solutions and was implemented on a high-speed multi-processor system. The reverse engineering methodology applied was based on the RTCA DO-178C Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification specification for onboard avionic software systems

Scale-free Networks from Optimal Design

A large number of complex networks, both natural and artificial, share the presence of highly heterogeneous, scale-free degree distributions. A few mechanisms for the emergence of such patterns have been suggested, optimization not being one of them. In this letter we present the first evidence for the emergence of scaling (and smallworldness) in software architecture graphs from a well-defined local optimization process. Although the rules that define the strategies involved in software engineering should lead to a tree-like structure, the final net is scale-free, perhaps reflecting the presence of conflicting constraints unavoidable in a multidimensional optimization process. The consequences for other complex networks are outlined.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. Submitted to Europhysics Letters. Additional material is available at http://complex.upc.es/~sergi/software.ht

Human occupation as a complex system

The present work justifies the change in theoretical approach required to use the concepts, principles and methods of artificial intelligence and computational science in order to deal with problems centered in social systems, such as studying the relation between human occupation and social stability and the validation of hypotheses about sociocybernetics strategies applied to governability. In order to model and study human occupation as a complex system, this document describes the autonomous components and the set of behaviors whose simultaneous and concurrent occurrence produce dynamical bifurcations (chaos) and emerging events in the Human Occupation, understood as a complex system between the triad: people - occupations - contexts, which expresses sensitive phenomena, impossible to be known completely and univocally. The components of the occupation are developed conceptually and relations of composition and condition of the given behaviors between these components are established, in order to establish human occupation as a complex system and in such a way that decision making and the prediction of occupational dynamics and behaviors in the individual and social levels can be modeled and simulated

An ontological framework for cooperative games

Social intelligence is an emerging property of a system composed of agents that consists of the ability of this system to conceive, design, implement and execute strategies to solve problems and thus achieve a collective state of the system that is concurrently satisfactory for all and each one of the agents that compose it. In order to make decisions when dealing with complex problems related to social systems and take advantage of social intelligence, cooperative games theory constitutes the standard theoretical framework. In the present work, an ontological framework for cooperative games modeling and simulation is presented