A Graph based architectural (re)configuration language

For several different reasons, such as changes in the business or technological environment, the configuration of a system may need to evolve during the execution. Support for such evolution can be conceived in terms of a language for specifying the dynamic reconfiguration of systems. In this paper, continuing our work on the development of a formal platform for architectural design, we present a high-level language to describe architectures and for operating changes over a configuration (i.e., an architecture instance), such as adding, removing or substituting components or interconnections. The language follows an imperative style and builds on a semantic domain established in previous work. Therein, we model architectures through categorical diagrams and dynamic reconfiguration through algebraic graph rewriting

A reification calculus for model-oriented software specification

This paper presents a transformational approach to the derivation of implementations from model-oriented specifications of abstract data types. The purpose of this research is to reduce the number of formal proofs required in model refinement, which hinder software development. It is shown to be appli- cable to the transformation of models written in Meta-iv (the specification lan- guage of Vdm) towards their refinement into, for example, Pascal or relational DBMSs. The approach includes the automatic synthesis of retrieve functions between models, and data-type invariants. The underlying algebraic semantics is the so-called final semantics “`a la Wand”: a specification “is” a model (heterogeneous algebra) which is the final ob ject (up to isomorphism) in the category of all its implementations. The transformational calculus approached in this paper follows from exploring the properties of finite, recursively defined sets. This work extends the well-known strategy of program transformation to model transformation, adding to previous work on a transformational style for operation- decomposition in META-IV. The model-calculus is also useful for improving model-oriented specifications.(undefined

A logical approach for behavioural composition of scenario-based models

As modern systems become more complex, design approaches model different aspects of the system separately. When considering (intra and inter) system interactions, it is usual to model individual scenarios using UML’s sequence diagrams. Given a set of scenarios we then need to check whether these are consistent and can be combined for a better understanding of the overall behaviour. This paper addresses this by presenting a novel formal technique for composing behavioural models at the metamodel level through exact metamodel restriction (EMR). In our approach a sequence diagram can be completely described by a set of logical constraints at the metamodel level. When composing sequence diagrams we take the union of the sets of logical constraints for each diagram and additional behavioural constraints that describe the matching composition glue. A formal semantics for composition in accordance with the glue guides our model transformation to Alloy. Alloy’s fully automated constraint solver gives us the solution. Our technique has been implemented as an Eclipse plugin SD2Alloy.Postprin

Specifying and Analysing SOC Applications with COWS

COWS is a recently defined process calculus for specifying and combining service-oriented applications, while modelling their dynamic behaviour. Since its introduction, a number of methods and tools have been devised to analyse COWS specifications, like e.g. a type system to check confidentiality properties, a logic and a model checker to express and check functional properties of services. In this paper, by means of a case study in the area of automotive systems, we demonstrate that COWS, with some mild linguistic additions, can model all the phases of the life cycle of service-oriented applications, such as publication, discovery, negotiation, orchestration, deployment, reconfiguration and execution. We also provide a flavour of the properties that can be analysed by using the tools mentioned above

Higher-order architectural connectors

We develop a notion of higher-order connector towards supporting the systematic construction of architectural connectors for software design. A higher-order connector takes connectors as parameters and allows for services such as security protocols and fault-tolerance mechanisms to be superposed over the interactions that are handled by the connectors passed as actual arguments. The notion is first illustrated over CommUnity, a parallel program design language that we have been using for formalizing aspects of architectural design. A formal, algebraic semantics is then presented which is independent of any Architectural Description Language. Finally, we discuss how our results can impact software design methods and tools

Completeness and decidability results for hybrid(ised) logics

Adding to the modal description of transition structures the ability to refer to specific states, hybrid(ised) logics provide an interesting framework for the specification of reconfigurable systems. The qualifier ‘hybrid(ised)’ refers to a generic method of developing, on top of whatever specification logic is used to model software configurations, the elements of an hybrid language, including nominals and modalities. In such a context, this paper shows how a calculus for a hybrid(ised) logic can be generated from a calculus of the base logic and that, moreover, it preserves soundness and completeness. A second contribution establishes that hybridising a decidable logic also gives rise to a decidable hybrid(ised) one. These results pave the way to the development of dedicated proof tools for such logics used in the design of reconfigurable systems