A Reverse Engineering Environment Based on Spatial and Visual Software Interconnection Models

Reverse engineering is the process of extracting system abstractions and design information out of existing software systems. This information can then be used for subsequent development, maintenance, re-engineering, or reuse purposes. This process involves the identification of software artifacts in a particular subject system, and the aggregation of these artifacts to form more abstract system representations. This paper describes a reverse engineering environment which uses the spatial and visual information inherent in graphical representations of software systems to form the basis of a software interconnection model. This information is displayed and manipulated by the reverse engineer using an interactive graph editor to build subsystem structures out of software building blocks. The spatial component constitutes information about the relative positions of the meaningful parts of a software structure, whereas the visual component contains information about how a software structu..

Animating TLA Specifications

. TLA (the Temporal Logic of Actions) is a linear temporal logic for specifying and reasoning about reactive systems. We define a subset of TLA whose formulas are amenable to validation by animation, with the intent to facilitate the communication between domain and solution experts in the design of reactive systems. 1 Introduction The Temporal Logic of Actions (TLA) has been proposed by Lamport [21] for the specification and verification of reactive and concurrent systems. TLA models describe infinite sequences of states, called behaviors, that correspond to the execution of the system being specified. System specifications in TLA are usually written in a canonical form, which consists of specifying the initial states, the possible moves of the system, and supplementary fairness properties. Because such specifications are akin to the descriptions of automata and often have a strongly operational flavor, it is tempting to take such a formula and "let it run". In this paper, we de..

Reasoning about epistemic states of agents by modal logic programming

Abstract. Modal logic programming is one of appropriate approaches to deal with reasoning about epistemic states of agents. We specify here the least model semantics, the fixpoint semantics, and an SLD-resolution calculus for modal logic programs in the multimodal logic KD4Ig5a, which is intended for reasoning about belief and common belief of agents. We prove that the presented SLD-resolution calculus is sound and complete. We also present a formalization of the wise men puzzle using a modal logic program in KD4Ig5a. This shows that it is worth to study modal logic programming for multi-agent systems.