The relevance of model-driven engineering thirty years from now

International audienceAlthough model-driven engineering (MDE) is now an established approach for developing complex software systems, it has not been universally adopted by the software industry. In order to better understand the reasons for this, as well as to identify future opportunities for MDE, we carried out a week-long design thinking experiment with 15 MDE experts. Participants were facilitated to identify the biggest problems with current MDE technologies, to identify grand challenges for society in the near future, and to identify ways that MDE could help to address these challenges. The outcome is a reflection of the current strengths of MDE, an outlook of the most pressing challenges for society at large over the next three decades, and an analysis of key future MDE research opportunities

Ariadne: evolving test data using grammatical evolution

Software testing is a key component in software quality assurance; it typically involves generating test data that exercises all instructions and tested conditions in a program and, due to its complexity, can consume as much as 50% of overall software development budget. Some evolutionary computing techniques have been successfully applied to automate the process of test data generation but no existing tech- niques exploit variable interdependencies in the process of test data gen- eration, even though several studies from the software testing litera- ture suggest that the variables examined in the branching conditions of real life programs are often interdependent on each other, for example, if (x==y), etc. We propose the Ariadne system which uses Grammatical Evolution (GE) and a simple Attribute Grammar to exploit the variable interdependen- cies in the process of test data generation. Our results show that Ariadne dramatically improves both e ectiveness and e ciency when compared with existing techniques based upon well-established criteria, attaining coverage (the standard software testing success metric for these sorts of problems) of 100% on all benchmarks with far fewer program evaluations (often between a third and a tenth of other systems)

ASAP: Automatic semantics-aware analysis of network payloads

Automatic inspection of network payloads is a prerequisite for effective analysis of network communication. Security research has largely focused on network analysis using protocol specifications, for example for intrusion detection, fuzz testing and forensic analysis. The specification of a protocol alone, however, is often not sufficient for accurate analysis of communication, as it fails to reflect individual semantics of network applications. We propose a framework for semantics-aware analysis of network payloads which automatically extracts semantics-aware components from recorded network traffic. Our method proceeds by mapping network payloads to a vector space and identifying communication templates corresponding to base directions in the vector space. We demonstrate the efficacy of semantics-aware analysis in different security applications: automatic discovery of patterns in honeypot data, analysis of malware communication and network intrusion detection

Imaging of pediatric pituitary endocrinopathies

Accurate investigation of the hypothalamic-pituitary area is required in pediatric patients for diagnosis of endocrine-related disorders. These disorders include hypopituitarism, growth failure, diencephalic syndrome, delayed puberty, precocious puberty, diabetes insipidus, syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone (SIADH) secretion, and hyperpituitarism. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the modality of choice to visualize hypothalamic-pituitary axis and associated endocrinopathies. Neuroimaging can be normal or disclose abnormalities related to pituitary-hypothalamic axis like (i) congenital and developmental malformations; (ii) tumors; (iii) cystic lesions; and (iv) infectious and inflammatory conditions. Classical midline anomalies like septo-optic dysplasias or corpus callosum agenesis are commonly associated with pituitary endocrinopathies and also need careful evaluation. In this radiological review, we will discuss neuroendocrine disorders related to hypothalamic pituitary-axis