The Rodin Formal Modelling Tool

We present a software tool, the Rodin tool, for formal modelling in Event-B. Event-B is a notation and method developed from the B-Method and is intended to be used with an incremental style of modelling. The idea of incremental modelling has been taken from programming: modern programming languages come with integrated development environments that make it easy to modify and improve programs. The Rodin tool provides such an environment for Event-B. The two main characteristics of the Rodin tool are its ease of use and its extensibility. The tool focuses on modelling. It is easy to modify models and try out variations of a model. The tool can also be extended easily. This will make it possible to adapt the tool specific needs. So the tool can be adapted to fit into existing development processes instead demanding the opposite. We believe that these two characteristics are major points for industrial uptake

Proceedings of the 11th Overture Workshop

The 11th Overture Workshop was held in Aarhus, Denmark on Wed/Thu 28–29th Au- gust 2013. It was the 11th workshop in the current series focusing on the Vienna De- velopment Method (VDM) and particularly its community-based tools development project, Overture (http://www.overturetool.org/), and related projects such as COMPASS(http://www.compass-research.eu/) and DESTECS (http://www.destecs.org). Invited talks were given by Yves Ledru and Joe Kiniry. The workshop attracted 25 participants representing 10 nationalities. The goal of the workshop was to provide a forum to present new ideas, to identify and encourage new collaborative research, and to foster current strands of work towards publication in the mainstream conferences and journals. The Overture initiative held its first workshop at FM’05. Workshops were held subsequently at FM’06, FM’08 and FM’09, FM’11, FM’12 and in between

Design and Management of Web-Based Innovation Communities: A Lifecycle Approach

Nowadays, web-based communities are a popular means to integrate external innovators into the innovation process of organizations. Combining extant research in innovation management and IS management, we integrate open innovation and application lifecycle management (ALM) to present an integrated understanding of the design and management of innovation communities. Therefore, the paper draws on an in-depth explorative case study. We describe the process of community design and management along the phases of ALM. From a socio-technical systems perspective, the manager of an innovation community has to specialize in designing and managing the social subsystem rather than the technical subsystem of an innovation community. Accordingly, we reveal that the community manager’s core asset is a specialized backend that supports these management tasks

Mixing Formal and Informal Model Elements for Tracing Requirements

Tracing between informal requirements and formal models is challenging. A method for such tracing should permit to deal efficiently with changes to both the requirements and the model. A particular challenge is posed by the persisting interplay of formal and informal elements. In this paper, we describe an incremental approach to requirements validation and systems modelling. Formal modelling facilitates a high degree of automation: it serves for validation and traceability. The foundation for our approach are requirements that are structured according to the WRSPM reference model. We provide a system for traceability with a state-based formal method that supports refinement. We do not require all specification elements to be modelled formally and support incremental incorporation of new specification elements into the formal model. Refinement is used to deal with larger amounts of requirements in a structured way. We provide a small example using Problem Frames and Event-B to demonstrate our approach

Rodin: an open toolset for modelling and reasoning in Event-B

Event-B is a formal method for system-level modelling and analysis. Key features of Event-B are the use of set theory as a modelling notation, the use of refinement to represent systems at different abstraction levels and the use of mathematical proof to verify consistency between refinement levels. In this article we present the Rodin modelling tool that seamlessly integrates modelling and proving. We outline how the Event-B language was designed to facilitate proof and how the tool has been designed to support changes to models while minimising the impact of changes on existing proofs. We outline the important features of the prover architecture and explain how well-definedness is treated. The tool is extensible and configurable so that it can be adapted more easily to different application domains and development methods

Towards Research Collaboration – a Taxonomy of Social Research Network Sites

The increase of scientific collaboration coincides with the technological and social advancement of social software applications which can change the way we research. Among social software, social network sites have recently gained immense popularity in a hedonic context. This paper focuses on social network sites as an emerging application designed for the specific needs of researchers. To give an overview about these sites we use a data set of 24 case studies and in-depth interviews with the founders of ten social research network sites. The gathered data leads to a first tentative taxonomy and to a definition of SRNS identifying four basic functionalities identity and network management, communication, information management, and collaboration. The sites in the sample correspond to one of the following four types: research directory sites, research awareness sites, research management sites and research collaboration sites. These results conclude with implications for providers of social research network sites

State of the Art Report: Verified Computation

This report describes the state of the art in verifiable computation. The problem being solved is the following: The Verifiable Computation Problem (Verifiable Computing Problem) Suppose we have two computing agents. The first agent is the verifier, and the second agent is the prover. The verifier wants the prover to perform a computation. The verifier sends a description of the computation to the prover. Once the prover has completed the task, the prover returns the output to the verifier. The output will contain proof. The verifier can use this proof to check if the prover computed the output correctly. The check is not required to verify the algorithm used in the computation. Instead, it is a check that the prover computed the output using the computation specified by the verifier. The effort required for the check should be much less than that required to perform the computation. This state-of-the-art report surveys 128 papers from the literature comprising more than 4,000 pages. Other papers and books were surveyed but were omitted. The papers surveyed were overwhelmingly mathematical. We have summarised the major concepts that form the foundations for verifiable computation. The report contains two main sections. The first, larger section covers the theoretical foundations for probabilistically checkable and zero-knowledge proofs. The second section contains a description of the current practice in verifiable computation. Two further reports will cover (i) military applications of verifiable computation and (ii) a collection of technical demonstrators. The first of these is intended to be read by those who want to know what applications are enabled by the current state of the art in verifiable computation. The second is for those who want to see practical tools and conduct experiments themselves.Comment: 54 page