Arcadia, a software development environment research project

The research objectives of the Arcadia project are two-fold: discovery and development of environment architecture principles and creation of novel software development tools, particularly powerful analysis tools, which will function within an environment built upon these architectural principles.Work in the architecture area is concerned with providing the framework to support integration while also supporting the often conflicting goal of extensibility. Thus, this area of research is directed toward achieving external integration by providing a consistent, uniform user interface, while still admitting customization and addition of new tools and interface functions. In an effort to also attain internal integration, research is aimed at developing mechanisms for structuring and managing the tools and data objects that populate a software development environment, while facilitating the insertion of new kinds of tools and new classes of objects.The unifying theme of work in the tools area is support for effective analysis at every stage of a software development project. Research is directed toward tools suitable for analyzing pre-implementation descriptions of software, software itself, and towards the production of testing and debugging tools. In many cases, these tools are specifically tailored for applicability to concurrent, distributed, or real-time software systems.The initial focus of Arcadia research is on creating a prototype environment, embodying the architectural principles, which supports Ada1 software development. This prototype environment is itself being developed in Ada.Arcadia is being developed by a consortium of researchers from the University of California at Irvine, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, TRW, Incremental Systems Corporation, and The Aerospace Corporation. This paper delineates the research objectives and describes the approaches being taken, the organization of the research endeavor, and current status of the work

AIERO: An algorithm for identifying engineering relationships in ontologies

Semantic technologies are playing an increasingly popular role as a means for advancing the capabilities of knowledge management systems. Among these advancements, researchers have successfully leveraged semantic technologies, and their accompanying techniques, to improve the representation and search capabilities of knowledge management systems. This paper introduces a further application of semantic techniques. We explore semantic relatedness as a means of facilitating the development of more “intelligent” engineering knowledge management systems. Using semantic relatedness quantifications to analyze and rank concept pairs, this novel approach exploits semantic relationships to help identify key engineering relationships, similar to those leveraged in change management systems, in product development processes. As part of this work, we review several different semantic relatedness techniques, including a meronomic technique recently introduced by the authors. We introduce an aggregate measure, termed “An Algorithm for Identifying Engineering Relationships in Ontologies,” or AIERO, as a means to purposely quantify semantic relationships within product development frameworks. To assess its consistency and accuracy, AIERO is tested using three separate, independently developed ontologies. The results indicate AIERO is capable of returning consistent rankings of concept pairs across varying knowledge frameworks. A PCB (printed circuit board) case study then highlights AIERO’s unique ability to leverage semantic relationships to systematically narrow where engineering interdependencies are likely to be found between various elements of product development processes

Analyzing and Implementing a Feature Mapping Approach to CAD System Interoperability

Interoperable information exchange between computer-aided design (CAD) systems is one of the major problems to enable information integration in a collaborative engineering environment. Although a significant amount of work has been done on the extension and standardization of CAD data formats as well as the cooperation of CAD systems in both academy and industry, these approaches are generally low-level and narrowly targeted. Lack of fundamental study of interoperability and generic solution to this problem is the major issue. Our intention of this research is to design a solution of CAD feature interoperability as generic as possible based on a theoretical foundation of language types. In this paper, we present a fundamental model of semantic features and feature mapping process based on the type theory. We implement and demonstrate our approach for automated feature exchange between commercial CAD systems

Next generation software environments : principles, problems, and research directions

The past decade has seen a burgeoning of research and development in software environments. Conferences have been devoted to the topic of practical environments, journal papers produced, and commercial systems sold. Given all the activity, one might expect a great deal of consensus on issues, approaches, and techniques. This is not the case, however. Indeed, the term "environment" is still used in a variety of conflicting ways. Nevertheless substantial progress has been made and we are at least nearing consensus on many critical issues.The purpose of this paper is to characterize environments, describe several important principles that have emerged in the last decade or so, note current open problems, and describe some approaches to these problems, with particular emphasis on the activities of one large-scale research program, the Arcadia project. Consideration is also given to two related topics: empirical evaluation and technology transition. That is, how can environments and their constituents be evaluated, and how can new developments be moved effectively into the production sector

Languages for Representing Software Specifications and Designs ; CU-CS-127-78

We consider the nature of software system specifications and designs, then survey the languages used in representing them. We emphasize the utility of language-based representations as a foundation for computerized tools which provide aid during software system development. The survey is based upon a classification of the languages according to their underlying representational constructs

Behavior specification in a software design system

A technique for software system behavior specification appropriate for use in designing systems with concurrency is presented. The technique is based upon a generalized ability to define events, or significant occurrences in a software system, and then indicate whatever constraints the designer might wish to see imposed upon the ordering or simultaneity of those events. Constructs implementing this technique in the DREAM software design system are presented and illustrated. The relationship of this technique to other behavior specification techniques is also discussed.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/25196/1/0000635.pd