Large-scale semi-automated migration of legacy C/C++ test code

This is an industrial experience report on a large semi-automated migration of legacy test code in C and C++. The particular migration was enabled by automating most of the maintenance steps. Without automation this particular large-scale migration would not have been conducted, due to the risks involved in manual maintenance (risk of introducing errors, risk of unexpected rework, and loss of productivity). We describe and evaluate the method of automation we used on this real-world case. The benefits were that by automating analysis, we could make sure that we understand all the relevant details for the envisioned maintenance, without having to manually read and check our theories. Furthermore, by automating transformations we could reiterate and improve over complex and large scale source code updates, until they were “just right.” The drawbacks were that, first, we have had to learn new metaprogramming skills. Second, our automation scripts are not readily reusable for other contexts; they were necessarily developed for this ad-hoc maintenance task. Our analysis shows that automated software maintenance as compared to the (hypothetical) manual alternative method seems to be better both in terms of avoiding mistakes and avoiding rework because of such mistakes. It seems that necessary and beneficial source code maintenance need not to be avoided, if software engineers are enabled to create bespoke (and ad-hoc) analysis and transformation tools to support it

Modelling Clock Synchronization in the Chess gMAC WSN Protocol

We present a detailled timed automata model of the clock synchronization algorithm that is currently being used in a wireless sensor network (WSN) that has been developed by the Dutch company Chess. Using the Uppaal model checker, we establish that in certain cases a static, fully synchronized network may eventually become unsynchronized if the current algorithm is used, even in a setting with infinitesimal clock drifts

Large-scale semi-automated migration of legacy C/C++ test code

This is an industrial experience report on a large semi-automated migration of legacy test code in C and C++. The particular migration was enabled by automating most of the maintenance steps. Without automation this particular large-scale migration would not have been conducted, due to the risks involved in manual maintenance (risk of introducing errors, risk of unexpected rework, and loss of productivity). We describe and evaluate the method of automation we used on this real-world case. The benefits were that by automating analysis, we could make sure that we understand all the relevant details for the envisioned maintenance, without having to manually read and check our theories. Furthermore, by automating transformations we could reiterate and improve over complex and large scale source code updates, until they were “just right.” The drawbacks were that, first, we have had to learn new metaprogramming skills. Second, our automation scripts are not readily reusable for other contexts; they were necessarily developed for this ad-hoc maintenance task. Our analysis shows that automated software maintenance as compared to the (hypothetical) manual alternative method seems to be better both in terms of avoiding mistakes and avoiding rework because of such mistakes. It seems that necessary and beneficial source code maintenance need not to be avoided, if software engineers are enabled to create bespoke (and ad-hoc) analysis and transformation tools to support it

Incorporating Formal Techniques into Industrial Practice: an Experience Report

Contains fulltext : 111357.pdf (preprint version ) (Open Access

Evaluating the Effect of Formal Techniques in Industry

Abstract. In this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of applying a formal component-based approach called Analytical Software Design (ASD) to the development of control software of an industrial project at Philips Healthcare. We analyze the performance of the ASD related tasks carried out during the development processes and report about the main issues encountered. Furthermore, we investigate whether introducing these formal techniques to industry could actually improve the quality and the productivity of the developed code compared to software developed by more traditional development methods.

Active Learning of Decomposable Systems

Active automata learning is a technique of querying black box systems and modelling their behaviour. In this paper, we aim to apply active learning in parts. We formalise the conditions on systems---with a decomposable set of actions---that make learning in parts possible. The systems are themselves decomposable through non-intersecting subsets of actions. Learning these subsystems/components requires less time and resources. We prove that the technique works for both two components as well as an arbitrary number of components. We illustrate the usefulness of this technique through a classical example and through a real example from the industry

Experiences with incorporating formal techniques into industrial practice

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