Preface to the special issue on improving software quality through program analysis

AbstractThis special issue is dedicated to the presentation of novel results in the scope of program analysis, verification, and testing of software to improve its quality. The papers included in the special issue present approaches that successfully combine model-based test case generation, reasoning about functional equivalence, data mining, classification, and the combination of abstraction with model-checking, to address real software applications in realistic settings

Trajectory Description Conception for Industrial Robots

International audienceIn this paper we observe the difficulties one can face when using different MPLs (Motion Planning Library) in a single application, and propose a new conception and a language which goal is to solve these problems. The idea is to present an interface between robot programming instruments and MPLs. Our goal is to provide a powerful tool for developers of software approaches for programming industrial robots that would allow an easy combination of different MPLs in one application. In addition the proposed conception hides the inner structure of libraries and eliminates the need to investigate algorithms before applying. That would increase the speed and the quality of the newly developed software systems

Probabilistic Model-Based Safety Analysis

Model-based safety analysis approaches aim at finding critical failure combinations by analysis of models of the whole system (i.e. software, hardware, failure modes and environment). The advantage of these methods compared to traditional approaches is that the analysis of the whole system gives more precise results. Only few model-based approaches have been applied to answer quantitative questions in safety analysis, often limited to analysis of specific failure propagation models, limited types of failure modes or without system dynamics and behavior, as direct quantitative analysis is uses large amounts of computing resources. New achievements in the domain of (probabilistic) model-checking now allow for overcoming this problem. This paper shows how functional models based on synchronous parallel semantics, which can be used for system design, implementation and qualitative safety analysis, can be directly re-used for (model-based) quantitative safety analysis. Accurate modeling of different types of probabilistic failure occurrence is shown as well as accurate interpretation of the results of the analysis. This allows for reliable and expressive assessment of the safety of a system in early design stages

Model-Based Security Testing

Security testing aims at validating software system requirements related to security properties like confidentiality, integrity, authentication, authorization, availability, and non-repudiation. Although security testing techniques are available for many years, there has been little approaches that allow for specification of test cases at a higher level of abstraction, for enabling guidance on test identification and specification as well as for automated test generation. Model-based security testing (MBST) is a relatively new field and especially dedicated to the systematic and efficient specification and documentation of security test objectives, security test cases and test suites, as well as to their automated or semi-automated generation. In particular, the combination of security modelling and test generation approaches is still a challenge in research and of high interest for industrial applications. MBST includes e.g. security functional testing, model-based fuzzing, risk- and threat-oriented testing, and the usage of security test patterns. This paper provides a survey on MBST techniques and the related models as well as samples of new methods and tools that are under development in the European ITEA2-project DIAMONDS.Comment: In Proceedings MBT 2012, arXiv:1202.582

Applications in organic computing

Dieser technische Bericht beinhaltet eine Sammlung von Anwendungen und Case Studies der Projekte des Schwerpunktprogramms "Organic Computing" der DFG. Jedes Projekt hat hierzu ein einheitliches Formular zur Anwendungsbeschreibung ausgefüllt. Diese werden in diesem Report präsentiert.This technical report provides a summary of the applications and case studies used in the priority program "Organic Computing" of the German Research Foundation (DFG SPP 1183). All projects were asked to fill out a consistent form with several points to the respective application. These are presented in this report

Trajectory Description Conception for Industrial Robots

International audienceIn this paper we observe the difficulties one can face when using different MPLs (Motion Planning Library) in a single application, and propose a new conception and a language which goal is to solve these problems. The idea is to present an interface between robot programming instruments and MPLs. Our goal is to provide a powerful tool for developers of software approaches for programming industrial robots that would allow an easy combination of different MPLs in one application. In addition the proposed conception hides the inner structure of libraries and eliminates the need to investigate algorithms before applying. That would increase the speed and the quality of the newly developed software systems

Efficient Optimization of Large Probabilistic Models

International audienceThe development of safety critical systems often requires design decisions which influence not only dependability, but also other properties which are often even antagonistic to dependability, e.g., cost. Finding good compromises considering different goals while at the same time guaranteeing sufficiently high safety of a system is a very difficult task. We propose an integrated approach for modeling, analysis and optimization of safety critical systems. It is fully automated with an implementation based on the Eclipse platform. The approach is tool-independent, different analysis tools can be used and there exists an API for the integration of different optimization and estimation algorithms. For safety critical systems, a very important criterion is the hazard occurrence probability, whose computation can be quite costly. Therefore we also provide means to speed up optimization by devising different combinations of stochastic estimators and illustrate how they can be integrated into the approach. We illustrate the approach on relevant case-studies and provide experimental details to validate its effectiveness and applicability