Domain specific software architectures: Command and control

GTE is the Command and Control contractor for the Domain Specific Software Architectures program. The objective of this program is to develop and demonstrate an architecture-driven, component-based capability for the automated generation of command and control (C2) applications. Such a capability will significantly reduce the cost of C2 applications development and will lead to improved system quality and reliability through the use of proven architectures and components. A major focus of GTE's approach is the automated generation of application components in particular subdomains. Our initial work in this area has concentrated in the message handling subdomain; we have defined and prototyped an approach that can automate one of the most software-intensive parts of C2 systems development. This paper provides an overview of the GTE team's DSSA approach and then presents our work on automated support for message processing

Self-Adaptive Systems for Information Survivability: PMOP and AWDRAT

Information systems form the backbones of the critical infrastructures of modern societies. Unfortunately, these systems are highly vulnerable to attacks that can result in enormous damage. Furthermore, traditional approaches to information security have not provided all the protections necessary to defeat and recover from a concerted attack; in particular, they are largely irrelevant to the problem of defending against attacks launched by insiders.This paper describes two related systems PMOP and AWDRAT that were developed during the DARPA Self Regenerative Systems program. PMOP defends against insider attacks while AWDRAT is intended to detect compromises to software systems. Both rely on self-monitoring, diagnosis and self-adaptation. We describe both systems and show the results of experiments with each

A Specificational Approach to Merging Persistent Object Bases

We examine the problem of merging persistent object bases (POBs) and the attendant problem of determining when two objects are equivalent. In particular, two or more source POBs are combined in a single target POB in which physically different objects in the sources may be merged into a single object in the target. Although persistent object base research has not focused on these problems in the past, any attempt to model (portions of) the real world in an object base butts up against them. In fact, the object-centered nature of POBs is consistent with and almost motivates our two-phase solution to the problem, in which an `object identification' phase precedes a `constraint resolution' phase. Families of keys are used to identify objects, after which various mechanisms are used to merge the remaining data. For example, preference specifications are used to resolve constraints violated in the target -- by preferring facts from one of the sources over the others. 1 Introduction One of ..

An Activity Language for the ADL Toolkit

Over the past decade numerous architecture description languages (ADLs) and tools have been developed [2]. Each has certain strengths, and each tends to work in isolation. A desirable goal is to find ways to combine the capabilities so that new architecture development environments can be easily developed by combining existing building blocks for architectural description, analysis, code generation, simulation, testing, etc. Such a collection of capabilities would then serve as an ADL Toolkit for building architecture-based design environments