5576673
A Generative Style-driven Framework for Software Architecture Design
Compared with texts, graphs are more intuitive to express comparative and structural information. Many graphical approaches, however, lack a formal basis for precise specifications in the design. This paper proposes a generative style-driven framework for software architecture specification based on a visual language formalism. In this framework, the designer uses graphical notations to define architectural styles. Given the graphical specifications, a visual language generator, i.e. a meta-tool, can automatically generate a specific design environment, which is suitable for the users without any knowledge of formal methods to directly manipulate software architectures by drawing box-line graphs. The graph transformation engine underlying the design environment can automatically validate structural integrity and reveal the hierarchical structure of a user-defined software architecture
26328924
Model checking the composition of hypermedia design components
Component-based software development aims at building software system by assembling software components to reduce cost, risk and time-to-market. However, conflicts among components constitute a crucial barrier to successful software composition. In this paper, we present an approach to analyze the properties of components and their compositions in order to detect and correct composition errors. We also demonstrate how model checking can be used to verify properties about the composition of design components. Furthermore, using a hypermedia case study, we show how to represent, instantiate, and integrate design components, and how to find composition errors by applying model checking techniques.
17418612
Visualizing design patterns with a UML profile
In this paper, we present a UML profile which defines new stereotypes, tagged values and constraints for visualizing design patterns in UML diagrams. These new stereotypes and tagged values are attached to a modeling element to explicitly represent the role the modeling element plays in a design pattern so that the user can identify the pattern in a UML diagram.
16769256
A model transformation approach for design pattern evolutions
The evolution of a design pattern typically involves the addition or removal of a group of modeling elements, such as classes, attributes, operations, and relationships. However, the possible evolutions of each design pattern are often not explicitly documented. Missing part of the evolution process may result in inconsistent evolution. In this paper, we define the evolution processes of design patterns in terms of two-level transformations, thus making the possible evolutions of each design pattern explicit. In addition, we automate the evolution processes as XSLT transformations that can transform the UML model of a design pattern application into the evolved UML model of the pattern. Both the original and evolved UML models are represented in the XML metadata interchange (XMI) format to facilitate the transformations. Furthermore, we check the consistency of the evolution results using the Java Theorem Prover
26263616
Developing a Formal Design Analysis Framework
9559762
A logical framework for design composition
The design of a large component based software system typically involves the composition of different components. The lack of rigorous reasoning about the correctness of composition is an important barrier towards the promise of "plug and play". The author describes a rigorous logic framework to reason about component compositions. We focus our analysis on design components such as design patterns, which have been used by a large number of applications. We also propose methods to verify structural and behavioral composition correctness.
15362726
State, event, time and diagram in system modeling
The design of complex systems requires powerful mechanisms for modeling state, concurrent events, and real-time behavior; as well as for visualising and structuring systems in order to control complexity. Methods integration has become a recent research trend in software specification and design. In the graphical area, many object-oriented methods have merged into one, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) which combines various diagrammatic modeling techniques to model static and dynamic aspects of software systems. Although traditional formal methods have not scale-up well, new integrated formal methods show great promise. This tutorial will present the state of the art in formal modeling techniques (state-based Object-Z and event-based Timed CSP), their integration (TCOZ), and transformation techniques from the integrated formalism to UML diagrams. An XML web environment for projecting integrated formal models to UML diagrams will also be demonstrated.
15498231
Soundness proof of Z semantics of OWL using institutions
The correctness of the Z semantics of OWL is the theoretical foundation of using software engineering techniques to verify Web ontologies. As OWL and Z are based on different logical systems, we use institutions to represent their underlying logical systems and use institution morphisms to prove the correctness of the Z semantics for OWL DL.
36530209
Determination of the star valency of a graph
The star valency of a graph G is the minimum, over all star decompositions π, of the maximum number of elements in π incident with a vertex. The maximum average degree of G, denoted by dmax-ave(G), is the maximum average degree of all subgraphs of G. In this paper, we prove that the star valency of G is either ⌈dmax-ave(G)/2⌉ or ⌈dmax-ave(G)/2⌉ + 1, and provide a polynomial time algorithm for determining the star valency of a graph.
5467078
Software modeling techniques and the semantic Web
Following the success of XML, W3C envisions the semantic Web (Berners-Lee et al., 2001) as the next generation of Web in which data are given well-defined and machine-understandable semantics so that they can be processed by intelligent software agents. Semantic Web can be regarded as an emerging area from the knowledge representation and the Web communities. The software engineering community can also play an important role in the semantic Web development. Modeling and verification techniques can be useful at many stages during the design, maintenance and deployment of semantic Web ontology. We believe semantic Web will be a new research and application domain for software modeling techniques and tools. For example, recent research results have shown that UML, Z (Woodcock and Davis, 1996) and Alloy (Jackson, 2002) can provide modeling, reasoning and consistency checking services for semantic Web.
43910679
Modeling Aircraft Mission Computer Task Rates
Recently the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) has been considering an upgrade to the F/A-18 aircraft in Australia. This upgrade may well involve the modification of Mission Computer (MC) systems. Maintaining correct functionality for the upgraded F/A-18 is therefore a major concern for the RAAF. This particular problem received interest from CSIRO and DSTO to support a joint Research Fellowship to investigate specification of hard real-time characteristics by formal method approaches.