Electronic Communications of the EASST (European Association of Software Science and Technology)
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Backward Reachability Analysis for Timed Automata with Data Variables
Full text linkEfficient techniques for reachability analysis of timed automata are zone-based methods that explore the reachable state space from the initial state, and SMT-based methods that perform backward search from the target states. It is also possible to perform backward exploration based on zones, but calculating predecessor states for systems with data variables is computationally expensive, prohibiting the successful application of this approach so far. In this paper we overcome this limitation by combining zone-based backward exploration with the weakest precondition operation for data variables. This combination allows us to handle diagonal constraints efficiently as opposed to zone-based forward search where most approaches require additional operations to ensure correctness. We demonstrate the applicability and compare the efficiency of the algorithm to existing forward exploration approaches by measurements performed on industrial case studies. Although the large number of states often prevents successful verification, we show that data variables can be efficienlty handled by the weakest precondition operation. This way our new approach complements existing techniques
Comparing Network Performance of Mobile VoIP Solutions
No full textMaintaining consistent VoIP quality is a challenging task, especially where it is carried using a mobile internet connection. With greater than 50% of the world's mobile user population using older GSM incarnations, this is very much a present technical research challenge. his paper presents an approach to improving mobile VoIP telephony by drastically lowering the bandwidth consumption while maintaining acceptable call quality when compared to competitor solutions. Although initial test had good results, we've found that a detailed experiment might be necessary to benefits of the implementation
Model Extraction of Legacy C Code in SCCharts
Full text linkWith increasing volumes of developed software and steadily growing complexity of these systems, software engineers struggle to manually maintain the vast amount of legacy code. Therefore, it is of interest to create a system which supports the documentation, maintenance, and reusability of software and its legacy code. The approach presented here automatically derives SCCharts models out of C code. These models can be used as visual documentation. By applying focus and context methods important parts of the model can be highlighted and may grant a better understanding of the overall software. Additionally, the models can also be used as a source to create new state-of-the-art code for various languages and platforms, such as C code or VHDL, using automatic code generators
Towards Reuse on the Meta-Level
Full text linkModern software development peaks in complex product lines and utilizes features of programming languages to their extend. On the other hand, model driven development shines by abstraction from implementation details to ease communication between programmers and domain experts. With the CINCO meta tooling suite there is now a framework to factor out programming knowledge completely in that it allows creating domain specific graphical modeling environments. Bundled with capabilities of full code generation domain experts can create software with minimum effort. In this paper an extension to the language family of CINCO is introduced which acts as one part of a foundation for developing software product lines. It highly stretches reuse of model specifications to overcome reoccurring problems in the context of inter-model references
Model-Checking-based vs. SMT-based Consistency Analysis of Industrial Embedded Systems Requirements: Application and Experience
Full text linkIndustry relies predominantly on manual peer-review techniques for assessing the correctness of system specifications. However, with the ever increasing size, complexity and intricacy of the specifications, it becomes difficult to assure their correctness with respect to certain criteria such as consistency. To cope with this challenge, a set of techniques based on formal methods, called \textit{sanity checks} have been proposed to automatically assess the quality of system specifications in a systematic and rigorous manner. The predominant way of assessing the sanity of system specifications is by model checking, which in literature is reported to be expensive for analysis as it takes a long time for the procedure to terminate. Recently, another approach for checking the consistency of a system's specification using Satisfiability Modulo Theories has been proposed in order to reduce the analysis time. In this paper, we compare the two approaches for consistency analysis, by applying them on a relevant industrial use case, using the same definition for consistency and the same set of requirements. The comparison is carried out with respect to: i) time for generating the model and the latter's complexity, and ii) consistency analysis time. Contrary to the currently available data, our preliminary results show no significant difference in analysis time when applied on the same system specification under the same definition of consistency, but show significant difference in the time of creating the model for analysis
On Privacy and Utility while Improving Software Quality
Full text linkSoftware development produces large amounts of data both from the process, as well as the usage of the software product. Software engineering data science turns this data into actionable insights for improving software quality. However, the processing of this data can raise privacy concerns for organizations, which are obligated by law, regulations and polices, to protect personal and business sensitive data. Early data privacy studies in sub-disciplines of software engineering found that applying privacy algorithms often degraded the usefulness of data. Hence, there is a recognized need for finding a balance between privacy and utility. A survey of data privacy solutions for software engineering data was conducted. Overall, researchers found that a combination of data minimization and obfuscation of data, produced results with high levels of privacy while allowing data to remain useful
Generating Optimal Decision Functions from Rule Specifications
Full text linkIn this paper we sketch an approach and a tool for rapid evaluation of large systems of weighted decision rules. The tool re-implements the patented miAamics approach, originally devised as a fast technique for multicriterial decision support. The weighted rules are used to express performance critical decision functions. MiAamics optimizes the function and generates its efficient implementation fully automatically. Being declarative, the rules allow experts to define rich sets of complex functions without being familiar with any general purpose programming language. The approach also lends itself to optimize existing decision functions that can be expressed in the form of these rules.The proposed approach first transforms the system of rules into an intermediate representation of Algebraic Decision Diagrams. From this data structure, we generate code in a variety of commonly used target programming languages.We illustrate the principle and tools on a small, easily comprehensible example and present results from experiments with large systems of randomly generated rules. The proposed representation is significantly faster to evaluate and often of smaller size than the original representation. Possible miAamics applications to machine learning concern reducing ensembles of classifiers and allowing for a much faster evaluation of these classification functions. It can also naturally be applied to large scale recommender systems where performance is key
Handling Domain Knowledge in Design and Analysis of Engineering Models
No full textThe development of complex systems, involves several domain experts and several models corresponding to different analyses (views) of the same system. No explicit information recording the characteristics of the performed system analyses is given. We propose a stepwise approach to keep trace of the process that allows a system designer to build a model analysis first, by making explicit definition of a descriptive model to describe the features of an analysis and second, by making explicit definition of the required concepts and properties borrowed from a design model to trigger a given model analysis.The approach is deployed using Model Driven Engineering (MDE) techniques and illustrated on an academic case study
