Robust Controller Design And Pid Tuning For Multivariable Processes

In this paper, a robust controller design method is first formulated to deal with both performance and robust stability specifications for multivariable processes. The optimum problem is then dealt with using a loop‐shaping H_∞ approach, which gives a sub‐optimal solution. Then a PID approximation method is proposed to reduce a high‐order controller. The whole procedure involves selecting several parameters and the computation is simple, so it serves as a PID tuning method for multivariable processes. Examples show that the method is easy to use and the resulting PID settings have good time‐domain performance and robustness.     

Testing variability-intensive systems using automated analysis: an application to Android

Software product lines are used to develop a set of software products that, while being different, share a common set of features. Feature models are used as a compact representation of all the products (e.g., possible configurations) of the product line. The number of products that a feature model encodes may grow exponentially with the number of features. This increases the cost of testing the products within a product line. Some proposals deal with this problem by reducing the testing space using different techniques. However, a daunting challenge is to explore how the cost and value of test cases can be modeled and optimized in order to have lower-cost testing processes. In this paper, we present TESting vAriAbiLity Intensive Systems (TESALIA), an approach that uses automated analysis of feature models to optimize the testing of variability-intensive systems. We model test value and cost as feature attributes, and then we use a constraint satisfaction solver to prune, prioritize and package product line tests complementing prior work in the software product line testing literature. A prototype implementation of TESALIA is used for validation in an Android example showing the benefits of maximizing the mobile market share (the value function) while meeting a budgetary constraint.     

An integrated domain analysis approach for teleoperated systems

Teleoperated systems for ship hull maintenance (TOS) are robotic systems for ship maintenance tasks, such as cleaning or painting a ship’s hull. The product line paradigm has recently been applied to TOS, and a TOS reference architecture has thus been designed. However, TOS requirements specifications have not been developed in any rigorous way with reuse in mind. We therefore believe that an opportunity exists to increase the abstraction level at which stakeholders can reason about this product line. This paper reports an experience in which this TOS domain was analyzed, including the lessons learned in the construction and use of the TOS domain model. The experience is based on the application of extensions of well-known domain analysis techniques, together with the use of quality attribute templates traced to a feature model to deal with non-functional issues. A qualitative research method (action research) was used to carry out the experience.     

Agile product line planning: A collaborative approach and a case study

Agile methods and product line engineering (PLE) have both proven successful in increasing customer satisfaction and decreasing time to market under certain conditions. Key characteristics of agile methods are lean and highly iterative development with a strong emphasis on stakeholder involvement. PLE leverages reuse through systematic approaches such as variability modeling or product derivation. Integrating agile approaches with product line engineering is an interesting proposition which – not surprisingly – entails several challenges: Product lines (PL) rely on complex plans and models to ensure their long-term evolution while agile methods emphasize simplicity and short-term value-creation for customers. When incorporating agility in product line engineering, it is thus essential to define carefully how agile principles can support particular PLE processes. For instance, the processes of defining and setting up a product line (domain engineering) and deriving products (application engineering) differ significantly in practices and focus with implications on the suitability of agile principles. This paper presents practical experiences of adopting agile principles in product line planning (a domain engineering activity). ThinkLets, i.e., collaborative practices from the area of collaboration engineering, are the building blocks of the presented approach as they codify agile principles such as stakeholder involvement, rapid feedback, or value-based prioritization. We discuss how our approach balances agility and the intrinsic needs of product line planning. A case study carried out with an industrial partner indicates that the approach is practicable, usable, and useful.     

A case study in model‐based testing of specifications and implementations

Despite the existence of a number of animation tools for a variety of languages, methods for employing these tools for specification testing have not been adequately explored. Similarly, despite the close correspondence between specification testing and implementation testing, the two processes are often treated independently, and relatively little investigation has been performed to explore their relationship. This paper presents the results of applying a framework and method for the systematic testing of specifications and their implementations. This framework exploits the close correspondence between specification testing and implementation testing. The framework is evaluated on a sizable case study of the Global System for Mobile Communications 11.11 Standard, which has been developed towards use in a commercial application. The evaluation demonstrates that the framework is of similar cost‐effectiveness to the BZ‐Testing‐Tools framework and more cost‐effective than manual testing. A mutation analysis detected more than 95% of non‐equivalent specification and implementation mutants. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Automated product line test case selection: industrial case study and controlled experiment

Automated test case selection for a new product in a product line is challenging due to several reasons. First, the variability within the product line needs to be captured in a systematic way; second, the reusable test cases from the repository are required to be identified for testing a new product. The objective of such automated process is to reduce the overall effort for selection (e.g., selection time), while achieving an acceptable level of the coverage of testing functionalities. In this paper, we propose a systematic and automated methodology using a feature model for testing (FM_T) to capture commonalities and variabilities of a product line and a component family model for testing (CFM_T) to capture the overall structure of test cases in the repository. With our methodology, a test engineer does not need to manually go through the repository to select a relevant set of test cases for a new product. Instead, a test engineer only needs to select a set of relevant features using FM_T at a higher level of abstraction for a product and a set of relevant test cases will be selected automatically. We evaluated our methodology via three different ways: (1) We applied our methodology to a product line of video conferencing systems called Saturn developed by Cisco, and the results show that our methodology can reduce the selection effort significantly; (2) we conducted a questionnaire-based study to solicit the views of test engineers who were involved in developing FM_T and CFM_T. The results show that test engineers are positive about adapting our methodology and models (FM_T and CFM_T) in their current practice; (3) we conducted a controlled experiment with 20 graduate students to assess the performance (i.e., cost, effectiveness and efficiency) of our automated methodology as compared to the manual approach. The results showed that our methodology is cost-effective as compared to the manual approach, and at the same time, its efficiency is not affected by the increased complexity of products.     

PHOEBE: an automation framework for the effective usage of diagnosis tools in the performance testing of clustered systems

The identification of performance issues and the diagnosis of their root causes are time‐consuming and complex tasks, especially in clustered environments. To simplify these tasks, researchers have been developing tools with built‐in expertise for practitioners. However, various limitations exist in these tools that prevent their efficient usage in the performance testing of clusters (e.g. the need of manually analysing huge volumes of distributed results). In a previous work, we introduced a policy‐based adaptive framework (PHOEBE) that automates the usage of diagnosis tools in the performance testing of clustered systems, in order to improve a tester's productivity, by decreasing the effort and expertise needed to effectively use such tools. This paper extends that work by broadening the set of policies available in PHOEBE, as well as by performing a comprehensive assessment of PHOEBE in terms of its benefits, costs and generality (with respect to the used diagnosis tool). The performed evaluation involved a set of experiments in assessing the different trade‐offs commonly experienced by a tester when using a performance diagnosis tool, as well as the time savings that PHOEBE can bring to the performance testing and analysis processes. Our results have shown that PHOEBE can drastically reduce the effort required by a tester to do performance testing and analysis in a cluster. PHOEBE also exhibited consistent behaviour (i.e. similar time‐savings and resource utilisations), when applied to a set of commonly used diagnosis tools, demonstrating its generality. Finally, PHOEBE proved to be capable of simplifying the configuration of a diagnosis tool. This was achieved by addressing the identified trade‐offs without the need for manual intervention from the tester. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dynamic decision models for staged software product line configuration

Software product line engineering practices offer desirable characteristics such as rapid product development, reduced time-to-market, and more affordable development costs as a result of systematic representation of the variabilities of a domain of discourse that leads to methodical reuse of software assets. The development lifecycle of a product line consists of two main phases: domain engineering, which deals with the understanding and formally modeling of the target domain, and application engineering that is concerned with the configuration of a product line into one concrete product based on the preferences and requirements of the stakeholders. The work presented in this paper focuses on the application engineering phase and builds both the theoretical and technological tools to assist the stakeholders in (a) understanding the complex interactions of the features of a product line; (b) eliciting the utility of each feature for the stakeholders and hence exposing the stakeholders’ otherwise implicit preferences in a way that they can more easily make decisions; and (c) dynamically building a decision model through interaction with the stakeholders and by considering the structural characteristics of software product line feature models, which will guide the stakeholders through the product configuration process. Initial exploratory empirical experiments that we have performed show that our proposed approach for helping stakeholders understand their feature preferences and its associated staged feature model configuration process is able to positively impact the quality of the end results of the application engineering process within the context of the limited number of participants. In addition, it has been observed that the offered tooling support is able to ease the staged feature model configuration process.     

A systematic review of domain analysis solutions for product lines

Domain analysis is crucial and central to software product line engineering (SPLE) as it is one of the main instruments to decide what to include in a product and how it should fit in to the overall software product line. For this reason many domain analysis solutions have been proposed both by researchers and industry practitioners. Domain analysis comprises various modeling and scoping activities. This paper presents a systematic review of all the domain analysis solutions presented until 2007. The goal of the review is to analyze the level of industrial application and/or empirical validation of the proposed solutions with the purpose of mapping maturity in terms of industrial application, as well as to what extent proposed solutions might have been evaluated in terms of usability and usefulness. The finding of this review indicates that, although many new domain analysis solutions for software product lines have been proposed over the years, the absence of qualitative and quantitative results from empirical application and/or validation makes it hard to evaluate the potential of proposed solutions with respect to their usability and/or usefulness for industry adoption. The detailed results of the systematic review can be used by individual researchers to see large gaps in research that give opportunities for future work, and from a general research perspective lessons can be learned from the absence of validation as well as from good examples presented. From an industry practitioner view, the results can be used to gauge as to what extent solutions have been applied and/or validated and in what manner, both valuable as input prior to industry adoption of a domain analysis solution.     

Automating identification of services and their variability for product lines using NSGA-II

Architecture-level business services are identified based on business processes; and likewise, in service-oriented product lines, identifying the domain architecture-level business services and their variability is preferred to be based on business processes and their variability. Identification of business services for a product line satisfying a set of given design metrics (such as cohesion and coupling) is extremely difficult for a domain architect, since there are many product configurations for which the services must be proper at the same time. This means that the identified services must have proper values for n metrics in m different configurations at the same time. The problem becomes more serious when there are high degrees of variability and complexity embedded in the business processes that are the basis for service identification.We contribute to solve the multi-objective optimization problem of identifying business services for a product line by partitioning the graph of a business process variability model utilizing Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II. The service specification is achieved based on the results of the partitioning. The variability of the services is then determined in terms of mandatory and optional services as well as variability relationships, which are all represented in a Service Variability Model. The method was empirically evaluated through experimentation, and showed proper levels of reusability and variability. Furthermore, the resulting models were fully consistent.     

A systematic review of approaches for testing concurrent programs

Concurrent programs are replacing the sequential programs as they utilize the true capabilities of multicore architecture. The extensive use of multicore systems and multithreaded paradigms warrants more attention to the testing of the concurrent programs. The testing concurrent program is not a new field as it has been more than 40 years because the first problem related to the testing concurrent program was addressed by the researchers. The field covers various domains, which include concurrency problems, testing approaches, techniques, graphical representations, tools, and subject systems. This paper aims at providing an overview of research in the domain of testing concurrent programs by classifying it into eight categories: (a) reachability testing, (b) structural testing, (c) model‐based testing, (d) mutation‐based testing, (e) slicing‐based testing, (f) formal methods, (g) random testing, and (h) search‐based testing. The survey is focused on the techniques applied, methodologies followed, and tools used in these aforementioned approaches. Furthermore, the gaps are also identified in different approaches. The paper concludes with the consolidation of various testing parameters along with the future directions. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

模块类网络安全产品的智能测试系统设计

为了提高模块类网络安全产品的批量测试效率,降低人力成本及换线时间,开展了模块类网络安全产品的智能测试系统设计;通过对模块类网络安全产品的智能测试需求进行分析,采用将搭载图像传感器的工业机械手与基于PXI架构的测试系统相结合的技术路线,并对机械手控制技术和PXI总线测试平台设计技术进行了研究;创新设计了模块类网络安全产品的智能测试系统,对测试工艺流程进行优化与再造,实现了产品上下料、型号识别与柔性换线、智能装夹、批量测试、合格品与不合格品分拣等流程的一站式无人值守运转;经实际应用验证,智能测试系统的单日测试产能提升超过180%,单日人工工时减少93%以上,换线时间从平均70分钟减少到10分钟以内。     

高速网络Fast TCP拥塞控制算法的改进

随着网络技术的飞速发展和接入性能的不断提高,如今全世界的互联主干网络呈现出一种高速网络的特性。在这种网络特性下,传统网络中的TCP拥塞控制协议已经开始显现出不适应性,发现了FAST TCP协议中＂持续拥塞＂的形成机制,建立了数学模型来准确的描述＂持续拥塞＂所导致数据流之间带宽分配不公平的问题,进一步利用优先服务队列的方法解决了FAST TCP在网络中的持续拥塞现象。     

DRAMA: A framework for domain requirements analysis and modeling architectures in software product lines

One of the benefits of software product line approach is to improve time-to-market. The changes in market needs cause software requirements to be flexible in product lines. Whenever software requirements are changed, software architecture should be evolved to correspond with them. Therefore, domain architecture should be designed based on domain requirements. It is essential that there is traceability between requirements and architecture, and that the structure of architecture is derived from quality requirements. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for modeling domain architecture based on domain requirements within product lines. In particular, we focus on the traceable relationship between requirements and architectural structures. Our framework consists of processes, methods, and a supporting tool. It uses four basic concepts, namely, goal based domain requirements analysis, Analytical Hierarchy Process, Matrix technique, and architecture styles. Our approach is illustrated using HIS (Home Integration System) product line. Finally, industrial examples are used to validate DRAMA.     

基于软件产品线的需求分析研究

软件产品线方法是一种面向特定领域的、大规模、大粒度的软件复用技术.在软件产品线的开发过程中,产品线需求分析是软件产品线开发的关键活动之一,软件产品线需求分析奠定了产品线构架的基础.通过分析软件产品线开发过程和软件产品线需求分析的特点,阐述了软件产品线需求分析方法以及软件产品线需求分析的实践风险.以领域分析和建模为切入点,对软件产品线的领域分析、需求建模和用例建模等关键方法和技术进行了重点的研究.     

Using the Creative Product Semantic Scale as a Metric for Results‐Oriented Business

The advantages to businesses of using the Creative Product Semantic Scale (CPSS), a reliable, valid instrument that measures novelty, resolution, and style, are presented. The word ‘product’ is broadly defined to include an idea, proposal, process, prototype, or tangible product. Research shows that the CPSS has helped businesses in testing for marketability, new product design, product improvement and enhancement of advertisements. Future applications of the CPSS include improving the screening of ideas, diagnosis of brand problems, competition analysis, and team processes. A new on‐line version of the CPSS provides a convenient method of administration.     

Regression test selection for C++ software

Regression testing is an important but expensive software maintenance activity performed with the aim of providing confidence in modified software. Regression test selection techniques reduce the cost of regression testing by selecting test cases for a modified program from a previously existing test suite. Many researchers have addressed the regression test selection problem for procedural language software, but few have addressed the problem for object‐oriented software. This paper presents a regression test selection technique for use with object‐oriented software. The technique constructs graph representations for software, and uses these graphs to select test cases, from the original test suite, that execute code that has been changed for the new version of the software. The technique is strictly code based, and requires no assumptions about the approach used to specify or test the software initially. The technique applies to modified and derived classes, and to application programs that use modified classes. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A layout technique for class diagrams to be used in product configuration projects

The use of product configurators has produced a range of benefits for several companies, such as minimizing the use of resources and shortening the lead times in product specification processes. When developing a product configurator, two kinds of models are often created, namely analysis models and design models. Since the task of describing product knowledge in analysis models involves domain experts, the analysis language has to be easily understandable in order to avoid the need for extensive training. For this task, the so-called Product Variant Master (PVM) diagramming technique is often applied. With regard to the design model, the requirements for the language focus more on a formalized and rich language, which is why class diagrams are often applied. To avoid the use of different modelling languages in the analysis and design phase, this paper proposes the layout technique ‘Vertically Aligned Class Diagrams’ (VACDs), which incorporate the usability of PVMs into class diagrams. To validate the usefulness of the VACD technique, the paper compares VACDs to PVMs and class diagrams in a utility analysis and a usability experiment. These investigations strongly indicate that VACDs maintain to a great extent the combined advantages of PVMs and normally drawn class diagrams. Thus, the use of VACDs in configurator projects has the potential to increase efficiency, improve communication and reduce errors.     

An ontological engineering approach for automating inspection and quarantine at airports

Customs and quarantine departments are applying information systems to automate their inspection processes and improve their inspection efficiency and accuracy. The product codes from the Harmonized System (HS codes) are the essential elements of the system's integration, automation and intelligence. The identified HS codes are well-accepted and precise product references used by customs authorities, to match applicable policies to the products being inspected and taxed. Domain ontology for importing and exporting industry can be used to acquire HS codes for given products, and is a prerequisite for an integrated and intelligent automated inspection system. The authors have proposed and implemented an importing and exporting domain ontology. The ontology is composed of an integrated and comprehensive knowledge base derived from static dictionaries and the HS specification, and dynamic processing data. Based on this ontology, a reasoning engine is developed to generate HS codes intelligently for the given product names. Information systems can use the engine to get HS codes for submitted products and find applicable policies automatically. The ontology and the engine have been implemented in a Java-based platform and published as a HS Web service. In this paper, knowledge structure, reasoning mechanism and implementation details for the domain ontology and reasoning engine are presented. A test bed in the application environment has been conducted and experimental results have been obtained. The ontology and the service have the potential to be widely used by authorities and international traders of importing and exporting industry around the world.