轨道交通控制软件中基于场景的需求分析方法

针对轨道交通控制软件的形式化方法,在实际工程应用中存在形式化建模和系统级场景验证困难的问题。提出一种面向轨道交通领域的形式化建模和需求确认及验证方法。通过非形式化、半形式化到形式化规约三步演化过程,为形式化规约构建提供模板。在对需求的确认和验证中,根据形式化规范建立需求模型,导出相关图表,基于此检查领域专家关注的场景。同时制定场景描述规则,使场景可以在需求模型中正确执行。在此基础上,从特殊变量、效率、场景质量三方面对场景进行优化,更充分地验证需求的正确性。实验结果表明,对于典型车载控制软件,该方法较传统分析方法可多探测到10%的潜在缺陷,效率提升80%以上。     

Guiding goal modeling using scenarios

Even though goal modeling is an effective approach to requirements engineering, it is known to present a number of difficulties in practice. The paper discusses these difficulties and proposes to couple goal modeling and scenario authoring to overcome them. Whereas existing techniques use scenarios to concretize goals, we use them to discover goals. Our proposal is to define enactable rules which form the basis of a software environment called L'Ecritoire to guide the requirements elicitation process through interleaved goal modeling and scenario authoring. The focus of the paper is on the discovery of goals from scenarios. The discovery process is centered around the notion of a requirement chunk (RC) which is a pair 〈Goal, Scenario〉. The paper presents the notion of RC, the rules to support the discovery of RCs and illustrates the application of the approach within L'Ecritoire using the ATM example. It also evaluates the potential practical benefits expected from the use of the approach     

可视化语言技术在软件开发中的应用

可视化语言技术比一维文本语言在描述软件组成方面具有优越性.由于图表和图形概念在系统建模中的广泛使用,可视化语言可以应用于需求分析、设计、测试和维护等软件开发的各个阶段.除了具有直观易见的特点之外,图文法在计算机上的精确建模和验证能力,为设计可视化语言提供了一个坚实的理论基础.讨论了可视化语言的形式理论基础,回顾了相关的可视化图形编程环境.特别提出了一种空间图文法,并且用该图文法定义了统一建模语言的行为语义.基于空间图文法,开发了一种基于模式驱动的框架,以帮助软件架构与设计.     

智能需求获取与建模研究综述

需求获取和建模是指从需求文本或记录中获取显式和隐式的需求,并通过表格化、图形化、形式化等方法构建相应模型的过程,是软件开发过程中极为关键的一步,为后续系统设计与实现铺平道路,提高软件开发效率和质量,提升软件系统稳定性和可行性.研究者们在需求获取与建模方面获得了一系列研究成果,根据其关注阶段不同,可以将它们分为需求知识提取、需求知识分类和需求模型构建3个方面.鉴于传统方法在知识获取、模型构建的准确性和效率方面一直存在弊端,近年来,越来越多的研究者们将具有广泛应用性的人工智能技术与需求获取、需求分类、需求建模方法相结合,提出了一系列智能需求获取与建模的方法和技术,从而弥补了传统方法的不足.着重从智能需求获取与建模角度着手,对近年来的研究进展进行梳理和总结.主要内容包括:1)统计并分析人工智能技术在需求知识提取、需求知识分类和需求模型构建中使用的方法和技术;2)总结了智能需求获取与建模过程中采用的验证方法和评估方法;3)从科学问题和技术难点2个方面归纳得出目前智能需求获取与建模的关键问题,围绕集成式和动态化模型构建、与其他软件工程活动关联、智能需求知识分类的粒度、数据集构建、评估指标构建和工具支持6部分,阐述了上述问题的可能解决思路和未来发展趋势.     

rCOS: a formal model-driven engineering method for component-based software

Model-driven architecture (MDA) has become a main stream technology for software-intensive system design. The main engineering principle behind it is that the inherent complexity of software development can only be mastered by building, analyzing and manipulating system models. MDA also deals with system complexity by providing component-based design techniques, allowing independent component design, implementation and deployment, and then system integration and reconfiguration based on component interfaces. The model of a system in any stage is an integration of models of different viewpoints. Therefore, for a model-driven method to be applied effectively, it must provide a body of techniques and an integrated suite of tools for model construction, validation, and transformation. This requires a number of modeling notations for the specification of different concerns and viewpoints of the system. These notations should have formally defined syntaxes and a unified theory of semantics. The underlying theory of the method is needed to underpin the development of tools and correct use of tools in software development, as well as to formally verify and reason about properties of systems in mission-critical applications. The modeling notations, techniques, and tools must be designed so that they can be used seamlessly in supporting development activities and documentation of artifacts in software design processes. This article presents such a method, called the rCOS, focusing on the models of a system at different stages in a software development process, their semantic integration, and how they are constructed, analyzed, transformed, validated, and verified.     

The analysis of architectural languages for the needs of practitioners

Architectural languages (ALs) have attracted much attention as the modeling notations for specifying and reasoning about important design decisions. In this study, 124 different existing ALs have been analyzed for a set of requirements that are crucial for practitioners. These requirements are concerned with language definition, language features, and tool support. Some of the important findings obtained from the analysis are as follows: (1) performance is the top popular nonfunctional requirement supported by ALs; (2) no ALs offer both textual and visual notation sets, one of which could be used independently; (3) process algebras are the top preferred formal method by formal ALs; (4) the physical, deployment, and operational viewpoints are rarely supported by ALs; (5) the top preferred extension mechanism of the extensible ALs is XML for syntax extension; (6) Java is the top preferred programming language in generating software code; (7) the exhaustive model checking is the top preferred automated analysis method; (8) the logic‐based formal techniques are so popular in specifying system requirements; (9) among the analysis properties considered, consistency is the top supported property for the automated checking; and (10) most ALs do not provide any discussion platform (eg, forums). Hence, these findings can be used by the new AL developers in addressing the needs of practitioners and bridging the gaps in the field. Practitioners can also use the findings to find out about the existing ALs and compare them to choose the one(s) that suits their needs best.     

Embedding requirements within Model-Driven Architecture

Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) brings benefits to software development, among them the potential for connecting software models with the business domain. This paper focuses on the upstream or Computation-Independent Model (CIM) phase of MDA. Our contention is that, whilst there are many models and notations available within the CIM phase, those that are currently popular and supported by the Object Management Group (OMG) may not be the most useful notations for business analysts nor sufficient to fully support software requirements and specification. Therefore, with specific emphasis on the value of the Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) for business analysts, this paper provides an example of a typical CIM approach before describing an approach that incorporates specific requirements techniques. A framework extension to MDA is then introduced, which embeds requirements and specification within the CIM, thus further enhancing the utility of MDA by providing a more complete method for business analysis.     

A framework for video abstraction systems analysis and modelling from an operational point of view

Nowadays the huge amount of video material stored in multimedia repositories makes its search and retrieval a very slow and usually difficult task. Existing video abstraction systems aim to relieve this problem by providing short versions of the original content which ease the search and navigation processes and reduce the browsing time. There are many approaches for video abstraction based on the optimal selection and presentation of a subset of fragments (keyframes, shots, etc.) from the original video attending to different criteria, usually dependent on the application scenario. Nevertheless, given the huge size and growth rate of existing video repositories there is an increasing need for providing efficient techniques. This paper presents a unified taxonomy and a generic architectural model aimed for the study of existing abstraction systems computational performance and characteristics. The taxonomy has been developed taking into account and identifying the operative characteristics of current state of the art video abstraction techniques. The proposed video abstraction architecture model characterizes the stages needed to build a generic abstraction process and establishes the basic architectural aspects and requirements for the modeling of systems with specific operative requirements.     

Design notations for secure software: a systematic literature review

In the past 10 years, the research community has produced a significant number of design notations to represent security properties and concepts in a design artifact. These notations are aimed at documenting and analyzing security in a software design model. The fragmentation of the research space, however, has resulted in a complex tangle of different techniques. Hence, practitioners are confronted with the challenging task of scouting the right approach from a multitude of proposals. Similarly, it is hard for researchers to keep track of the synergies among the existing notations, in order to identify the existing opportunities for original contributions. This paper presents a systematic literature review that inventorizes the existing notations and provides an in-depth, comparative analysis for each.     

基于人机交互的计算机辅助软件需求分析工具的研发

软件需求工程在软件开发项目中起着至关重要的作用,而需求分析活动的主角是人,因此计算机辅助需求分析工具的设计要做到以用户为中心,即以人为本。本原型作品在已有的面向问题的计算机辅助软件需求工程(Computer-Aided Requirements Engineering,CARE)工具的基础上,进一步在支持的平台及易用性等方面进行了扩展。选择安卓平台来开发此工具,理由是移动端应用软件相较于PC端具有一些优势(功能多样性、便捷性等)以及安卓的开源性质,它能够为提高软件质量以及用户体验带来新的技术支持。此外,还具体展示并介绍了该工具是如何基于人机交互的理论模型及设计原则设计的。     

Refinement and verification in component-based model-driven design

Modern software development is complex as it has to deal with many different and yet related aspects of applications. In practical software engineering this is now handled by a UML-like modelling approach in which different aspects are modelled by different notations. Component-based and object-oriented design techniques are found effective in the support of separation of correctness concerns of different aspects. These techniques are practised in a model-driven development process in which models are constructed in each phase of the development. To ensure the correctness of the software system developed, all models constructed in each phase are verifiable. This requires that the modelling notations are formally defined and related in order to have tool support developed for the integration of sophisticated checkers, generators and transformations. This paper summarises our research on the method of Refinement of Component and Object Systems (rCOS) and illustrates it with experiences from the work on the Common Component Modelling Example (CoCoME). This gives evidence that the formal techniques developed in rCOS can be integrated into a model-driven development process and shows where it may be integrated in computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools for adding formally supported checking, transformation and generation facilities.     

一种基于对象序列图的组件交互协议设计方法

基于组件的软件开发(component-basedsoftwaredevelopment,简称CBSD)现已成为软件开发的主流范型之一,其关心的核心问题是组件标准化与组件间的互操作性.它在互操作方面被广泛采用的思想是,分离组件的功能与交互特征,使用独立部件-交互协议来协调组件之间的交互.基于这种思想,探讨运用UML(unifiedmodelinglanguage)的对象序列图(objectsequencediagram,简称OSD)方法进行组件交互协议设计的多个方面的研究,其中包括OSD规范的形式定义以及规范的静态和动态形式分析方法,并为开发组件交互协议提出了一个集成OSD可视化建模和形式分析技术的软件工具框架.     

A survey of UML applications in mechatronic systems

Mechatronic systems are composed of mechanical, electronic and software parts. Recently, software processes and modeling notations traditionally used in software engineering have been used in building mechatronic systems. One of the modeling notations used in software design is the Unified Modeling Language (UML), a visual modeling language. In this paper, an analysis of UML in the building of mechatronic systems is presented.     

A framework for the operationalization of monitoring in business intelligence requirements engineering

Business intelligence (BI) is perceived as a critical activity for organizations and is increasingly discussed in requirements engineering (RE). RE can contribute to the successful implementation of BI systems by assisting the identification and analysis of such systems’ requirements and the production of the specification of the system to be. Within RE for BI systems, we focus in this paper on the following questions: (i) how the expectations of a BI system’s stakeholders can be translated into accurate BI requirements, and (ii) how do we operationalize specifically these requirements in a system specification? In response, we define elicitation axes for the documentation of BI-specific requirements, give a list of six BI entities that we argue should be accounted for to operationalize business monitoring, and provide notations for the modeling of these entities. We survey important contributions of BI to define elicitation axes, adapt existing BI notations issued from RE literature, and complement them with new BI-specific notations. Using the i* framework, we illustrate the application of our proposal using a real-world case study.     

Development and analysis — an intergrated approach

Due to the growing complexity and size of software systems, the development of correct and easy to maintain software has become more and more of a problem. This is especially true for distributed systems with real-time requirements. Therefore, great efforts have been made to overcome this problem. However, most approaches either do not consider every aspect of interest or are restricted to only one development phase. This paper describes OASIS, an open environment, that allows the integration of different analysis techniques in different system development phases, and presents the existing OASIS-toolset, that is already incorporated in this environment.     

A survey of approaches for the visual model-driven development of next generation software-intensive systems

Software-intensive systems of the future are expected to be highly distributed and to exhibit adaptive and anticipatory behavior when operating in highly dynamic environments and interfacing with the physical world. Therefore, visual modeling techniques to address these software-intensive systems require a mix of models from a multitude of disciplines such as software engineering, control engineering, and business process engineering. As in this concert of techniques software provides the most flexible element, the integration of these different views can be expected to happen in the software. The software thus includes complex information processing capabilities as well as hard real-time coordination between distributed technical systems and computers.In this article, we identify a number of general requirements for the visual model-driven specification of next generation software-intensive systems. As business process engineering and software engineering are well integrated areas and in order to keep this survey focused, we restrict our attention here to approaches for the visual model-driven development of adaptable software-intensive systems where the integration of software engineering with control engineering concepts and safety issues are important. In this survey, we identify requirements and use them to classify and characterize a number of approaches that can be employed for the development of the considered class of software-intensive systems.     

A scientific evaluation of the misuse case diagrams visual syntax

ContextMisuse case modeling is a well-known technique in the domain of capturing and specifying functional security requirements. Misuse case modeling provides a mechanism for security analysts to consider and account for security requirements in the early stages of a development process instead of relying on generic defensive mechanisms that are augmented to software systems towards the latter stages of development.ObjectiveMany research contributions in the area of misuse case modeling have been devoted to extending the notation to increase its coverage of additional security related semantics. However, there lacks research that evaluates the perception of misuse case models by its readers. A misread or misinterpreted misuse case model can have dire consequences downstream leading to the development of an insecure system.MethodThis paper presents an assessment of the design of the original misuse case modeling notation based on the Physics of Notations framework. A number of improvements to the notation were suggested. A survey and a controlled experiment were carried out to compare the cognitive effectiveness of the new notation in comparison to the original notation.ResultsThe survey had 55 participants for have mostly indicated that the new notation is more semantically transparent than the original notation. The results of the experiment show that subjects reading diagrams developed using the new notation performed their tasks an average 6 min quicker, while in general the subjects performed their tasks in approximately 14.5 min. The experimental tasks only required subjects reading diagrams and not creating them.ConclusionThe main finding of this paper is that the use of colors and icons has improved the readability of misuse case diagrams. Software engineering notations are usually black and white. It is expected that the readability of other software notations will improve if they utilize colors and icons.     

Integrating behavior analysis into architectural modeling

Architectural modeling and behavior analysis are two important concerns in the software development. They are often implemented separately, and specified by their own supporting notations. Architectural modeling helps to guarantee the system design to satisfy the requirement, and behavior analysis can ensure the interaction correctness. To improve the trustworthiness, methods trying to combine architectural modeling and behavior analysis notations together have been proposed, e.g., establishing a one-way mapping relation. However, the one-way relation cannot ensure updating one notation specifications in accordance with the other one, which results in inconsistency problems. In this paper, we present an approach to integrating behavior analysis into architectural modeling, which establishes the interoperability between architectural modeling notation and behavior analysis notation by a bidirectional mapping. The architecture is specified by the modeling language, architecture analysis and design language (AADL), and then mapped to behavior analysis notation, Darwin/FSP (finite state process) through the bidirectional transformation. The bidirectional transformation provides traceability, which makes behavior analysis result provided by a model checker can be traced and reflected back to the original AADL specifications. In this way, the behavior analysis is integrated into architectural modeling. The feasibility of our approach is shown by a control system example.