PProto: An environment for prototyping parallel programs

This paper describes Parallel Proto (PProto), an integrated environment for constructing prototypes of parallel programs. Using functional and performance modeling of dataflow specifications, PProto assists in analysis of high-level software and hardware architectural tradeoffs. Facilities provided by PProto include a visual language and an editor for describing hierarchical dataflow graphs, a resource modeling tool for creating parallel architectures, mechanisms for mapping software components to hardware components, an interactive simulator for prototype interpretation, and a reuse capability. The simulator contains components for instrumenting, animating, debugging, and displaying results of functional and performance models. The Pproto environment is built on top of a substrate for managing user interfaces and database objects to provide consistent views of design objects across system tools.     

Saving reuse from the noose: reuse of analogous specifications through human involvement in reuse process

Analogy is proposed as an alternative paradigm for the reuse of specifications during requirements analysis. First, critical determinants of analogies between software engineering problems are discussed in relation to a specification retrieval mechanism. Second, the process of specification reuse is examined. Specification reuse by analogy is knowledge-intensive, hence an important role is proposed for the analyst during specification reuse: analyst involvement would appear necessary to categorize a new problem, select between candidate reusable specifications, and customize the selected specification to the new domain. Finally, a specification reuse tool is proposed that recognises the collaborative nature of reuse by analogy. This tool assists and advises the analyst during reuse founded on cognitive models of analyst behaviour during analogous reasoning and reuse. The prototype version of this intelligent reuse advisor (Ira) is outlined.     

Integrating domain knowledge,requirements, and specifications

This paper describes efforts to develop a transformation-based software environment that supports the acquisition and validation of software requirements specifications. These requirements may be stated informally at first, and then gradually formalized and elaborated. Support is provided for groups of requirements analysts working together, focusing on different analysis tasks and areas of concern. The environment assists in the validation of formalized requirements by translating them into natural language and graphical diagrams and testing them against a running simulation of the system to be built. Requirements defined in terms of domain concepts are transformed into constraints on system components. The advantages of this approach are that specifications can be traced back to requirements and domain concepts, which in turn have been precisely defined.     

Contributions from cognitive engineering to requirements specifications for complex sociotechnical systems: A case study in the context of healthcare in Brazil

This paper aims at presenting a case study on the use of human factors and ergonomics to enhance requirement specifications for complex sociotechnical system support tools through enhancing the understanding of human performance within the business domain and the indication of high‐value requirements candidates to information technology support. This work uses methods based on cognitive engineering to build representations of the business domain, highlighting workers’ needs, and contributing to the improvement of software requirements specifications, used in the healthcare domain. As the human factors discipline fits between human sciences and technology design, we believe that its concepts can be combined with software engineering to improve understanding of how people work, enabling the design of better information technology.     

A model for software reuse

Software reusability is widely believed to be a key to help overcome the ongoing software crisis by improving software productivity and quality. New computer technology and the demands of an advancing society require new and more complicated software. It is unrealistic to expect that every software system can be developed solely reusing existing software; however, software reusability has proven to be a way of enhancing software productivity and quality in different organizations. It is also believed that reuse of code segments alone does not significantly reduce software development effort.By creating reuse support information while software is being developed (when the software is best known to software developers), the reuse effort for both software development and maintenance can be potentially reduced.In this paper, five types of RSI are presented: Semantic Web, Horizontal Web, Vertical Web, Syntactic Web, and Alternative Web. We collectively call these five webs a Quintet Web. The Semantic Web enables software developers to locate a software segment. The Horizontal Web provides a means to reuse a block of soflware along with other types of software from other phases of a development process. The inter-phase integration of software can be performed through this Web. The Vertical Web identifies the vertical relationship of a software block to its operational environment. The Syntactic Web locates all statements in which a variable is used. The Alternative Web provides alternative software blocks that perform an identical operation.A prototype of the Quintet Web is presented.     

A domain model of Web recommender systems based on usage mining and collaborative filtering

Considering the increasing demand of multi-agent systems, the practice of software reuse is essential to the development of such systems. Multi-agent domain engineering is a process for the construction of domain-specific agent-based reusable software artifacts, like domain models, representing the requirements of a family of multi-agent systems in a domain, and frameworks, implementing reusable agent-based design solutions to those requirements. This article describes the domain modeling tasks of the MADEM methodology and a case study on the application of GRAMO, a MADEM technique, for the construction of the domain model of ONTOWUM, specifying the common and variable requirements of a family of Web recommender systems based on usage mining and collaborative filtering.     

The Core method for real-time requirements

The member companies of the Software Productivity Consortium develop large, mission-critical, real-time applications. For these companies, requirements are the top-priority problem in systems and software development. These requirements have driven the development of the Consortium Requirements Engineering (Core) method and its prototype CASE tools. Core is a single, coherent method for specifying real-time requirements that integrates object-oriented and forward models, integrates graphical and formal specifications, permits nonalgorithmic specifications, and provides a machine-like model. The Core requirements, component technologies, and conceptual model are discussed. Some important Core features are illustrated with an example of safety-shutdown software for a shipboard fuel-control system     

Deriving tabular event-based specifications from goal-oriented requirements models

Goal-oriented methods are increasingly popular for elaborating software requirements. They offer systematic support for incrementally building intentional, structural and operational models of the software and its environment. They also provide various techniques for early analysis, notably, to manage conflicting goals or to anticipate abnormal environment behaviours that prevent goals from being achieved. On the other hand, tabular event-based methods are well-established for specifying operational requirements for control software. They provide sophisticated techniques and tools for late analysis of software behaviour models through simulation, model checking or table exhaustiveness checks. The paper proposes to take the best out of these two worlds to engineer requirements for control software. It presents a technique for deriving event-based specifications, written in the SCR tabular language, from operational specifications built according to the KAOS goal-oriented method. The technique consists of a series of transformation steps each of which resolves semantic, structural or syntactic differences between the KAOS source language and the SCR target language. Some of these steps need human intervention and illustrate the kind of semantic subtleties that need to be taken into account when integrating multiple formalisms. As a result of our technique SCR specifiers may use upstream goal-based processes à la KAOS for the incremental elaboration, early analysis, organization and documentation of their tables, while KAOS modelers may use downstream tables à la SCR for later analysis of the behaviour models derived from goal specifications.     

Java-MaC: A Run-Time Assurance Approach for Java Programs

We describe Java-MaC, a prototype implementation of the Monitoring and Checking (MaC) architecture for Java programs. The MaC architecture provides assurance that the target program is running correctly with respect to a formal requirements specification by monitoring and checking the execution of the target program at run-time. MaC bridges the gap between formal verification, which ensures the correctness of a design rather than an implementation, and testing, which does not provide formal guarantees about the correctness of the system.Use of formal requirement specifications in run-time monitoring and checking is the salient aspect of the MaC architecture. MaC is a lightweight formal method solution which works as a viable complement to the current heavyweight formal methods. In addition, analysis processes of the architecture including instrumentation of the target program, monitoring, and checking are performed fully automatically without human direction, which increases the accuracy of the analysis. Another important feature of the architecture is the clear separation between monitoring implementation-dependent low-level behaviors and checking high-level behaviors, which allows the reuse of a high-level requirement specification even when the target program implementation changes. Furthermore, this separation makes the architecture modular and allows the flexibility of incorporating third party tools into the architecture. The paper presents an overview of the MaC architecture and a prototype implementation Java-MaC.     

A knowledge-based prototyping environment for construction of scientific modeling software

Over the past 30 years, scientific software models have played an increasingly prominent role in the conduct of science. Unfortunately, scientific models can be difficult and time-consuming to implement, and there is little software engineering support specifically available for constructing scientific models. Because these models are not easily specified to scientifically-naive programmers, and because the scientist requires intimate knowledge of the code to conduct experiments, many scientists implement their own models. This coding activity takes valuable time away from their primary scientific mission. We have developed a knowledge-based software development tool that assists scientists in prototyping scientific models. With a specialized graphical user interface, the scientist constructs a high-level visual specification that captures the essential computational dependencies in the desired model. The system uses its scientific domain knowledge to ensure that the model being built is consistent and coherent. The final product is an executable prototype of a scientific model. Our tool accelerates the model-building process and eliminates the scientist's need to program in a formal language. Furthermore, the models developed with this tool are easier to understand and reuse than typical low-level scientific modeling code. At present, models developed with our system are restricted to those involving non-coupled algebraic and first order ordinary differential equations. Research is ongoing to lessen this restriction and support models with simultaneous equations.     

一种基于重用的领域模型分类方法

文中提出了一种领域模型的分类方法，以促进软件重用，虽然领域分析在软件重用中扮演了重析角色，但是却很难运用，特别是对于新的应用领域更是如此，软件重用中类比方法，通过提供相似领域的软件模型来支持领域分析，为了实现这种类比的方法，领域模型需要分类，文中所提出的方法是分层枚举（ｅｎｕｍｅｒａｔｉｖｅｈｉｅｒａｒｃｈｙ）和刻面方法（ｆａｃｅｔｅｄｓｃｈｅｍｅ）的综合，从而使领域分析者可以很方便的地确定一个相     

面向软件产品家族的变化性建模方法

用户需求和运行环境的变化增加了软件产品开发、维护和演化的难度.另一方面,如果能对同类软件(比如软件产品家族)的变化性实施有效的控制,则可以极大地促进软件复用,提高软件生产效率和质量.对变化性建模是控制变化性的有效手段,既有助于变化性的识别和规约,又能够提供足够的机制支持变化性的演化.提出了一种面向产品家族的变化性建模方法,以变化性的管理策略为指导,从扩展的用况(use case)模型入手捕获系统行为的变化性,以特征模型来组织功能性需求和质量属性并识别其变化性,两种模型对变化性的建模采用相同的机制.还结合一个实例讨论了产品家族变化性建模的全过程.该研究对产品家族变化性的分析与建模具有一定的参考作用.     

产品线工程理论应用与研究

产品线工程（Product Line Engineering）是运用软件重用思想的一种软件开发方法,它属于一种大粒度的软件复用方式,用于开发相同领域的类似产品过程。由于PLE强调针对特定产品集合的领域开发和面向重用技术,所以能有效地提高软件产品的开发效率和质量,降低软件开发成本。文中介绍了PLE理论,着重研究产品线模型、开发模式、生命周期和体系结构,介绍领域工程和应用工程在生命周期内部的交互作用。通过产品线开发周期分析和比较出PLE在系统开发过程中的特点,最后介绍PLE在HIS系统中的开发应用。     

面向软件动态演化的需求建模及其模型规范化

针对目前需求工程阶段对软件动态演化考虑不足的现状,在分析软件动态演化面临的挑战的基础上,设计了面向动态演化的需求元模型(dynamic-evolution-orientedrequi rements meta-model,DERM)。该元模型以特征为基本部件,按特征组合的方式建立需求模型,需求模型由行为特征和属性特征组成。行为特征被区分为计算行为特征和交互行为特征,以实现计算和交互的相对隔离;属性特征通过其作用域,指定其在行为特征模型中的作用范围,从而将行为特征模型和属性特征模型统一为需求模型。在此基础上,讨论了需求模型的参照完整性、依赖一致性和互斥一致性,并进一步把需求模型规范化为需求模型第一范式到第三范式,需求模型规范化的过程提供了一种保证需求模型一致性的方法。最后通过案例研究,表明了该方法的可行性及其对软件动态演化的有效支持。     

安全关键软件术语推荐和需求分类方法

安全关键软件需求中的相关知识大多需要手工提取,既费时又费力。近年来,人工智能技术逐渐被应用于安全关键软件设计与开发过程中,以减少工程师的手工劳动,缩短软件开发的生命周期。文中提出了一种安全关键软件术语推荐和需求分类方法,为安全关键软件需求规约提供了基础。首先,基于词性规则和依存句法规则对候选术语进行提取,通过术语相似度计算和聚类方法对候选术语进行聚类,将聚类结果推荐给工程师;其次,基于特征提取方法和分类方法将安全关键软件需求自动分为功能、安全性、可靠性等需求;最后,在AADL(Architecture Analysis and Design Language)开源建模环境OSATE中实现了原型工具TRRC4SCSTool,并基于工业界案例需求、安全分析与认证标准等构建实验数据集进行了实验验证,证明了所提方法的有效性。     

模型驱动的嵌入式系统测试脚本生成方法研究与实现

自动化测试通过机器运行事先准备好的测试脚本进行测试，提升了软件测试效率。然而，测试脚本存在着编写专业性强、调试工作量大、维护成本高、难以复用等问题，成为自动化测试技术难以广泛使用的主要技术瓶颈。以嵌入式系统为测试对象，提出了模型驱动的测试脚本生成方法。该方法根据BPMN2.0建模标准对测试业务流程进行可视化建模；采用路径深度覆盖算法生成测试路径，根据路径上的约束条件生成测试输入参数；通过自定义的测试动作原语将测试路径和输入参数转化为可在嵌入式系统测试平台ETest上自动执行的测试脚本。实现的原型系统支持嵌入式系统的配置项级和系统级的测试脚本生成，提高了测试工具的易用性和测试模型及脚本的可理解性、可复用性和可维护性。     

一种面向特征的领域模型及其建模过程

特征模型作为捕获领域需求的重要模型已被现阶段的主流领域工程方法所接受,但这些方法缺乏对特征模型组织框架的细致研究和说明,在一定程度上导致了特征模型在表现形式上的冗余性和混乱性,也使得领域分析人员在实践中很难有效地进行领域建模活动.从特征模型的基本组织结构、变化性的表现方式和限制机制、变化性的绑定时间等方面对特征模型的组织框架及剪裁机制进行了统一、抽象的描述.在考察服务、用例(use case)、功能、行为特点等不同类型的特征及其相互关系的基础上,给出了一种特征模型的具体形式,并结合具体的领域,对其建模过程进行了详细论述.此项研究对于领域建模活动的成功实施具有一定的指导作用.     

面向并行程序设计的扩展UML建模

为了解决并行软件开发复杂及维护困难的问题,提出一种并行软件建模的方法。利用统一建模语言(UML)的扩展机制建立了一系列模型,描述了分布式共享内存的基本程序结构建模,通过组合这些基本模型,创建新的模型来适应具体应用。该建模方法保留了UML易理解、易扩展和易于指导工程实践的特点,便于从串行建模扩展到并行建模。通过对一个并行应用的描述,表明该方法对实际的并行程序设计具有指导意义。