Use case maps as architectural entities for complex systems

The paper presents a novel, scenario based notation called Use Case Maps (UCMs) for describing, in a high level way, how the organizational structure of a complex system and the emergent behavior of the system are intertwined. The notation is not a behavior specification technique in the ordinary sense, but a notation for helping a person to visualize, think about, and explain the big picture. UCMs are presented as “architectural entities” that help a person stand back from the details during all phases of system development. The notation has been thoroughly exercised on systems of industrial scale and complexity and the distilled essence of what has been found to work in practice is summarized. Examples are presented that confront difficult complex system issues directly: decentralized control, concurrency, failure, diversity, elusiveness and fluidity of runtime views of software, self modification of system makeup, difficulty of seeing large scale units of emergent behavior cutting across systems as coherent entities (and of seeing how such entities arise from the collective efforts of components), and large scale     

On Proposing Statecharts to Specify Performance Models

This paper shows that Statecharts, a high-level specification technique, can be used to represent performance models. This is a powerful technique and is based on state-transition diagrams added with concepts of hierarchy and orthogonality to represent a system behavior. It is shown that Statecharts may conveniently be used to represent models with richness and clarity. Using an analytical approach the technique to determine performance measurements is provided. Three examples are presented and the results show Statecharts' potential for representing systems for performance evaluation.     

Specification Diagrams for Actor Systems

Specification diagrams (SD's) are a novel form of graphical notation for specifying open distributed object systems. The design goal is to define notation for specifying message-passing behavior that is expressive, intuitively understandable, and that has formal semantic underpinnings. The notation generalizes informal notations such as UML's Sequence Diagrams and broadens their applicability to later in the design cycle. Specification diagrams differ from existing actor and process algebra presentations in that they are not executable per se; instead, like logics, they are inherently more biased toward specification. In this paper we rigorously define the language syntax and semantics and give examples that show the expressiveness of the language, how properties of specifications may be asserted diagrammatically, and how it is possible to reason rigorously and modularly about specification diagrams.     

Requirements specification for process-control systems

The paper describes an approach to writing requirements specifications for process-control systems, a specification language that supports this approach, and an example application of the approach and the language on an industrial aircraft collision avoidance system (TCAS II). The example specification demonstrates: the practicality of writing a formal requirements specification for a complex, process-control system; and the feasibility of building a formal model of a system using a specification language that is readable and reviewable by application experts who are not computer scientists or mathematicians. Some lessons learned in the process of this work, which are applicable both to forward and reverse engineering, are also presented     

Modeling spiking neural networks

A notation for the functional specification of a wide range of neural networks consisting of temporal or non-temporal neurons, is proposed. The notation is primarily a mathematical framework, but it can also be illustrated graphically and can be extended into a language in order to be automated. Its basic building blocks are processing entities, finer grained than neurons, connected by instant links, and as such they form sets of interacting entities resulting in bigger and more sophisticated structures. The hierarchical nature of the notation supports both top-down and bottom-up specification approaches. The use of the notation is evaluated by a detailed example of an integrated tangible agent consisting of sensors, a computational part, and actuators. A process from specification to both software and hardware implementation is proposed.     

From control law diagrams to Ada via Circus

Control engineers make extensive use of diagrammatic notations; control law diagrams are used in industry every day. Techniques and tools for analysis of these diagrams or their models are plentiful, but verification of their implementations is a challenge that has been taken up by few. We are aware only of approaches that rely on automatic code generation, which is not enough assurance for certification, and often not adequate when tailored hardware components are used. Our work is based on Circus, a notation that combines Z, CSP, and a refinement calculus, and on industrial tools that produce partial Z and CSP models of discrete-time Simulink diagrams. We present a strategy to translate Simulink diagrams to Circus, and a strategy to prove that a parallel Ada implementation refines the Circus specification; we rely on a Circus semantics for the program. By using a combined notation, we provide a specification that considers both functional and behavioural aspects of a large set of diagrams, and support verification of a large number of implementations. We can handle, for instance, arbitrarily large data types and dynamic scheduling.     

Towards the Integration of Visual and Formal Models for GUI Testing

This paper presents an approach to diminish the effort required in GUI modelling and test coverage analysis within a model-based GUI testing process. A familiar visual notation a subset of UML with minor extensions is used to model the structure, behaviour and usage of GUIs at a high level of abstraction and to describe test adequacy criteria. The GUI visual model is translated automatically to a model-based formal specification language (e.g., Spec), hiding formal details from the testers. Then, additional behaviour may be added to the formal model to be used as a test oracle. The adequacy of the test cases generated automatically from the formal model is accessed based on the structural coverage of the UML behavioural diagrams.     

带时间约束的UML序列图的分析工具

统一建模语言(UML)是一种多用途的可视化建模语言,它可用于软件系统的规约、可视化的构造和建档.UML序列图描述了交互对象间的协作,如在实时和分布式系统中通讯实体间的信息交互.与其它的规约和设计过程类似,UML序列图的规约也易出错,所以对它进行分析是很有必要的.文章描述了一个对带时间约束的UML序列图进行分析的工具.     

Static and Dynamic Data Models for the Storage Resource Manager v2.2

We present a conceptual model for the Storage Resource Manager, the standard interface adopted for the storage systems of the Worldwide Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid. This model provides a clear and concise definition of the structural and behavioral concepts underlying the interface specification and is meant to support service and application development. Different languages (natural language, UML diagrams, and simple set-theoretic and logical notation) are used to describe different aspects of the model.     

Specifying a safety-critical control system in Z

The paper presents a formal specification in the Z notation for a safety-critical control system. It describes a particular medical device but is quite generic and should be widely applicable. The specification emphasizes safety interlocking and other discontinuous features that are not considered in classical control theory. A method for calculating interlock conditions for particular operations from system safety assertions is proposed; it is similar to ordinary Z precondition calculation, but usually results in stronger preconditions. The specification is presented as a partially complete framework that can be edited and filled in with the specific features of a particular control system. Our system is large but the specification is concise. It is built up from components, subsystems, conditions and modes that are developed separately, but also accounts for behaviors that emerge at the system level. The specification illustrates several useful idioms of the Z notation, and demonstrates that an object-oriented specification style can be expressed in ordinary Z     

Graphic Language for Describing Constraints on Diagrams of UML Classes

A visual notation for specifying constraints on diagrams of UML classes by means of the UML collaboration diagrams is suggested. A formal semantics of the suggested notation is presented.     

脉冲调宽系统的状态转移分析

本文基于状态转移理论,分析了脉冲调宽系统的精确方法,给出了递推算式及计算程序框 图,并以脉冲调宽式数字随动系统为例,应用状态转移方法计算了单位阶跃响应.文中介绍的 方法具有准确反映脉冲调宽系统真实工作状态的优点.     

Explicit modeling of semantics associated with composite states in UML statecharts

UML statecharts are used for describing dynamic aspects of system behavior. The work presented here extends a general Petri net-based methodology to support formal modeling of UML statecharts. The approach focuses on the specific task of generating explicit transition models associated with the hierarchical structure of statechart. We introduce a state-transition notation to serve as an intermediate model for conversion of UML statecharts, and in particular, the complexity of composite states, to other target specifications. By defining a process for deriving, from UML statecharts, a state-transition notation that can serve as an intermediate state machine model, we seek to deepen understanding of modeling practices and help bridge the gap between model development and model analysis. This work covers all of the primary issues associated with the hierarchical structure of composite states, including entry and exit transitions, transition priorities, history states, and event dispatching. Thus, the results provide an important step forward toward the goal of modeling increasingly complex semantics of UML statecharts. This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Army Research Office under grant number DAAD19-01-1-1-0672, and the U.S. National Science Foundation under grant number CCR-9988168.     

Mexitl: Multimedia in Executable Interval Temporal Logic

This paper explores a formalism for describing a wide class of multimedia document constraints, based on an interval temporal logic. We describe the requirements that arise from the multimedia documents application area, and we illustrate these requirements using several examples. Then we present the temporal logic formalism that we use. This logic extends existing interval temporal logic with a number of new features: actions, framing of actions, past operators, a projection-like operator called filter and a new handling of interval length. The notation is applied to the specification of the examples, and in particular a set of logical manipulations, providing feedback to an author, is presented. A model theory, logic and satisfaction relation are defined for the notation.     

基于衍型的模式标注方法

设计模式在面向对象软件设计、开发和维护中发挥着非常重要的作用。为了克服现有设计模式标注方法的缺陷与不足,提出一种基于衍型的模式标注方法SBPN。基于UML衍型机制,SBPN不仅提供了一套规则用于精确标注结构图中类、方法或属性等模型元素的模式角色相关信息,还可以标注交互图中的模式信息。此外,SBPN为源代码中模式信息的标注也提供了相应的解决方案。给出了使用SBPN方法标注类图、交互图和源代码中的模式信息的实例,最后还将SBPN应用于一个较为复杂的排序系统。     

网络实时系统的一种活动性描述语言*

介绍了ADL,它是一种基于网络实时系统的活动性描述语言,一种描述并发处理中时态和功能行为的新的形式规格说明符号.ADL专用于计算机网络,是DORIS的一种形式语言扩充.它组合了状态机活动(ASM)的图形符号和基于模型的活动功能行为(AFB)符号;提供了关于ASM的抽象语法和静态、动态语义.最后通过一个小实例说明该语言是如何解释指定网络实时系统的.