3,458 papers · page 161 of 173
Recent work in the area of software architectures is exploring the use of formal methods for specification and analysis of software architecture designs. The work is particularly aimed at achieving better possibilities for evolution, sharing and reuse among software entities. How…
The Unified Modelling Language (UML) is a standardised notation for describing object oriented software designs. We present vUML, a tool that automatically verifies UML models where the behaviour of the objects is described using UML Statecharts diagrams. The tool uses the SPIN m…
Embedded controllers in safety critical applications rely on the highest of software quality standards. Testing is performed to ensure that requirements and specifications are met for all the different environments in which the controllers operate. This paper describes the archit…
Impediments to software quality are exacerbated when applications-under-test are developed using component-based software engineering. Component misuse is one such impediment. Component misuse occurs when a component is used in a way that differs from the component producer's exp…
The paper describes the initial results of applying Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) to program source code and associated documentation. Latent Semantic Analysis is a corpus based statistical method for inducing and representing aspects of the meanings of words and passages (of na…
The goal of this work is to show that precepts from activity theory can be used in software requirements elicitation. Thus, we propose an approach to requirements elicitation using principles from this theory. Initially, we mention common problems found in requirements elicitatio…
During the evolution of object-oriented (OO) systems, the preservation of correct design should be a permanent quest. However, for systems involving a large number of classes and which are subject to frequent modifications, the detection and correction of design flaws may be a co…
In this paper, we show how data mining can be used to discover library reuse patterns in user-selected applications. This can be helpful in building and debugging applications that use a particular library by observing how other developers have used that library in their applicat…
Fault avoidance, fault removal and fault tolerance represent three successive lines of defense against the contingency of faults in software systems and their impact on system reliability. Beyond the colorful discussions of the relative merits of these techniques, the law of dimi…
There is an increasingly large demand for software systems which are able to operate effectively in dynamic environments. In such environments, automated software engineering is extremely valuable since a system needs to evolve in order to respond to changing requirements. One wa…
Tools such as Simulink(R) are being used by engineers around the world to model and solve real problems about dynamical systems. In particular control systems are modelled graphically, simulated and then code is generated automatically. Code generated from such a tool is being pr…
This paper describes the application of advanced formal modelling techniques and tools from the CADP toolset to the verification of CFS, a distributed file system kernel. After a short overview of the specification of CFS, we describe the techniques used for model generation and …
Describes the application of the Rebound (REuse Based On UNDerstanding) framework to synthesize event-based software architectures. Within Rebound, deductive techniques are used to select components and wrap them for integration. The framework guides the selection of wrappers bas…
Discusses a simple example that demonstrates various expressive limitations of the refinement calculus, and suggests a liberalization of refinement, called retrenchent, which supports an analogous formal development calculus. Useful concrete system behaviour can be specified outs…
Siddhartha applies the domain-specific language (DSL) paradigm to solve difficult problems in specification-based testing (SBT). Domain-specific test case data specifications (TestSpecs) and difficult-to-test program design styles engender difficult SBT problems, which are the es…
Modularization and abstraction are the keys to practical verification and analysis of large and complex systems. We present in an incremental methodology for the automatic analysis and verification of concurrent software systems. Our methodology is based on the theory of abstract…
An approach to automatic imperative program synthesis is presented which builds upon Gries' (1981) vision of developing a program and its proof hand in hand. To achieve this vision we rely on the proof planning paradigm, which enables the coupling of both heuristic and deductive …
Annotation of software artifacts is common in software development, and vital for software inspection. People viewing annotated artifacts encounter delocalization: they must understand various parts of an artifact (and their annotations) to understand the part they are viewing. W…