3,458 papers · page 163 of 173
The main factors that affect software understanding are the complexity of the problem solved by the program, the program text, the user's mental ability and experience and the task being performed. The paper describes a planning approach solution to the software understanding pro…
Specification-based retrieval provides exact content-oriented access to component libraries but requires too much deductive power. Specification-based browsing evades this bottleneck by moving any deduction into an off-line indexing phase. In this paper, we show how match relatio…
By focusing on the families of assignment and permutation problems (such as graph colouring and n-Queens), we show how to adapt D.R. Smith's (1990) KIDS approach for the synthesis of constraint programs (with implicit constraint satisfaction code), rather than applicative Refine …
Formal approaches to software reuse rely heavily upon a specification matching criterion, where a search query using formal specifications is used to search a library of components indexed by specifications. In previous investigations, we addressed the use of formal methods and c…
Only recently has the research community started to consider how to make software process models interoperable and reusable. The task is difficult Software processes are inherently creative and dynamic difficult to define and repeat at an enactable level of detail. Additionally, …
The paper is concerned with those properties of software that can be statically surmised from the source code. Many such properties have been extensively studied from the perspective of compiler construction technology. However, live variable analysis, alias analysis and the such…
We consider the problem of detecting and handling inconsistencies in software development processes using a graph based approach. It seems to be a natural way to express the various options and possibilities in attacking the problem. We apply the techniques developed in the area …
The cost-effective and reliable evolution of systems is a significant software engineering challenge. Our approach is based on a combination of product modelling, process modelling and software metrics. We describe an empirical laboratory study following the evolution of three re…
For the last three years the authors have been building an instantiation of a system development paradigm, called ARTS. The paradigm consists of a view of what a system development environment is, in general terms, and a methodology for instantiating the paradigm for particular a…
Reactive systems control many useful and complex real-world devices. Tool-supported specification modelling helps software engineers design such systems correctly. One such tool is a scenario generator, which constructs an input event sequence for the spec model that reaches a st…
The issues of re-engineering and reverse engineering have become important ones in the computing industry. A legacy system that has evolved has usually been worked on by many different programmers and reflects the different programming styles as practised by those programmers. We…
Presents an overview of the Possum specification animation system and its integration into the Cogito methodology and toolset. Possum allows interpretation (or animation) of specifications written in Sum, the specification language of Cogito. We distinguish two potential uses for…
Middleware forms such as CORBA and DCOM provide standard component interfaces, interaction protocols and communication services to support interoperability of object-oriented applications operating in heterogeneous and distributed environments. General-purpose services and facili…
Starting from a graphical data model (a subset of the OMT object model), a skeleton of formal specification can be generated and completed to express several constraints and provide a precise formal data description. Then standard operations to modify instances of this data model…
Detecting global predicates in a distributed program is a useful tool for debugging and testing the program. Past research has considered several restricted forms of predicates, including conjunctive predicates and linked predicates, and their detection algorithms. The authors in…
Message Sequence Chart (MSC) specifications have found their way into many software engineering methodologies and CASE tools, in particular to represent early life-cycle requirements and high-level design specifications. We analyze iterating and branching MSC specifications with …
From the viewpoint of a project manager who is responsible for the verification and validation (V&V) of a software system, mathematical verification techniques provide a potentially valuable addition to otherwise standard empirical testing. However, the value they add, both in te…
Since the emergence of object technology, organizations have accumulated a tremendous amount of object-oriented (OO) code. Instead of continuing to recreate components that are similar to existing artifacts, and considering the rising costs of development, many organizations woul…
We describe a tools environment which automates the validation and maintenance of a requirements model written in many-sorted first order logic. We focus on a translator that produces an executable form of the model; blame assignment functions, which input batches of mis-classifi…
We describe part of an STL conformance test suite under development. Test suites for all of the STL containers have been written, demonstrating the feasibility of thorough and highly automated testing of industrial component libraries. We describe affordable test suites that prov…