BTS:uma ferramenta de suporte ao desenvolvimento sistemático de sistemas confiáveis baseados em componentes

The component-based development of systems revolutionized the software development process, facilitating the maintenance, providing more confiability and reuse. Nevertheless, even with all the advantages of the development of components, their composition is an important concern. The verification through informal tests is not enough to achieve a safe composition, because they are not based on formal semantic models with which we are able to describe precisally a system s behaviour. In this context, formal methods provide ways to accurately specify systems through mathematical notations providing, among other benefits, more safety. The formal method CSP enables the specification of concurrent systems and verification of properties intrinsic to them, as well as the refinement among different models. Some approaches apply constraints using CSP, to check the behavior of composition between components, assisting in the verification of those components in advance. Hence, aiming to assist this process, considering that the software market increasingly requires more automation, reducing work and providing agility in business, this work presents a tool that automatizes the verification of composition among components, in which all complexity of formal language is kept hidden from users. Thus, through a simple interface, the tool BST (BRIC-Tool-Suport) helps to create and compose components, predicting, in advance, undesirable behaviors in the system, such as deadlocks

Formal methods for the development and verification of autonomic IT systems

This chapter explores ways in which rigorous mathematical techniques, termed formal methods, can be employed to improve the predictability and dependability of autonomic computing. Model checking, formal specification, and quantitative verification are presented in the contexts of conflict detection in autonomic computing policies, and of implementation of goal and utility-function policies in autonomic IT systems, respectively. Each of these techniques is illustrated using a detailed case study, and analysed to establish its merits and limitations. The analysis is then used as a basis for discussing the challenges and opportunities of this endeavour to transition the development of autonomic IT systems from the current practice of using ad-hoc methods and heuristic towards a more principled approach. © 2012, IGI Global.

Lightweight Formal Methods for the Development of High-Assurance Networking Systems

We survey several of the research efforts pursued by the iBench and snBench projects in the CS Department at Boston University over the last half dozen years. These activities use ideas and methodologies inspired by recent developments in other parts of computer science -- particularly in formal methods and in the foundations of programming languages -- but now specifically applied to the certification of safety-critical networking systems. This is research jointly led by Azer Bestavros and Assaf Kfoury with the participation of Adam Bradley, Andrei Lapets, and Michael Ocean.

Towards agility in design in global component-based development

The potential benefits of implementing Component-Based Development (CBD) methodologies in a globally distributed environment are many. Lessons from the aeronautics, automotive, electronics and computer hardware industries, in which Component-Based (CB) architectures have been successfully employed for setting up globally distributed design and production activities, have consistently shown that firms have managed to increase the rate of reused components and sub-assemblies, and to speed up the design and production process of new products.

Semi-formal Models to Support Program Development: Autonomic Management within Component Based Parallel and Distributed Programming

Functional and non-functional concerns require different programming effort, different techniques and different methodologies when attempting to program efficient parallel/distributed applications. In this work we present a "programmer oriented" methodology based on formal tools that permits reasoning about parallel/distributed program development and refinement. The proposed methodology is semi-formal in that it does not require the exploitation of highly formal tools and techniques, while providing a palatable and effective support to programmers developing parallel/distributed applications, in particular when handling non-functional concerns.

Genie:supporting the model driven development of reflective, component-based adaptive systems

Engineering adaptive software is an increasingly complex task. Here, we demonstrate Genie, a tool that supports the modelling, generation, and operation of highly reconfigurable, component-based systems. We showcase how Genie is used in two case-studies: i) the development and operation of an adaptive flood warning system, and ii) a service discovery application. In this context, adaptation is enabled by the Gridkit reflective middleware platform.

Formal network behaviour analysis using model checking

In this research we modelled computer network devices to ensure their communication behaviours meet various network standards. By modelling devices as finite-state machines and examining their properties in a range of configurations, we discovered a flaw in a common network protocol and produced a technique to improve organisations' network security against data theft.

Formal analysis of human-computer interaction using model checking

Experiments with simulators allow psychologists to better understand the causes of human errors and build models of cognitive processes to be used in human reliability assessment (HRA). This paper investigates an approach to task failure analysis based on patterns of behaviour, by contrast to more traditional event-based approaches. It considers, as a case study, a formal model of an air traffic control (ATC) system which incorporates controller behaviour. The cognitive model is formalised in the CSP process algebra. Patterns of behaviour are expressed as temporal logic properties. Then a model-checking technique is used to verify whether the decomposition of the operator's behaviour into patterns is sound and complete with respect to the cognitive model. The decomposition is shown to be incomplete and a new behavioural pattern is identified, which appears to have been overlooked in the analysis of the data provided by the experiments with the simulator. This illustrates how formal analysis of operator models can yield fresh insights into how failures may arise in interactive systems.

Combining data driven programming with component based software development:with applications in geovisualisation and dynamic data driven application systems

Software development methodologies are becoming increasingly abstract, progressing from low level assembly and implementation languages such as C and Ada, to component based approaches that can be used to assemble applications using technologies such as JavaBeans and the .NET framework. Meanwhile, model driven approaches emphasise the role of higher level models and notations, and embody a process of automatically deriving lower level representations and concrete software implementations. The relationship between data and software is also evolving. Modern data formats are becoming increasingly standardised, open and empowered in order to support a growing need to share data in both academia and industry. Many contemporary data formats, most notably those based on XML, are self-describing, able to specify valid data structure and content, and can also describe data manipulations and transformations. Furthermore, while applications of the past have made extensive use of data, the runtime behaviour of future applications may be driven by data, as demonstrated by the field of dynamic data driven application systems. The combination of empowered data formats and high level software development methodologies forms the basis of modern game development technologies, which drive software capabilities and runtime behaviour using empowered data formats describing game content. While low level libraries provide optimised runtime execution, content data is used to drive a wide variety of interactive and immersive experiences. This thesis describes the Fluid project, which combines component based software development and game development technologies in order to define novel component technologies for the description of data driven component based applications. The thesis makes explicit contributions to the fields of component based software development and visualisation of spatiotemporal scenes, and also describes potential implications for game development technologies. The thesis also proposes a number of developments in dynamic data driven application systems in order to further empower the role of data in this field.

A semantic web environment for component model

Component-based development (CBD) has become an important emerging topic in the software engineering field. It promises long-sought-after benefits such as increased software reuse, reduced development time to market and, hence, reduced software production cost. Despite the huge potential, the lack of reasoning support and development environment of component modeling and verification may hinder its development. Methods and tools that can support component model analysis are highly appreciated by industry. Such a tool support should be fully automated as well as efficient. At the same time, the reasoning tool should scale up well as it may need to handle hundreds or even thousands of components that a modern software system may have. Furthermore, a distributed environment that can effectively manage and compose components is also desirable. In this paper, we present an approach to the modeling and verification of a newly proposed component model using Semantic Web languages and their reasoning tools. We use the Web Ontology Language and the Semantic Web Rule Language to precisely capture the inter-relationships and constraints among the entities in a component model. Semantic Web reasoning tools are deployed to perform automated analysis support of the component models. Moreover, we also proposed a service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based semantic web environment for CBD. The adoption of Semantic Web services and SOA make our component environment more reusable, scalable, dynamic and adaptive.

Model-checking bisimulation-based information flow properties for infinite state sstems

Bisimulation-based information flow properties were introduced by Focardi and Gorrieri [1] as a way of specifying security properties for transition system models. These properties were shown to be decidable for finite-state systems. In this paper, we study the problem of verifying these properties for some well-known classes of infinite state systems. We show that all the properties are undecidable for each of these classes of systems.