Aline Maria Santos Andrade

A Systematic Review of Software Requirements Selection and Prioritization Using SBSE Approaches

Selection and prioritization of software requirements represents an area of interest in Search-Based Software Engineering SBSE and its main focus is finding and selecting a set of requirements that may be part of a software release. This paper uses a systematic review to investigate which SBSE approaches have been proposed to address software requirement selection and prioritization problems. The search strategy identified 30 articles in this area and they were analyzed for 18 previously established quality criteria. The results of this systematic review show which aspects of the requirements selection and prioritization problems were addressed by researchers, the methods approaches and search techniques currently adopted to address these problems, and the strengths and weaknesses of each of these techniques. The review provides a map showing the gaps and trends in the field, which can be useful to guide further research.

Improving Web Service Discovery by a Functional and Structural Approach

Service oriented Architecture (SOA) has been widely used in service computing applications and this fact has been encouraged the publication over the Web in a Web Service format. Whereas the number of Web services published on the Web is growing up, discovery techniques must be improved so as to retrieve more desirable services. Nowadays, the most commonly used technique is semantic filters based on ontological concepts. However, such mechanisms can leave out some important Web services of the matching process, because of their structural relationship not mentioned in an ontology. In order to overcome such problems, some authors have proposed a hybrid approach to combine traditional syntactic and semantic approaches. These proposals remain restricted especially with respect to complexity, precision and time of execution, thus making such solutions in most of cases unfeasible. In this paper, we combine semantic filters based on functional properties with a structural approach, analyzing each neighbor relationship in an ontology. The results showed a considerable improvement in terms of performance and a complexity reduction with respect to other existing techniques. Furthermore, we implement a tool called OWLS-S Discovery in order to simplify the use of our approach by developers.

Integrating UML and UPPAAL for designing, specifying and verifying component-based real-time systems

A new tool for integrating formal methods, particularly model checking, in the development process of component-based real-time systems specified in UML is proposed. The described tool, TANGRAM (Tool for Analysis of Diagrams), performs automatic translation from UML diagrams into timed automata, which can be verified by the UPPAAL model checker. We focus on the CORBA Component Model. We demonstrate the overall process of our approach, from system design to verification, using a simple but real application, used in train control systems. Also, a more complex case study regarding train control systems is described.

A TLA+ Formal Specification and Verification of a New Real-Time Communication Protocol

We describe the formal specification and verification of a new fault-tolerant real-time communication protocol, called DoRiS, which is designed for supporting distributed real-time systems that use a shared high-bandwidth medium. Since such a kind of protocol is reasonably complex and requires high levels of confidence on both timing and safety properties, formal methods are useful. Indeed, the design of DoRiS was strongly based on formal methods, where the TLA+ language and its associated model-checker TLC were the supporting design tool. The protocol conception was improved by using information provided by its formal specification and verification. In the end, a precise and highly reliable protocol description is provided.

Toward the Revision of CTL Models through Kripke Modal Transition Systems

In this paper we consider the problem of automatic repair of models in the context of system partial specification. This problem is a challenge involving theoretical and practical issues and the theory of belief revision is an alternative to give theoretical support to its solution. A Kripke structure is widely used to model systems, but it does not express partial information explicitly and a set of these structures might be required to represent several possibilities of behavior. A more general structure is the Kripke Modal Transition System (KMTS) which can specify systems with partial information and can be interpreted as a set of Kripke models. In this paper, we propose a framework for the repair of KMTS based on belief revision combined with model checking as an approach to revise sets of Kripke structures. We demonstrate the advantages of our approach, even with the existing restrictions in representing general sets of CTL models over the KMTS formalism.

MTP: Model Transformation Profile

Model Driven Development (MDD) is a softwaredevelopment approach that makes intensive use of modelsallowing not only reuse of code but also reuse of models producedalong the entire software development life cycle. At the core ofMDD is a transformation chain that transforms input modelsinto output models until code generation enabling softwaredevelopment automation. However, despite the importance of thedevelopment automation provided by MDD, there is a lack ofmodeling strategies to support transformation specification: theyare usually specified in natural language and implementeddirectly in code. As a result, it is difficult to adopt best practicesof software development and enable reuse. This paper proposes amodel transformation profile (MTP) suitable for thetransformation specification since requirements elicitation.MTP provides specifications independent of platform that can bereused to generate code in different transformation languages.This profile is a specialization of UML to the transformationdomain taking advantage of the large number of tools thatsupports this language widely used by industry and academy.

Specification and Verification of the IEEE 802.11 Medium Access Control and an Analysis of its Applicability to Real-Time Systems

The use domain of IEEE 802.11 networks has broadened to several types of application, including those that require quality of service and real-time guarantees. This trend in particular, has motivated the use of formal methods, not only to obtain a more precise knowledge of protocol properties, but also to specify and validate them. In this context, the contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we describe a formal specification of the IEEE 802.11 medium access control functions using UPPAAL, a freeware model checker tool. The described specification allowed us to verify important properties of these functions, taking into account both time and concurrency. Second, we report an experience of model checking a widely used and reasonably complex communication protocol, taking into consideration temporal requirements.

Towards a Metamodel Design Methodology Experiences from a model transformation metamodel design

Software engineering makes extensive use of models to provide a better understanding of artifacts produced during system development. Models are specified in modeling languages such as UML or using Domain Specific Languages. In this paradigm of development, metamodeling is essential because it is usually used to specify the abstract syntax of these languages. However, the design of metamodels is not a trivial task, it requires expertise in specific domains, language definition and abstraction capabilities. This paper provides a guide for metamodel design towards a metamodel development methodology based on some lessons learned from metamodel design experiences.

A 3-Valued Contraction Model Checking Game: Deciding on the World of Partial Information

In this work we address the problem of model checking a desired property specified in Computation Tree Logic (CTL) in the presence of partial information. The Kripke Modal Transition System (KMTS) is used for modelling due its capacity to represent indefinitions explicitly which enables a KMTS interpretation as a set of Kripke structures. In this interpretation a specific model checking algorithm is required that can return one of the three possible values: true when all Kripke models of the set satisfy the property, false when no Kripke models of the set satisfy the property and indefinite when some models satisfy and others do not. To the best of our knowledge the literature lacks a KMTS model checking algorithm that fits this interpretation and in this paper we present an algorithm based on a game approach called a Contraction Model Checking algorithm for this purpose.

Generating correct compositions of semantic web services with respect to temporal constraints

Services are being widely published over the Web and many services may be composed to attend a users need. A composition of services can demand complex requirements to get an executable composition. Temporal restrictions are one of these requirements. As compositions are dynamically composed, model checking can be applied to verify if compositions are correct in relation to the temporal restrictions required. In this work we propose an algorithm that creates semantic web service compositions and verifies the correctness of a composition checking the temporal restrictions of each iteration. Experiments were carried out and the precision of retrieved services and their execution time were analyzed.