Antti-Pekka Tuovinen

Modelling of Features and Feature Interactions in Nokia Mobile Phones Using Coloured Petri Nets

This paper reports on the main results from an industrial cooperation project. The project is a joint project between Nokia Research Centre and the CPN group at the University of Aarhus. The purpose of the project was to investigate features and feature interactions in development of Nokia mobile phones through construction of a Coloured Petri Nets (CPN) model. The model is extended with domain-specific graphics and Message Sequence Charts to enable mobile phone user interface designers and software developers who are not familiar with Petri Nets to work with the model. The paper presents the CPN model constructed in the project, describes how domain-specific graphics and Message Sequence Charts are used in simulations of the CPN model, and discusses how the project and in particular the construction of the CPN model has influenced the development process of features in Nokia mobile phones.

Establishing a software architecting environment

We present the work of establishing an integrated environment that facilitates architecture design, reconstruction, and maintenance in the entire life cycle of a software product line. This architecting environment (ART environment) has been used in modeling and analysis of both the designed platform architecture model and the reverse-engineered product implementation architecture models of different releases in a big product line of Nokia mobile terminals. ART environment comprises tools for architecture model validation, architecture model analysis and processing, and reverse architecting. The ART environment fits the current software development process inside Nokia, and is integrated with the design and documentation tools that have already been used by Nokia software architects. UML, after being customized with UML profiles for architecture design, is used as the architecture modeling language in ART environment.

Feature Interaction Control on Smartphones

Smartphones are becoming increasingly complex software-intensive devices. The platforms supporting these devices need to cope with the growing complexity while maximising the use of the underlying hardware. At the same time, manufacturers need to ensure that the different features do not clash or have undesired interactions between them, leading to a bad user experience and ultimately a bad perception of the product. This paper focuses on one of the common resources used by all features in the system; namely, processor capacity. While it is desirable to maximise the use of available processor capacity, overuse can have dire consequences for usability. We present the Application Superstate Control System, a centralised approach based on a negotiation protocol for sharing the available capacity among features in a configurable fashion. Manufacturers and platform integrators can get visibility over feature interactions and control their outcome with the proposed framework.

Tool Support for Estimating the Memory Usage of Mobile Phone Software

We present and discuss a tool that can estimate the worst-case memory usage of interacting software components. The tool applies formal analysis based on Coloured Petri nets (CPN). For a given set of interaction scenarios, the tool calculates a state space of a CPN model and finds a path, which corresponds to a worst-case memory usage interleaving of the events in the scenarios. To hide the formal analysis from the users of the tool, IBM Rational Rose is used as front-end to specify scenarios as annotated UML sequence diagrams, and Microsoft Excel is used as back-end to present the analysis results.

System Family Architectures: Current Challenges at Nokia

We discuss the current state and the future challenges of software architecture work pertaining to the mobile handset families produced by Nokia. We identify the most important variance factors in the product set, present some open problems in the product family development, and outline a case study for employing the system family technology developed in the ESAPS project to the development of mobile handsets at Nokia.

Error recovery in parsing relational languages

The ability to report syntactic errors and to recover from them are basic requirements for any programming environment where programs are parsed before execution. Advanced error handling techniques are standard tools when processing textual programs, whereas in the context of visual languages the problem is factually unexplored. We develop an error recovery strategy for the parsing algorithm for atomic relational grammars originally developed by K. Wittenburg (1996). We present a definition of parser defined syntax errors for Wittenburgs parser by analyzing the possible parsing action failures and by showing how an explicit parse trace can be constructed to locate the errors. Then, we present two error recovery techniques, describe how they are integrated to the parses and discuss further directions.

A Framework for Processors of Visual Languages

The initial design of a framework for processors of visual languages is presented. The concept of visual language is discussed and the framework-based approach to implementing visual languages is motivated. The main features of the proposed framework are presented. The framework combines declarative grammar-based language specification techniques with inheritance and dynamic binding of language entities.

Practical Error Handling in Parsing Visual Languages

Abstract The ability to report syntactic errors and to recover from them are basic requirements for any programming environment where programs are parsed before execution. Advanced error handling techniques are standard tools when processing textual programs, whereas in the context of visual languages the problem is factually unexplored. In this work, we develop an error recovery strategy for the parsing algorithm for atomic relational grammars originally developed by K. Wittenburg. We present a definition of parser-defined syntax errors for Wittenburgs parser by analyzing the possible parsing action failures and by showing how an explicit parse trace can be constructed to locate the errors. Then, we present two error recovery techniques, describe how they are integrated to the parser, and discuss further directions.

Translating SQL for database reengineering

A tool for porting database applications is presented. The tool transforms VMS/Rdb applications written in C and embedded SQL into a portable, database-independent application interface which can be directly installed on a target platform and database management system with a separate customization tool. The converter is based on standard techniques developed for compiling programming languages. The original task of the converter was to port a large administrative system from VMS/Rdb into Oracle, but the tool can be used for other reengineering applications as well.

Object-oriented visualization of program logic

The Eliot system visualizes program execution; it concentrates on program logic, i.e., dynamic semantics of a program. The Eliot approach to program visualization is based on visual data types capable of animating their instances. The architecture of Eliot applies the object-oriented approach by implementing visual data types as classes of self-animated objects. The benefits of the object-oriented approach to program visualization are clear; in addition to providing a programmer with a flexible and interactive animation environment, it shortens the construction time of animation from hours to minutes. This makes Eliot an interesting choice for uses in education, program development, and visual debugging, as well as algorithm research.