Gwendolyn H. Walton

Next-Generation Software Engineering: Function Extraction for Computation of Software Behavior

The ultra-large-scale systems of the future require the transformation of software engineering into a computational discipline capable of fast and dependable software development. This paper discusses an emerging next-generation software engineering research area: function extraction (FX) technology for automated computation to the maximum extent possible of the behavior, correctness, and quality attributes of software components and their compositions into systems. An introduction to the mathematical foundations for computation of software behavior is provided, followed by an overview description of a rigorously designed experiment to quantify the potential for FX technology, and a discussion of a CERT STAR *Lab first application of FX technology to compute the behavior of code expressed in the Intel assembly language instruction set

The flow-service-quality framework: unified engineering for large-scale, adaptive systems

Modern enterprises are irreversibly dependent on large-scale, adaptive, component-based information systems whose complexity frequently exceeds current engineering capabilities for intellectual control, resulting in persistent difficulties in system development, management, and evolution. We propose an innovative framework of engineering representation and reasoning methods for developing these complex systems: the flow-service-quality (FSQ) framework. In dynamic network information systems with constantly varying function and usage, workflows and their corresponding traces of system services act as stable foundations for functional and non functional (quality attribute) specification, design, and operational control. Our objective is to provide theoretical foundations, language representations, and rigorous yet practical unified engineering methods to represent and reason about system flows as essential artifacts of system specification, design, and operation.

A Service-Oriented Composition Framework with QoS Management

Quality of Services (QoS) management in compositions of services requires careful consideration of QoS characteristics of the services and effective QoS management in their execution. This paper describes an approach to implementation of QoS management in compositions of Web services in the context of Computational Quality Attributes and Service Level Agreements. Building on prior research work of others in the use of Message Detail Records, this paper integrates the results from several research threads to propose a QoS Management Architecture to support dynamic processing of service- and flow level quality attributes to support QoS requests and analyses in Web-service-oriented architectures. The study of QoS management in a Web service composition framework was motivated by the evolution of the composition framework for a toolkit for integration and experimentation of distributed system applications. A message tracking model is proposed for supporting QoS end-to-end management by applying the Computational Quality Attribute (CQA) concepts of Flow-Service-Quality engineering. Quality attributes are defined, computed and acted upon as dynamic characteristics of systems, with values constantly changing in operation. A CQA provision is illustrated, with a simple Web Services travel reservation example. The example is elaborated to illustrate QoS end-to-end management using the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) message tracking model.

Computational Evaluation of Software Security Attributes

In the current state of practice, security properties of software systems are typically assessed through subjective, labor-intensive human evaluation. Moreover, much of the quantitative security analysis research to date is characterized by the development of approximate solutions and/or based on assumptions that severely constrain the operational utility of the results. In order to achieve a dramatic increase in maturing the discipline of software security engineering, a fundamentally different approach to analysis and evaluation of security attributes is required. The computational security attributes (CSA) approach to software security analysis provides a new approach for specification of security attributes in terms of data and transformation of data by programs. This paper provides an introduction to the CSA approach, provides behavioral requirements for several security attributes, and discusses possible application of the CSA approach to support analysis of security attributes during software development, acquisition, verification, and operation.

Next-Generation Software Engineering Introduction to Minitrack

Societal dependence on largescale, networkcentric systems continues to grow. But cost and complexity are increasing, and errors and vulnerabilities persist despite best efforts. Evidence suggests that software engineering is reaching the limits of development technologies evolved in the first fifty years of computing. A need exists to create a next-generation software engineering (NGSE) for the next fifty years that will reduce cost and complexity for fast and correct development of the ultralargescale systems of the future. NGSE is envisioned as a computational engineering discipline, largely enabled by theorybased, semanticsdirected automation that permits intellectual control at a scope and scale unattainable with present methods.