Hervé Leblanc

Bad smells in design and design patterns.

To give a consistent and more valuable property on models, model-driven processes should be able to reuse the expert knowledge generally expressed in terms of patterns. We focus our work on the design stage and on the systematically use of design patterns. Choose a good design pattern and ensure the correct integration of the chosen pattern are non trivial for a designer who wants to use them. To help designers, we propose design inspection in order to detect “bad smells in design” and models reworking through use of design patterns. The automatic detection and the explanation of the misconceptions are performed thanks to spoiled patterns. A “spoiled pattern” is a pattern which allows to instantiate inadequate solutions for a given problem: requirements are respected, but architecture is improvable.

Using Aspect-Oriented Programming to Trace Imperative Transformations

With the advent of languages and tools dedicated to model-driven engineering (e.g., ATL, Kermeta, EMF), as well as reference metamodels (MOF, Ecore), model-driven development processes can be used easily. However, the maturity of a software engineering technology should be evaluated by the degree of use of trace ability practices. One of the first major challenges consists in generating automatically trace information during a transformation process. Our contribution is a tool dedicated to infer traces during the execution of a model transformation. This tool is based on aspect oriented programming which permits us to isolate management of traces and imperative transformations code in a Java/EMF environment. A meta-model of nested traces allows the visualisation of traces as nested graphs which represent the trace ability links and the control flow diagram of the execution. A model-to-model case study is proposed as an example to illustrate our contribution.

A guideline to teach agile requirements

This paper presents a specific sequence of collaborative workshops dedicated to build a first version of a product backlog. This backlog is composed by user stories refined from a first idea of the product to develop.

Experience in learning test-driven development: space invaders project-driven

From Kent Becks point of view, Test-Driven Development (TDD) really encourages simple design and inspires confidence. This agile software engineering practice suggests a different programming way that requires writing tests before writing the code in short cycles to reduce feedbacks loops. To help novice programmers discover and appreciate it, this paper describes an experience based on a laboratory course for learning TDD by developping a Space Invaders game through a step-by-step project-driven approach. To improve student engagement, a game development is chosen. All concepts are taught within the context of this project and students learn by doing. Applied in the context of a basis of object-oriented design course, this experience should raise student awareness of designs and programmings good practices as testing, refactoring, simple design and short releases. The evaluation shows that this experience helps students to engage in the learning process, to reflect on the importance of testing in a software development, to make aware of code quality and to understand the benefits of TDD.

Specification by Example for Educational Purposes

The Specification By Example (SBE) is a guideline for building the right software, a software that meets customer requirements. It is based on seven process patterns and enhances communication and collaboration and it usually is used in agile software development. The connection between education and agile software development sounds actually as an emergent topic. In this paper, we propose to structure a teaching approach in analogy to an agile software developement by transposing each process pattern of SBE to a corresponding one in the teaching domain. Moreover, we show that thanks to the emergence of a collective intelligence process, the students are more confident and more responsible. Such a course offers the opportunity to learn not only technical skills, but also some values in a new mindset.

A Domain Specific Test Language for Systems Integration

In avionic context, systems are complex, embedded, critical, reactive and real time. In this context, testing activities are predominant in a V development process. We propose to bring in some features coming from agile methods. System integration testing that means systems are tested individually and together in order to ensure that they all operate correctly. We focus on functional and system integration testing just before the ground testing phase. Nowadays, test procedures and test plans we studied are described in textual manner and are executed manually. We aim to provide a common specific language that improves communications for the team of test designers and between test designers and test performers. In the same manner as agile test frameworks, this language allows to structure the test procedures. Moreover, this language tends to facilitate the automatic execution of some parts of the procedures. We choose a domain specific language approach to design a first domain specific test language dedicated to networks system integration.

Automatic Co-evolution of Models Using Traceability

Model Driven Engineering allows models to be considered as data and then used as first class entities in dedicated transformations languages. As a result, recurring problems linked to software production are emerging in this new development context. One such problem is to maintain an inter-model consistency during execution of a process based on models and model transformations. When some related models must co-evolve, what appends when different transformations are applied separately on each of these models? To prevent this, we assume that one of these models is the master model and we propose an automatic co-evolution of the other models based on the traceability of the main transformation. So the contribution of this paper is a conceptual framework where the necessary transformations of repercussion can be easily deployed.