Jennifer Brings

On the Impact of the Model-Based Representation of Inconsistencies to Manual Reviews

To ensure fulfilling stakeholder wishes, it is crucial to validate the documented requirements. This is often complicated by the fact that the wishes and intentions of different stakeholders are somewhat contradictory, which manifests itself in inconsistent requirements. To aid requirements engineers in identifying and resolving inconsistent requirements, we investigated the usefulness for manual reviews of two different model-based representation formats for inconsistent requirements; one that represent the inconsistent requirements in separate diagrams and one that represents them integrated into one diagram using annotations. The results from a controlled experiment show that the use of such integrated review diagrams can significantly increase efficiency of manual reviews, without sacrificing effectiveness.

An Ontological Context Modeling Framework for Coping with the Dynamic Contexts of Cyber-physical Systems.

Cyber-physical systems are highly collaborative by nature. At runtime these systems collaborate with each other to achieve goals that a single system could not achieve on its own. For example, autonomous vehicles can dynamically form convoys at runtime to facilitate higher traffic throughput and a reduction in CO2 emissions. While the importance of context documentation and analysis in system development is well known, current model-based engineering approaches struggle with the size and complexity of cyber-physical systems’ contexts. This is due to high variety and dynamicity of the contexts to be considered. For example, a convoy to be formed at runtime may consist of different numbers of participating vehicles. Additionally, it may face different neighboring, not partaking context systems (e.g., non-equipped vehicles, equipped but not participating vehicles) and situations (e.g., speed limits, road construction sites, emergency vehicles). This paper proposes a context ontology to cope with highly dynamic contexts of cyber-physical systems by explicitly differentiating between not only the system and its context but also between the cyber-physical system network the system participates in, as well as the system network’s context.

On Different Search Methods for Systematic Literature Reviews and Maps: Experiences from a Literature Search on Validation and Verification of Emergent Behavior

[Background] Systematic literature reviews and maps have become well-established research methods in software engineering research. Of the three commonly suggested and used search methods: manual search, database search, or snowball search; systematic literature reviews and maps typically employ one or a combination of two or three of those as their search strategy. As systematic literature reviews and maps raise a claim to result in a representative set of relevant papers for a certain area of investigation, it is of importance to understand the impact the search strategy has on achieving this goal. [Aim] This paper contributes a study to compare all three search methods. This study aims at providing evidence as to what advantages and disadvantages of these three search methods are. [Method] We conducted three systematic literature reviews on the same topic, which affects multiple software engineering related disciplines, using different search methods, while keeping other parameters like inclusion and exclusion criteria consistent among all three reviews. [Results] Our results show a similar effectiveness for snowball and database search and the highest efficiency for database searches. However, our literature reviews led to three barely overlapping sets of papers, which in turn led to distinct impressions of the same field. [Conclusion] Our results show that the use of a single search method can lead to a set of included papers, which misrepresents the research field under investigation. Hence, particularly when conducting literature reviews that affect different software engineering sub-disciplines and related disciplines, researchers should not just rely on the single most effective and/or efficient search method.

Approaches, success factors, and barriers for technology transfer in software engineering-Results of a systematic literature review

Technology transfer aims at supporting the transfer of results from software engineering research from academia to industrial application.

A semi-automated approach to foster the validation of collaborative networks of cyber-physical systems

Cyber-physical systems form collaborative networks dynamically at runtime. In the collaboration of multiple systems, behavior emerges in the interplay of the collaborating instances. This emergent behavior raises challenges for the validation of cyber-physical systems’ software, since interoperability of the single systems as well as functional correctness of the entire network of collaborative cyber-physical systems must be validated for all possible configurations of the network. Such network configurations differ, among others, in the number of participating systems, the number of system types involved, and the communication patterns between the participating systems. To aid the validation of behavior emerging from the collaboration, this paper proposes the automated generation of dedicated review diagrams to investigate the collaborative network’s behavior for different network configurations. First evaluations using case examples from industry partners show that the use of such automatically generated instance level review diagrams can support the validation of collaborative cyber-physical systems.

Verifying Cyber-Physical System Behavior in the Context of Cyber-Physical System-Networks

Cyber-physical systems are highly connected context sensitive systems that form networks. Within these cyber-physical system-networks, behavior emerges from the interplay of the connected systems that cannot be attributed to a single system. Verifying single system behavior as well as the resulting emergent behavior of the system-network the single systems contribute to, is challenging as the intended behavior differs between the different cyber-physical system-networks the single system takes part in. It can even differ between two almost identical cyber-physical system-networks, which, for example, only differ by one system. To ensure correct behavior, requirements engineering for cyber-physical systems must cope with the identification and documentation of the cyber-physical systems dynamic context, i.e. the different system-networks the system takes part in (e.g., a system-network of vehicles forming a platoon on a highway) as well as the context situations these system-networks can encounter (e.g., road work leading to the need for lane shifts). This paper contributes a solution idea for automated support in identifying relevant system-networks the system will have to interact with and for verifying the cyber-physical system under development against these relevant system-networks.

SPES XT Context Modeling Framework

When developing embedded systems, the context is of vital importance as embedded systems interact with the context through sensing and actuation. There is a multitude of context information, which is relevant for embedded systems engineering: on the one hand, external systems and human users interacting with the system under development constrain the specific interaction among them.