Kazunori Matsumoto

A three-view model for developing object-oriented frameworks

This paper describes a three-view model for developing object-oriented frameworks. We propose a new methodology based on this model, and demonstrate its effectiveness using an example of practical industrial applications. This model can lead software engineers to a framework that has high reliability, portability, and maintainability. These quality factors of applications are especially important in a domain that has repeatability and changeability of hardware and software environment. The three-view model consists of a domain analysis view, a layer view, and a mechanism view. The domain analysis view is used to clarify all information and domain knowledge by using a new concept that we call Domain Reference Models (DRM), which reference models for modeling domain-specific objects, so that a framework has high reusability. The layer view is used to divide a framework into three layers that are piled up vertically: an infrastructure layer, a generic layer, and a domain layer. Because software engineers can replace a part of the framework for restriction on implementation, the framework has high portability. The mechanism view is used to decide which mechanism of whitebox frameworks or blackbox frameworks. By using this guideline, the framework has high maintainability. We applied our approach to the framework development for an industrial monitoring applications. By developing a prototype, we have a prospect of withdrawing the development costs of the framework by five or six times of application deployment. In this application, we estimate several ten times of application deployment. Therefore, it is effective for software engineers to develop a framework based on the three-view model.

An application of structural modeling and automated reasoning to real-time systems design

This paper presents an application of structural modeling and automated reasoning as a software development environment for real-time systems. This application satisfies two major requirements for such an environment: (1) to synthesize an absolutely correct program and, (2) to increase software productivity. The real-time systems, which consist of concurrent programs, are described by a Prolog based concurrent object-oriented language, called MENDEL/87. As a typical concurrent program consists of two parts: functional and synchronization parts; the functional part in the reusable component to be registered in a library will be generated by a structural modeling through the use of structuring functions with respect to data flows. The synchronization part will be synthesized from temporal logic specifications by the use of an automated reasoning mechanism. This paper also describes the MENDELS ZONE implemented on a Prolog machine, which is the working base for the presented application method.

An Experimental Agricultural Data Mining System

Agriculture is an information-intensive industry from an essential point of view. Many factors such as soil, fertilizer, temperature, precipitation, sunray, etc. are all affect harvest, so that information about them is carefully investigated by expert persons in deciding agricultural activities. We thus expect to build an intelligent agricultural information system to assist the experts and to help an improvement on agricultural technologies [7]. Towards this purpose, we firstly need to provide a system which can reveal hidden relations among agricultural factors. Although traditional statistical methods have already applied to this field, we expect recent data mining technologies to bring still more fruitful results. In particular, an expert can easily examines IF - THEN style rules extracted by the typical data mining methods [1],[6], he then may give further investigations around the rules with existing knowledge

An application of structural modeling and automated reasoning to concurrent program design

An application of structural modeling and automated reasoning as an intelligent software development environment for concurrent programs is presented. This application, using an integration of software reuse and theorem-proving methods, synthesizes an absolutely correct program and increases software productivity. The concurrent programs are described by a Prolog-based concurrent object-oriented language called MENDEL/87. The functional part of the reusable component is generated by structural modeling, and the synchronization part is synthesized from temporal-logic specifications by the use of an automated-reasoning mechanism. A description is also given of the MENDELS ZONE, implemented on a Prolog machine, which is the working base of the method.<<ETX>>

Synthesis of concurrent programs: automated reasoning complements software reuse

The authors describe a concurrent program synthesis system (Mendels Zone) consisting of reusable software using temporal logic and Petri nets. The concurrent program consists of nonsynchronization parts (called body parts) and synchronization parts. In Mendels Zone, the body parts are constructed with reusable software, and the synchronization parts are synthesized from temporal logic specifications. The reused software components in the body part construction do not necessarily satisfy the users requirements because the components are retrieved only with key words. Therefore, the synchronization parts must be synthesized so as to satisfy the users requirements, which are represented by a Petri net.<<ETX>>

Data Mining of Generalized Association Rules Using a Method of Partial-Match Retrieval

This paper proposes an efficient method for data mining of generalized association rules on the basis of partial-match retrieval. A generalized association rule is derived from regularities of data patterns, which are found in the database under a given data hierarchy with enough frequencies. The pattern search is a central part of data mining of this type and occupies most of the running time. In this paper, we regard a data pattern as a partial-match query in partial-match retrieval then the pattern search becomes a problem to find partial-match queries of which answers include sufficient number of database records. The proposed method consists of a selective enumeration of candidate queries and an efficient partial-match retrieval using signatures. A signature, which is a bit sequence of fixed length, is associated with data, a record and a query. The answer for a query is fast computed by bit operations among the signatures. The proposed data mining method is realized based on an extended signature method that can deal with a data hierarchy. We also discuss design issues and mathematical properties of the method.

Exploratory Attributes Search for Time-Series Data: An Experimental System for Agricultural Application

This paper reports an experimental agricultural datamining system which purposes to find weather patterns influencing yield of rice. Necessary data for this system are separately maintained in various databases. We then show how this system integrate them into one database with an assistance of support databases. Next we discuss the attribute selection problem for the data in the integrated database. Our method first exploratory search for a candidate set of attributes. In this case, the support databases is used to avoid a searching space explosion. Once the candidate set is identified, we apply a greedy search in the set to find the most useful subset of attributes.

Development and Evaluation of Large-Screen Digital Kanban with Smartphone Operation

The project is often visualized using the Kanban method in agile software development. The Kanban method is divided into two implementations: a physical Kanban and a digital Kanban. Both have particular advantages and disadvantages. Operating Kanban methods having the advantages of both have been proposed, but they require a high synchronization cost or a high price instrument. The authors developed a large-screen digital Kanban that has the advantages of both using a short-focus projector and a smartphone at a low cost. It has an interface using a two-dimensional (2D) code, a built-in smartphone camera, an acceleration sensor, a gyro sensor and a touch panel, so it can be operated without looking at the smartphone. Users can operate the Kanban while holding discussions in front of the Kanban board just like using a physical Kanban. From a result of evaluation of practicability, users will be able to operate our Kanban at a speed about equal to a physical Kanban if they practice the Kanban well.

MENDELS: concurrent program synthesis system using temporal logic

A concurrent program synthesis system called MENDELS is proposed. A concurrent programming language MENDEL/87, that is a target language for program synthesis, is also provided. MENDELS consists of two parts: (1) retrieving and interconnecting reusable components from I/O data specifications and (2) synthesizing a synchronization supervisor from a propositional temporal logic specification. MENDELS has been implemented in PROLOG on a PROLOG machine. MENDELS is a subsystem of the intelligent programming environment MENDELS ZONE.