Matteo Risoldi

Self-aware Pervasive Service Ecosystems

Here we present the overall objectives and approach of the SAPERE (“Self-aware Pervasive Service Ecosystems”) project, focussed on the development of a highly-innovative nature-inspired framework, suited for the decentralized deployment, execution, and management, of self-aware and adaptive pervasive services in future network scenarios.

Developing pervasive multi-agent systems with nature-inspired coordination

Pervasive computing systems can be modelled effectively as populations of interacting autonomous components. The key challenge to realizing such models is in getting separately-specified and -developed sub-systems to discover and interoperate with each other in an open and extensible way, supported by appropriate middleware services. In this paper, we argue that nature-inspired coordination models offer a promising way of addressing this challenge. We first frame the various dimensions along which nature-inspired coordination models can be defined, and survey the most relevant proposals in the area. We describe the nature-inspired coordination model developed within the SAPERE project as a synthesis of existing approaches, and show how it can effectively support the multifold requirements of modern and emerging pervasive services. We conclude by identifying what we think are the open research challenges in this area, and identify some research directions that we believe are promising.

High-Level Petri Net Model Checking with AlPiNA

Although model checking is heavily used in the hardware domain, it did not take off in software engineering yet. One of the possible reasons is that software models are very complex. They integrate many dimensions such as data types and concurrency, leading to the infamous state space explosion problem. This article introduces the Algebraic Petri Nets Analyzer (AlPiNA), a symbolic model checker for High-level Petri nets. It is comprised of two independent modules: a GUI plug-in for Eclipse and an underlying model checking engine. AlPiNA is a step towards performing efficient and user-friendly model checking of large software systems. This is achieved by separating the model and its properties from the optimisation artifacts. This article describes the features that AlPiNA provides to the user for designing models and verifying properties. It also presents the techniques and artifacts used for tuning verification performance, along with some theoretical background.

AlPiNA: a symbolic model checker

AlPiNA is a symbolic model checker for High Level Petri nets. It is comprised of two independent modules: a GUI plugin for Eclipse and an underlying model checking engine. AlPiNA’s objective is to perform efficient and user-friendly, easy to use model checking of large software systems. This is achieved by separating the model and its properties from the model checking-related concerns: the users can describe and perform checks on a high-level model without having to master low-level techniques. This article describes the features that AlPiNA provides to the user for specifying models and properties to validate, followed by the techniques that it implements for tuning validation performance.

AlPiNA: an algebraic petri net analyzer

AlPiNA is a graphical editor and model checker for a class of high-level Petri nets called Algebraic Petri Nets. Its main purpose is to perform reachability checks on complex models. It performs symbolic model checking based on ΣDD, an efficient evolution in the Decision Diagrams field, using novel techniques such as algebraic clustering and algebraic unfolding. AlPiNA offers a user-friendly interface, and is easily extensible.

Modeling Self-* Systems Using Chemically-Inspired Composable Patterns

The behaviour of self-* systems is complex to model from an algorithmic point of view. Designing and specifying self-* systems implies a great amount of work that can be sensibly reduced if models can be reused and composed in a modular way. This article discusses a chemically-inspired architecture and formalisms that facilitate the creation of modular, reusable models based on behavioural patterns inspired by behaviours found in nature. The architecture is based on chemical-like laws ruling the evolution of the system. We show the reuse of general behavioural patterns using three concrete examples of self-* systems from different domains.

Developing domain-specific modeling languages by metamodel semantic enrichment and composition: a case study

Designing a DSML implies binding the syntactical concepts of the problem domain with the semantics of a solution domain. Previous work presented a formal framework for language composition where language syntactical patterns (expressed by metamodels) along with their semantics (expressed by transformation models) are combined as small reusable building blocks in a constructive manner, in order to achieve the desired expressiveness for DSMLs. This article refines the framework, as well as showing its application through a case study led in collaboration with CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research).

Composing Visual Syntax for Domain Specific Languages

With the increasing interest in metamodeling techniques for Domain Specific Modeling Languages (DSML) definition, there is a strong need to improve the language modeling process. One of the problems to solve is language evolution. Possible solutions include maximizing the reuse of metamodel patterns, composing them to form new, more expressive DSMLs. In this paper we improve the process of rapid prototyping of DSML graphical editors in meta-modeling tools, by defining composition rules for the graphical syntax layer. The goal is to provide formally defined operators to specify what happens to graphical mappings when their respective metamodels are composed. This improves reuse of Domain Specific Modeling Languages definitions and reduces development time.

Towards a formal, model-based framework for control systems interaction prototyping

This paper provides an overview of a starting project called BATIC3S (Building Adaptive Three-dimensional Interfaces for Critical Complex Control Systems). This project aims to bring a more viable approach in the fields of Graphical User Interfaces (GUI), software modeling and verification, automatic code generation, and adaptivity. The goal is to build a comprehensive methodology for semi-automated, formal model-based generation of effective, reliable and adaptive 3D GUIs for diagnosing control systems. This can be used to assist in GUI development for very complex systems, like industrial systems, high energy physics experiments and similar.

A domain specific language and methodology for control systems GUI specification, verification and prototyping

A work-in-progress domain-specific language and methodology for modeling complex control systems GUIs is presented. MDA techniques are applied for language design and verification, simulation and prototyping.