Mohd. Zulkifli Mohd. Zaki

Model-driven estimation approach for system reliability using integrated tasks and resources

The increasing complexity of software systems in embedded systems or industrial business domains has led to the importance of reliability analysis for current systems. Reliability analysis has become a crucial part of the system development life cycle, and a new approach is needed to enable an early analysis for reliability estimation, especially for the system under design. However, the existing approach neglects the correlation between system resource and system task for estimating system reliability. This subsequently restricts accuracy of the estimation as well as causing difficulties in identifying critical resources and tasks during the design phase. This paper proposes a model-driven system reliability estimation using a scenario-based approach to estimate system reliability and identify its critical resources and system tasks during the design phase. This model is based on the PerFAM model, which can specifically view timing failures through a system scenario. The proposed approach is validated by the application of a sensitivity analysis into one case study. The case study demonstrates an essential relationship between system reliability, as well as both resources and tasks, which ultimately becomes the integral part for a system reliability estimation assessment.

A Survey of Design Model for Quality Analysis: From a Performance and Reliability Perspective

The use of a model for the analysis of the software quality attributes during the design phase has been gaining more attention in recent years. These models, which are peripheral in system design, are the center of quality analysis. The system design is the central focus in representing the structure and behavior of the system. Therefore, the goal of the software architecture performance and reliability analysis is to discover possible quality problems that may violate the quality requirements, which have been stated in the design. The use of an intermediate model to correlate the performance and reliability specification from the UML model and which is then transformed into an analysis model could facilitate the analysis process. This paper provides a survey of the existing intermediate metamodels from a performance and reliability perspective, through the evaluation and discussion on the similarities and differences focusing on the aspects of general concepts, modelling and analysis. The purpose of the discussion is to offer guidelines on which intermediate metamodel is appropriate for the use of quality analysis at design time as well as outline the possible space for improvement by making classifications and comparisons studies.

A Robotic Wheelchair Component-Based Software Development

A robotic wheelchair system provides mobility for handicapped and elderly people who are unable to operate classical wheelchair system. Software development for such system is challenged by requirement for multi-disciplines expert knowledge which includes embedded systems, real-time software issues, control theories and artificial intelligence aspects. Software reuse is an approach to provide a way to reuse expertise that can be used across domains in software engineering. Software reuse can be a mechanism to support the attempts to transfer technology from other engineering fields to rehabilitation engineering. For example, (Bonail et al., 2009) and (Cheein et al., 2009) have attempted to transfer software platform and algorithms from robotic technologies to rehabilitation engineering software development. The technologies transfer requires a methodological support to enable a systematic software reuse of the multi-disciplines expert knowledge. Software reuse is one of the promising approaches to increase software productivity and improve its quality, as well as to decrease the costs of software development. This is because of software reuse uses existing software either in the form of component or knowledge to construct new software. Yet, applying software reuse in Embedded Real-Time (ERT) domain, such as robotic wheelchair sets major challenges to the software development process due to the resource-constrained and real-time requirements of the system. In order to overcome multi-constraints and multi-disciplinary knowledge in ERT software development problems, Component-Based Development (CBD) method becomes a promising approach for ERT software development (Bunse & Gross, 2006; Carlson et al., 2006). Existing industrial component technologies such as OMG’s CORBA Component Model (CCM), Microsoft’s (D) COM/COM++, .NET, SUN Microsystems’ JavaBeans and enterprise JavaBeans, are not suitable to develop ERT systems because they do not address the non-functional properties in ERT systems. With the purpose to meet the requirements of ERT systems, a number of component technologies such as Koala (Ommering, 2000), PECOS (Nierstrasz, et al., 2002) and KobrA (Atkinson, et al., 2002) have emerged. However, these component technologies still have some weaknesses. Koala and PECOS cannot support multi-disciplinary knowledge, but they can

Model-based methodology for implementing MARTE in embedded real-time software

This paper presents an integration of a model-based methodology for embedded real-time software with MARTE. However, although has being introduced as a new profile to overcome problem in previous profile, a sound and systematic methodology is necessary to tackle complexity problem that arise. The objective of this paper is to propose an integration of profile and method for satisfying embedded real-time software requirements and helping engineers to model their system, enhancing the structure and behavior modeling. For that, this paper describes a proposed methodology for the integration process, involving two elements: a profile and a method. The integration result will support to solve complexity whereby the profile is used to solve the lack of specific modeling language notation for embedded real-time system and the method can provide a systematical software process. The proposed integration component model is applied on a case study to show its enhancements.

Meta-model validation of integrated MARTE and component-based methodology component model for embedded real-time software

A validation process for integrated model-based methodology for component-based embedded real-time software with a profile is presented in this paper. Unified Modeling Language for Modeling and Analysis Real-Time and Embedded System, as a newly developed profile has been introduced to overcome problems in previous profiles. Nevertheless, a sound and systematic methodology is needed in order to tackle complexity problems that arose. The objective of this paper is to validate the integrated profile and a selected component-based methodology component model for satisfying embedded real-time software requirements, thus helping engineers to model their system, enhancing the structure and component modeling. For that, this paper described a component model meta-model validation process using quality matching for the integration process, involving a profile and a methodology. Nevertheless, this paper focused more towards the validation of the integrated component model before can be implemented on Embedded Real-Time software development, whereby the proposed integration component model is applied on a case study to show its enhancements. The integration result will support to solve complexity whereby the profile is used to solve the lack of specific modeling language notation for embedded real-time system and the method can provide a systematical software process.