Formalizing and verifying stochastic system architectures using Monterey Phoenix (SoSyM abstract)

Software Architecture plays an essential role in the high level description of a system design. Despite its importance in the software engineering practice, the lack of formal description and verification support hinders the development of quality architectural models. In this paper, we present an automated approach to the modeling and verification of software architecture designs using the Process Analysis Toolkit (PAT). We present the formal syntax of the Wright# architecture description language together with its operational semantics in Labeled Transition System (LTS). A dedicated model checking module for Wright# is implemented in the PAT verification framework based on the proposed formalism. The module - ADL supports verification and simulation of software architecture models in PAT. We advance our work via defining an architecture style library that embodies commonly used architecture patterns to facilitate the modeling process. Finally, a case study of the Teleservices and Remote Medical Care System (TRMCS) modeling and verification is presented to evaluate the effectiveness and scalability of our approach.

Since their creation, CubeSats have become a valuable educational tool for university science and engineering programs. Unfortunately, while aerospace companies invest resources to develop verification and validation methodologies based on larger-scale aerospace projects, university programs tend to focus resources on spacecraft development. This paper looks at two different types of methodologies in an attempt to improve CubeSat reliability: generating software requirements and utilizing system and software architecture modeling. Both the Consortium Requirements Engineering (CoRE) method for software requirements and the Monterey Phoenix modeling language for architecture modeling were tested for usability in the context of PolySat, Cal Poly's CubeSat research program. In the end, neither CoRE nor Monterey Phoenix provided the desired results for improving PolySat's current development procedures. While a modified version of CoRE discussed in this paper does allow for basic software requirements to be generated, the resulting specification does not provide any more granularity than PolySat's current institutional knowledge. Furthermore, while Monterey Phoenix is a good tool to introduce students to model-based systems engineering (MBSE) concepts, the resulting graphs generated for a PolySat specific project were high-level and did not find any issues previously discovered through trial and error methodologies. While neither method works for PolySat, the aforementioned results do provide benefits for university programs looking to begin developing CubeSats.

Software architecture is high-level software design, dealing with the structure and organization of software systems. A software architecture is defined in terms of computational components and interactions among those components. Architecture description languages (ADLs) represent architecture-level software designs. Different ADLs often have different intents; e.g., Rapide supports architecture simulation and Acme is intended to be both an ADL and an ADL interchange format. Experimental applications of two ADLs were conducted to determine the effectiveness of ADLs for architecture-level analysis of simulation systems; one of them is reported. Acme was used to model the architecture of ModSAF and to analyze its run-time performance. The model was used to analyze execution time at the component and federate levels and to estimate the maximum number of internal and external simulation entities that could be supported by the ModSAF architecture. The experiment showed that ADLs could model important features of simulation system architectures.

Software applications are continuing to grow at a rapid pace and became more and more complex. Thus, the use of software architectures in the development process is the ideal solution to deal with this issue. In this context, many Architecture Description Languages (ADLs) have been introduced to define the software architecture and its elements. Most of these ADLs do not address the dynamic behavior of the software architecture. This dynamic behavior is most commonly known as architectural reconfiguration. In our work, we use the Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL) due to its capacity to represent the architectural reconfiguration. However, AADL suffers from the absence of a concrete model to define its formal semantics. This paper presents a formal approach based on Bigraphical Reactive Systems (BRS) to model the dynamic architectural reconfiguration of embedded real-time systems expressed in AADL.

In the past decade, software architecture research has mainly focused on the concept formulation and the development of various architecture description languages. This field has now matured enough and thus requires more emphasis on techniques for developing and analyzing software architecture specifications. SAM is a general software architecture model for developing and analyzing software architectures. In this paper, we show how to integrate high-level Petri nets and first-order temporal logic as the foundation of SAM to establish a unified framework for specifying and analyzing all aspects of a software architecture. We provide a set of heuristics, which are supported by well-defined existing methods and techniques developed by other researchers as well as our own, for software architecture development and analysis. We demonstrate the application of this framework and the heuristics with an example.

Software architecture is widely recognized as one of the most fundamental concepts in software engineering, because of the fact, that today’s software systems are assembled from components with different characteristics: for example heterogenous, legacy or distributed systems. At the software architecture level, designers combine subsystems into complete systems using different techniques, e.g. “Architecture Description Languages” (ADLs). There exists a number of ADLs, each of which is specialized for one or more architectural styles. They are designed by different research groups with different goals in mind corresponding to their mental model on how software architecture can be expressed in the most efficient and elegant way. As a result, ADLs are not compatible with each other, so that it is difficult to present a homogeneous view of the software architecture of a system assembled from different components. This paper presents an approach how architectural styles can be combined using a concept of ADL-interchange.KeywordsSoftware ArchitectureDescription LanguageArchitectural StyleService LayerAbstract State MachineThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Automated Formalisation for Verification of Diagrammatic Models

Software architecture is an important key that guarantees services and an effective analysis tool that ensures efficient verification properties of software systems. This is confirmed by using architecture description languages (ADL). The precise semantics of B method and its powerful data abstraction allow software architects to specify architectural elements behavior explicitly, to verify their semantics using powerful tools that are designed for the B method. In this paper, we define the behavioral aspects of software architecture using the B method. We use this formal method to define the behavioral aspects of COSA, which is a metamodel for software architecture. We also provide a B formal specification of the proposed aspects.

Software architecture research focuses on models of software architectures as specified in architecture description languages (ADLs). As research progresses in specific areas of software architectures, more and more architectural information is created. Ideally, this information can be stored in the model. An extensible modeling language is crucial to experimenting with and building tools for novel modeling constructs that arise from evolving research. Traditional ADLs typically support a small set of modeling constructs very well, but adapt to others poorly. XML provides an ideal platform upon which to develop an extensible modeling language for software architectures. Previous XML-based ADLs successfully leveraged XML's large base of off-the-shelf tool support, but did not take advantage of its extensibility. To give software architecture researchers more freedom to explore new possibilities and modeling techniques, while maximizing reuse of tools and modeling constructs, we have developed xADL 2.0, a highly extensible XML-based ADL. xADL 2.0 supports run-time and design time modeling, architecture configuration management and model-based system instantiation. Additionally, xADL 2.0 has a set of extensible infrastructure tools that support the creation, manipulation, and sharing of xADL 2.0 documents.

We present a novel architecture description language - OPNADL. The domain specific software architecture based on OPNADL is employed to guide the large-scale software development. OPNADL (object-oriented Petri nets architecture description language) is a graphical and mathematical modeling language, which can be used to describe static and dynamic semantics, and analyze the dynamic behavior of software system. The overall and individual characteristics of a system can be visually and intuitively depicted with the proposed OPNADL. Software architecture is conveniently constructed, refined and verified by OPNADL.

Research and experimentation in software architectures over the past decade (1992-2002) have yielded a plethora of software architecture description languages (ADLs). Continuing innovation indicates that it is reasonable to expect more new ADLs, or at least ADL features. This research process is impeded by the difficulty and cost associated with developing new notations. An architect in need of a unique set of modeling features must either develop a new architecture description language from scratch or undertake the daunting task of modifying an existing language. In either case, it is unavoidable that a significant effort will be expended in building or adapting tools to support the language. To remedy this situation, we have developed an infrastructure for the rapid development of new architecture description languages. Key aspects of the infrastructure are its XML-based modular extension mechanism, its base set of reusable and customizable architectural modeling constructs, and its equally important set of flexible support tools. The paper introduces the infrastructure and demonstrates its value in the context of several real-world applications.

In this article we contribute to the issue of the recent research work, in which software architecture is oriented more toward the OMG group. Thus, we try to map any ADL (Architecture Description Language) into MDA (Model Driven Architecture) platform. Our strategy is based on constructing a meta ontology that next can be used as a facade meta-model for semantic mapping of ADLs into MDA platforms. We show how this strategy can be used by mapping COSA architectural description concepts into CORBA. The goal of our work is to increase the high level of systems' concepts abstracting for wrapping and integrating heterogeneous software concepts into MDA platforms via a top-level ontology.

Software architectures may be described using text-based architecture description language(ADL). The key goals of an ADL are to communicate alternate designs between different stakeholders, to detect reusable structures, and to record design decisions. This paper provided a solution to the representation problem by creating a tool for three-dimensional representation of architectural viewpoints. The tool consisted of an architecture description language(VTADL) to first describe the software architectures and viewpoints on the architectures; and a VTADL-to-VRML translator to translate each viewpoint into a separate virtual reality world The goal of the paper was to devise algorithms for translating an ADL into effective VRML representations based on the desired viewpoint. The VRML representations were intended to enhance comprehension on the overall design and to improve communications between diverse stakeholders.

Welcome you to the Fifth Edition of the track Software Architecture: Theory, Technology, and Applications (SA-TTA 2017) as part of the 32th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC).

Architecture description languages (ADLs) play an important role in specifying the software architectures. While most of these ADLs are unable to deal with the change directly, especially for dynamic evolution of software systems. This paper proposes an XML-based ADL, named Breeze/ADL, which is supported by Breeze Graph Grammar (BGG) - a graph grammar we defined, to describe software architecture and capture the change in the architecture definition. Our approach is explained in two directions. First, we give the basic definitions of Breeze/ADL, and then show how to map the BGG to Breeze/ADL to specify the structural model, style constraints and dynamic evolution. The other direction is that we use a Client/Server application as a running example to demonstrate our approach throughout this paper. In this approach, the software architecture description has both a textual and a graph representations, and the unplanned change can be captured and defined.