Security has become an important concern with the development of large scale distributed and heterogeneous multi-agent systems (MAS).One of the main problems in addressing security during the development of MAS is that security is often an afterthought.The cost involved to patch existing systems against vulnerabilities and attacks after deployment is high.If developers and designers can spend some quality time investigating security aspects before beginning to code then this cost can be reduced significantly.Also, using formal methods to specify the complex behavior of large scale software systems has resulted in reliable software systems.This research effort was focused on using formal methods early in the development lifecycle to specify security requirements for MAS.New solutions are emerging to fix security related issues, but how much thought gets in during the early phases of development in terms of security needs to be answered.In this paper, analysis of security requirements for MAS, existing solutions to secure MAS, and the use of formal methods to specify security requirements has been studied.Descartes -Agent, a formal specification language for specifying agent systems has been taken into study to model the security requirements of MAS early on in the development process. Functional specifications of MAS are modelled along with the non-functional security requirements using the Descartes -Agent specification language. A case study example is used to illustrate the specification of security requirements in MAS using the Descartes -Agent.

This Innovative Practice Category Work In Progress paper presents course design for an interdisciplinary course that can be offered to engineering and computer science students. Engineering disciplines use technology and engineers deal with computing machines to perform day to day activities. The engineers who use such technologies have to be informed users of technology and also are expected to aid in the advancement of technology. Engineers must have sufficient computer skills. An engineering curriculum must help students acquire these skill sets. Employers note that except for a few, most engineering graduates struggle with learning new technologies and putting them to practice. Computer science students who are technically strong are not getting enough exposure to interdisciplinary projects within their curriculum. Computer science students often note not having enough experience working with diverse problem sets inside their curriculum, which is a key for being successful in any industry after graduation. This paper is about introducing an interdisciplinary course across engineering and computer science disciplines that aims at fixing the above two deficiencies. The course is designed for freshman and will enroll students from computer science and engineering disciplines. The curriculum design will aim at teaching computing concepts with interdisciplinary engineering problem sets. This approach is a unique effort as the objectives of the course are completely different from the typical courses offered within the computer science and engineering disciplines. This course will focus on teaching basic computing skills, basic programming, implementing solutions to interdisciplinary problems sets, choice and use of software tools that aid problem solving, and effectively working across interdisciplinary teams. Designing instructional materials and assessment tools to develop this unique mix of skill sets will be addressed in this paper. This effort is just underway; the interdisciplinary course developed will aim at getting used across institutions to serve a similar purpose.

Dorothy is an integrated 3D/robotics educational tool created by augmenting the Alice programming environment for teaching core computing skills to students without prior programming experience. The tool provides a drag and drop interface to create graphical routines in virtual worlds; these routines are automatically translated into code to provide a real-time or offline enactment on mobile robots in the real world. This paper summarizes the key capabilities of Dorothy, and describes the contributions made to: (a) enhance the bidirectional communication between the virtual interface and robots; and (b) support multirobot collaboration. Specifically, we describe the ability to automatically revise the virtual world based on sensor data obtained from robots, creating or deleting objects in the virtual world based on their observed presence or absence in the real world. Furthermore, we describe the use of visually observed behavior of teammates for collaboration between robots when they cannot communicate with each other. Dorothy thus helps illustrate sophisticated algorithms for fundamental challenges in robotics and AI to teach advanced computing concepts, and to emphasize the importance of computing in real world applications, to beginning programmers.

New tools and techniques are emerging to handle the complexities that might arise with the development of software systems. Reactive agent models are one such area that is emerging as a powerful paradigm in software engineering. This paper describes issues, trends, and approaches that exhibit the innovative characteristic of the reactive agent model and the design aspects of such a system. Engineering flexible agent systems has always been a challenging task. Development of such systems highlights the importance of formal specification methods. Descartes, an executable specification language, was taken into study with these complicated systems because of the importance of providing a satisfactory approach to software development. This approach enhances software development by providing a means of reduction of the gap between analysis and design. The paper concludes with proposed extensions to specification languages to support agent-based software engineering.

No abstract available.

Direct support of real-time and control system features in a real-time specification language has a key role in the modeling of such systems. Correct modeling constructs in a specification language simplifies specification construction and enhances specification comprehension. This paper presents enhancements to an executable real-time specification language with constructs to model control systems. Two key control system modeling constructs are added to the language. The details of the constructs are discussed and the concepts are applied to model a gas burner system in the RealSpec language.

No abstract available.

Several real-time executable software specification languages and techniques exist. However, there are aspects among these languages that are preventing these languages from being widely accepted and adopted. The paper identifies three key areas contributing to this non-acceptability. The paper also suggests future directions and advancements needed in the identified areas.

The agent-oriented approach has emerged as a new and powerful paradigm in modern software engineering. This paper analyzes the reactive agent model, exhibiting innovative characteristics of autonomy, goal-direction, reactive capability, concurrency, and interactivity. Contrary to object depictions of attribute and method signatures, reactive agents are described in terms of their behavior. Due to the complex nature inherent to reactive agent behavior, the need for formal specification and design integrity becomes essential. Descartes is an executable specification language, which has historically been applied to provide such design assurance. This paper describes a formal approach to deriving a reactive agent software design represented in the Agent Unified Modeling Language (AUML). The objective is accomplished through extension of the Descartes specification language and application of a transformation into design representation. The addition serves as a method of providing a guarantee of design reliability by way of gap reduction between requirements analysis and design

Real-time and embedded software systems are becoming increasingly prevalent in everyday life. Well-defined and robust methods and methodologies are needed to support development and maintenance of such large and complex systems. Specification of a system is a critical phase of the development life cycle and has a major impact on the quality of a system. Formal specification languages and techniques are needed to be able to comprehensively and correctly define and prototype large and complex systems. The quality of a specification directly depends upon the capability of the language or technique used to express the specification. There is a need to determine language appropriateness for real-time systems. This paper establishes a real-time specification technique evaluation framework based on the features of real-time systems. The features are presented and the paper summarizes the result in terms of major features and their sub-features in a tabular form. This detailed list of features should serve not only to compare the techniques using a common framework, but also to determine the extent of real-time support that these techniques provide for specification. Application of the framework is demonstrated by testing a set of specification techniques for the specification of a real-time embedded cell phone software system.

Several evaluation criteria exist in the literature for both specification and specification techniques. These evaluation criteria identify a list of desired properties in specifications and specification techniques for judging their goodness. This paper presents a detailed analysis of several specification and specification technique evaluation criteria. Detailed analysis of these criteria identified that there is a lack of consistency in the property definition among criteria. The implication of this lack of differentiation between the two concepts is that the criteria for both specification and specification techniques are intermingled. Since the concept of specification is different from specification technique, the criteria used for one might not be applicable for the other. For example, "completeness" and "consistency" are specification criteria. A specification can be complete and consistent regardless of the medium used to represent the specification, the process used in its construction, the degree/extent of tools and automation used, or whether it is formal or informal. However, there is meaning to denote that a technique can be used to produce "consistent" or "complete" specifications. Hence, for proper applicability of these criteria, this paper separates specification criteria from that of the specification technique criteria. This paper also presents a unified criteria terminology and uses a table to list each criterion property from various researchers mapped to the unified terminology. The paper also identifies and presents a mapping from technique criteria to the specification criteria that shows which technique criteria satisfies specification criteria. The applicability of the mapping is then demonstrated by applying the mapping to a specification language and its support environment.

Testing provides a way of detecting specification errors. However, testing only shows the presence of errors, but never shows the absence of errors. Proofs complement the limitations of testing. Unfortunately, proofs have been considered impractical for showing the correctness. Nevertheless, proofs are highly recommended for critical parts that may risk human life, company finance, or system success. A formal specification language is introduced to facilitate proofs of correctness. With theorem proving, a specification is validated against the user claims which may only be concerned about the critical parts of the specification.

The Summary-based Object-Oriented Reuse Library System (SOORLS) was developed to support both librarians who manage databases of object-oriented reusable components, and software developers who intend to use these components to develop software on the Web. This paper presents the library management functions implemented by SOORLS, with focus on a software reuse approach based on the summary contents of the library. The cluster-based classification scheme proposed in this paper alleviates the labor-intensity domain analysis problem often attributed to traditional facet-based classification schemes. We then concentrate on the facilities offered by SOORLS' tools, as well as its Web-based architecture, which allows distributed access to reusable components on servers from a variety of platforms.

This paper introduces a new computational model for SequenceL. The model is extended through the addition of a notion of the VRAM model. The computational model introduced together with the SequenceL language provides for a good expression of distributed behaviour.

Software reuse should not be limited to only code. Software reuse should be engineered as early as possible in the software development life cycle. The authors address specification reuse by defining templates of specifications and then instantiating them to yield specific specifications. From the perspective of software reuse in the large, reusable templates should be created as scalably as possible. Existing technologies for building reusable templates suffer the problems of scalability. Schemes (generic and parameterized modules) in TUG (Tree Unified with Grammar) facilitate specifiers to build scalable templates hierarchically without replication. Reuse is performed vertically and horizontally. Vertical reuse makes a lower level scheme inherit all features from its upper level scheme. Horizontal reuse makes a scheme reusable within the same level of abstraction. Parametric building and incremental building are two techniques for realizing the vertical and horizontal reuse. They present a scheme for a generalized inventory control system and demonstrate how a generalized inventory control scheme can be reused to model a library system. Finally, the capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses are discussed.

The front end of the software life cycle is an important phase in the development of quality software systems. Due to the interactive nature of the requirements specification phase, automated tools assist in capturing user concepts and conveying these concepts to the developers. This paper presents a syntax-directed editor developed for the Descartes software specification language. The editor helps in constructing the specifications by detecting and preventing syntactic and static semantic errors. The editor uses the visual notation of Nassi–Shneiderman charts for the external representation of Descartes specifications. The specifications are edited in their visual form directly within the editor. Use of a syntax-directed editor for the construction of Descartes specifications is expected to reduce specification errors, enhance constructibility, and in turn increase productivity. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Rapid prototyping via software transformations provides a potentially economical way to construct a prototype both quickly and cheaply. User requirements and specifications can be incrementally elicited and formalized through rapid prototyping via software transformations. A formal specification language called TUG (Tree Unified with Grammar) is used not only as a language for specification but also as a language for rapid prototyping via software transformations. The abstract execution capability of the language allows specifiers to formalize the user requirements incrementally. A framework for rapid prototyping via software transformations is proposed to explain how a prototype for evolution is constructed and managed. A mechanism using change request scripts (CRSs) is used to keep track of the specification changes and make timely updates to the prototype. A telegram analysis problem, as a case study, is given to illustrate how an incomplete and inexact specification is refined successively into a more complete and precise one using the approach.

Current domain modeling techniques encounter a similar barrier that the traditional requirements modeling methods have suffered: lack of enough flexibility to support potential reuse. Domain analysis is proposed to facilitate reuse across different applications in the same domain. But domain analysis is a complex and time-consuming task, furthermore, there are similarities among different application domains. The results of domain modeling should also be reused for different but analogous domains to receive high-payoff. This paper expands the current domain modeling methods by incorporating some concepts reported in the analogy research discipline. The expanded approach include four main models: object model, functional model, relational model, and dynamic model. Relational modeling and systems goals in dynamic modeling are adopted from analogical studies and experiments and are integrated into the approach. The expanded view will not only help better understand the domain, but also facilitate reasoning and mapping of existing knowledge or software to different yet analogous application domains.

Software reuse has been a research area for improving software development productivity and quality. A language incorporating a facility for reuse amplifies the software developer's capabilities. The TUG (Tree Unified with Grammar) specification language caters several features such as polymorphism, overloading, schemes (generic and parameterized modules), root type, renaming, and extending to foster specification reuse. This paper briefly introduces the syntax and semantics of the TUG specification language. Some important but not comprehensive features of the language for reuse are then illustrated with the aid of examples. Mechanisms for reuse are examined The augmented typed lambda calculus is used to explain the language. Finally, the capabilities, benefits, limitations and future research are discussed.>

A major obstacle blocking the widespread deployment of software engineering environments is the absence of generally accepted quantitative methods to measure the benefits or value, of their use. Such an evaluation technique can be used to identify settings where environments may have the greatest benefit, suggest directions for research efforts, and allow potential users to make informed choices among various candidates. The evaluation method presented here is inexpensive and easy to apply. The method is independent of any specific software engineering environment, process model, or methodology. The evaluation questionnaire enforces a distinction between perceptions of the development setting and perceptions of the utility of the software engineering environment. The method is composed of evaluation criteria and evaluation scales from the body of work in software measurement. Automation of the evaluation method is straight forward.>

Software reuse has drawn much attention in computing research. Domain analysis is considered a prerequisite to effective reuse of existing software. Several approaches and methodologies have been proposed for domain analysis or domain modeling, but not many case studies have been reported in the literature. The first objective of this paper is to present the concept and practical experiences of a domain analysis approach in discrete-event simulation in manufacturing — generic /specific modeling. A second objective of this paper is to present a meta-model based on the generic/ specific approach from the software engineering perspective. The steps and knowledge required to build the model are described. Domain analysis lessons learned from the generic/specific approach in discrete-event simulation are discussed. Classification of this domain modeling approach was conducted through the Wartik and Prieto-Diaz criteria. The classification will facilitate the comparison with other domain analysis approaches. Similar modeling concepts or techniques may be beneficial to other researchers in their own application domains.

Includes presentations on industry training programs for software engineers and project managers that range from new hires through continuing education programs. Software engineering education in an academic setting is addressed as a precursor to a discussion of three approaches in industry to software engineering training. The introduction of a cross-functional technical training team and a project management training team at the Bull Worldwide Information Systems organization in Phoenix, Arizona is addressed. An overview of software engineering training within a Strategic Business Unit of Motorola, Inc. is presented. The training program includes corporate initiatives, general software engineering training, and applications specific training, utilizing a mix of Motorola training, local universities, vendor-supplied training, and internally developed workshops. The experience gained by Tata Consultancy Services training group is discussed regarding designing, organizing, and conducting software engineering training programs, initially on an experimental basis, and subsequently as a regular feature.>

A specification metalanguage is presented for the purpose of describing and analyzing specifications written in existing specification languages. Specification theory-based metalanguage (STM) was developed to describe specifications in terms of components defined within a theory of specification. STM constitutes the application of theoretical definitions and analyses to individual specifications. The process of describing specifications in STM produces needed manual analysis, while the completed description can be automatically processed by the language processor and description simulator. A summary of STM features is presented. Manual analysis results are pointed out in discussing an example of STM description.>

Descartes is an executable specification language that supports the rapid prototyping of partial through complete software specifications. A technique developed to represent Descartes executable specifications visually by adapting the charts of I. Nassi and B. Shneiderman (1973), is described. Symbols are identified for the data structuring methods and the rationale for selecting these symbols is discussed. The benefits gained in moving a graphical technique up to the front end of the software life cycle are discussed. Sample specifications are included to illustrate the effectiveness of the technique.>

The fundamental rationale for the increase in the use of CASE tools by both large and medium enterprises is the belief that CASE tools facilitate and enhance improved productivity and system quality. The development of CASE environments has evolved over several years. Users are demanding high-level, domain-specific interfaces to applications, easy-to-use systems, systems that offer increases in productivity/cost ratios, flexibility in multiparadigm tools usage, and systems which are modular, portable, and robust. To meet such far ranging needs, software engineering research has become a large-scale endeavor. Thus, CASE development has become the concerted effort of academia, government, and industry. In this paper, the academic research effort on CASE development is discussed. Specifically, the perspective of the paper is on the effect that Undergraduate Software Engineering (USE) education has had and can have on the ability to develop timely and quality software tools. The focus of the paper is dichotomized as follows: (1) the impact of USE education on current techniques for developing CASE tools and a measurement of current CASE technology transfer and (2) the qualitative component(s) of USE education which will help in advancing tools development in the next decade.

The objective of this work is the application of propositional calculus to validate the consistency of the interrelationship between software objects. A software object is defined as an entity or element which has a name and a role, achieves an objective, and can be identified at the formative stages of eliciting requirements specifications. A relation is also an entity that binds two software objects and conveys an association between the object-pair. Such a binding produces logical propositions or arguments for reasoning about the interrelationships of the objects. The authors narrow the view of requirements specifications to a collection of several, perhaps hundreds, of propositions or arguments.>

The development of correct specifications is a critical task in the software development process. An alternative approach for the development of specifications is described. The approach relies on a specification language for abstract data types and synthesis system. The system is capable of translating in abstract data type specification into an executable program. This process defines an alternative methodology that provides the necessary tools for the early testing of the specifications and for the development of prototypes and implementation models.

This paper describes an approach to software specification development with interpretation as applied to an information storage and retrieval system. Machine execution of software specifications is possible with both partial and complete specifications. A partial specification is interpreted using abstract execution. The Descartes specification language is utilized to describe a functional aspect of an existing information storage and retrieval system, namely, the MADAM (Multics Approach to Data Access and Management) system at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. Brief descriptions of both the Descartes language and the MADAM system precede the example specification. The paper concludes with a discussion of the expected results that this methodology could have on the pragmatic development and evolution of information systems.

This paper describes an approach to software specification development with interpretation as applied to an information storage and retrieval system. Machine execution of software specifications is possible with both partial and complete specifications. A partial specification is interpreted using abstract execution. The Descartes specification language is utilized to describe a functional aspect of an existing information storage and retrieval system, namely, the MADAM (Multics Approach to Data Access and Management) system at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. Brief descriptions of both the Descartes language and the MADAM system precede the example specification. The paper concludes with a discussion of the expected results that this methodology could have on the pragmatic development and evolution of information systems.