The analysis of software architecture plays an important role in understanding the system structures and facilitate proper implementation of user requirements. Despite its importance in the software engineering practice, the lack of formal description and verification support in this domain hinders the development of quality architectural models. To tackle this problem, in this work, we develop an approach for modeling and verifying software architectures specified using Monterey Phoenix (MP) architecture description language. MP is capable of modeling system and environment behaviors based on event traces, as well as supporting different architecture composition operations and views. First, we formalize the syntax and operational semantics for MP; therefore, formal verification of MP models is feasible. Second, we extend MP to support shared variables and stochastic characteristics, which not only increases the expressiveness of MP, but also widens the properties MP can check, such as quantitative requirements. Third, a dedicated model checker for MP has been implemented, so that automatic verification of MP models is supported. Finally, several experiments are conducted to evaluate the applicability and efficiency of our approach.

Modeling and analyzing software architectures are useful for helping to understand the system structures and facilitate proper implementation of user requirements. 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 work, we develop an approach for modeling and verifying software architectures specified using Monterey Phoenix (MP) architecture description language. Firstly, we formalize the syntax and operational semantics for MP. This language is capable of modeling system and environment behaviors based on event traces, as well as supporting different architecture composition operations and views. Secondly, a dedicated model checker for MP is developed based on PAT verification framework. Finally, several case studies are presented to evaluate the usability and effectiveness of our approach.

This paper presents some concepts, principles, and techniques for automated testing of system-of-systems based on attributed event grammar (AEG) modeling of the system's operational environment. AEG provides a uniform approach for automatically generating, executing, and analyzing tests. Quantitative and qualitative software risk assessment can be performed based on statistics gathered during automatic test execution within the specified environment model.

Web services (WS) technology is becoming pervasive in the development of distributed systems and is an appealing vehicle for service presentation and horizontal integration. On the other hand, model integrated computing (MIC) offers a means of system integration in the vertical direction by using domain-specific modeling, and then synthesizing the software system from the high-level model using a model-specific generator. This paper presents a meta-modeling approach to WS to explore the application of MIC in WS development and its contribution.

The research vision of the Unified Component Meta Model Framework (Uniframe) is to develop infrastructure for components that enables a plug and play component environment where the security contracts are a part of the component description and the security aware middleware is generated by the component integration toolkits. That is, the component providers will define security contracts in addition to the functional contracts. These security contracts will be used to analyze the ability of a service to meet the security constraints when used in a composition of components. A difficulty in progressing the security related aspects of this infrastructure is the lack of a unified access control model that can be leveraged to identify protected resources and access control points at the model level. Existing component technologies utilize various mechanisms for specifying security constraints. This paper will explore issues related to expressing access control requirements of components and the resources they manage. It proposes a platform independent model (PIM) for the access control that can be leveraged to parameterize domain models. It also outlines the analysis necessary to progress a standard transformation from this PIM to three existing platform specific models (PSMs).

The UniFrame research project is proposing a Unified Component Meta Model Framework (UniFrame) that includes quality of service (QoS) contracts. Today it is the role of the software architect, based on experience, to design platform specific solutions that will meet QoS requirements. As we refine algorithms for model transformations, we must identify these QoS-aware design patterns and utilize them during model transformations. Our research includes supporting and participating in the exploration of generative techniques as they relate to QoS requirements (both static and dynamic) and the standardization of QoS-aware transformations. This paper explores how QoS requirements can impact decisions related to model transformation (using UML for Platform Independent Modeling and ISO IDL for the Platform Specific Model). It explores a series of QoS related design issues that must be considered as platform independent models are refined for specific component platforms.

This paper presents an application framework in which declarative specifications of debugging actions are translated into execution monitors that can automatically detect bugs. The approach is non-intrusive with respect to program source code and provides a high level of abstraction for debugging activities.

Two-Level Grammar (TLG) is proposed as a formal specification language for generative assembly of components. Both generative domain models and generative rules may be expressed in TLG and these specifications may be automatically translated into an implementation which realizes an integration of components according to the principles of the Unified Meta-component Model (UMM) and Unified Approach (UA) to component integration. Furthermore, this implementation realizes Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees by means of static QoS verification at the time of system assembly, and dynamic QoS validation on a set of test cases.

Abstract Component‐based software development offers a promising solution for taming the complexity found in today's distributed applications. Today's and future distributed software systems will certainly require combining heterogeneous software components that are geographically dispersed. For the successful deployment of such a software system, it is necessary that its realization, based on assembling heterogeneous components, not only meets the functional requirements, but also satisfies the non‐functional criteria such as the desired quality of service (QoS). In this paper, a framework based on the notions of a meta‐component model, a generative domain model and QoS parameters is described. A formal specification based on two‐level grammar is used to represent these notions in a tightly integrated way so that QoS becomes a part of the generative domain model. A simple case study is described in the context of this framework. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

PARFORMAN (PARallel FORMal ANnotation language) is a high-level specification language for expressing intended behavior or known types of error conditions when debugging or testing parallel programs. Models of intended or faulty target program behavior can be succinctly specified in PARFORMAN. These models are then compared with the actual behavior in terms of execution traces of events, in order to localize possible bugs. PARFORMAN can also be used as a general language for expressing computations over target program execution histories. PARFORM AN is based on a precise model of target program behavior. This model, called H-space (History-space), is formally defined through a set of general axioms about three basic relations, which may or may not hold between two arbitrary events: they may be sequentially ordered (SEQ), they may be parallel (PAR), or one of them might be included in another composite event (IN). The general notion of composite event is exploited systematically, which makes possible more powerful and succinct specifications. The notion of event grammar is introduced to describe allowed event patterns over a certain application domain or language. Auxiliary composite events such as Snapshots are introduced to be able to define the notion “occurred at the same time” at suitable levels of abstraction. Finally, patterns and aggregate operations on events are introduced to make possible short and readable specifications. In addition to debugging and testing, PARFORMAN can also be used to specify profiles and performance measurements.