Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Audit / model-driven development / UML'

In recent years, a number of laws and regulations (such as the Basel II accord or SOX) demand that organizations record certain activities or decisions to fulfill legally enforced reporting duties. Most of these regulations have a direct impact on the information systems that support an organization's business processes. Therefore, the definition of audit requirements at the modeling-level is an important prerequisite for the thorough implementation and enforcement of corresponding policies in a software system. In this paper, we present a UML extension for the specification of audit properties. The extension is generic and can be applied to a wide variety of UML elements. In a model-driven development (MDD) approach, our extension can be used to generate corresponding audit rules via model transformations. (author's abstract)

This dissertation presents the principles and examples for building AMI for UML-based modeling environments. Modelers may use proposed AMI interface to extend UML modeling tools by modeling plug-ins using modeling tools itself. The work discusses four cases of AMI realization implemented in MagicDraw UML. Moreover, the proposed AMI implementation might be realized in other modeling tools that provide API and access to the model elements via standard UML metamodel interfaces. The ideas and results of this dissertation can be directly applied in numerous UML modeling tools available in the market. Although the focus in this dissertation is on UML modeling tools, many ideas are also applicable in other software systems that are developed using model driven approach.
Šiame darbe yra pristatoma modeliavimu grindžiama praplėtimo sąsaja, kurią siūloma vadinti aplikacijos modeliavimo sąsaja (angl. Application Modeling Interface, AMI). Modeliuotojai, naudodami siūlomą aplikacijos modeliavimo sąsają, gali kurti UML įrankių įskiepius juos modeliuodami pačių UML įrankių pagalba. Darbe taip pat nagrinėjamas aplikacijos modeliavimo sąsajos apibrėžimo ir realizavimo UML įrankiuose aspektai.

Traits are primitive units of code reuse that serve as building blocks of classes. In this research, we enhance reuse by extending the capabilities of traits; in particular, we add modeling abstractions to them. Traits have a variety of benefits, including facilitating reuse and separation of concerns. They have appeared in several programming languages, particularly derivatives of Smalltalk. However, there is still no support for traits that contain modeling abstractions, and no straightforward support for them in general-purpose programming languages. The latter is due to structural concerns that exist for them at runtime, especially traits that contain modeling abstractions. Model-driven technologies are making inroads into the development community, albeit slowly. Modeling abstractions such as state machines and associations provide new opportunities for reuse, and can be combined with inheritance for even greater reusability. However, issues with inheritance apply also when these new abstractions are inheritable units. This suggests that traits and models ought to be able to be synergistically combined. We perform a comprehensive analysis of using modeling elements in traits. We implement such traits in Umple, which is a model-oriented programming language that permits embedding of programming concepts into models. The contributions of the thesis are: a) Adding new elements including state machines and associations into traits, hence bringing more reusability, modularity, and applications to traits; b) Developing an algorithm that allows reusing, extending, and composing state machines through traits; c) Extending traits with required interfaces so dependencies at the semantic level become part of their usage, rather than simple syntactic capture; d) Adding template parameters with associations in traits, offering new applications for traits in which it is possible to define design patterns and to have a library of most-used functionality; e) The implementation of all the above concepts, including generating code in multiple general-purpose programming languages through automatic model transformation.

In this thesis, we present an abstract meta-model for model driven development of web applications targeting multiple platforms. We review the existing technologies and the related work in order to obtain a list of requirements for such an abstract model. The abstract model is built by extending an existing UML-based model for web applications. We demonstrate that it is possible to map this abstract model to more than one specific development platform by providing transformations for these mappings. We also lay out the general outline of a model-driven process based on the proposed abstract model. The abstract model and the model-driven process are supported by a set of tools, case studies and a visual modeling notation. Model-driven techniques have been used in the area of web development to a great extent. Most of the existing approaches are tuned toward specific platforms or develop only certain parts of web applications. These approaches generally use meta-models adapted to their targeted platforms. In order to flexibly target multiple platforms, the level of abstraction of the meta-model must be raised. Such a meta-model must allow the description of relevant features of web applications independently from the specificities of specific platforms. Additionally, transformations mapping from abstract to specific web descriptions must be expressible in a flexible way. In this thesis, we propose such an abstract meta-model. Mappings that transform abstract models to specific platforms are also presented. Different benefits can be foreseen from this approach. By relieving developers from low-level platform-specific related design, the approach has the potential to shift the development task to issues related to business needs. Another benefit is shortened development time. This could help web developers to overcome the problem of schedule delays, which is recognized as one of the top five most-cited problems with large-scale web systems. The approach is specifically suitable for information-intensive web-based systems. These applications typically involve large data stores accessed through a web interface. A distinctive aspect of this approach is its use of a specification of the data mapping as part of its high-level input. More importantly, the common features required to process data and communicate data objects between different layers and components are targeted.

By analyzing the last years of software development evolution, it is possible to observe that the involved technologies are increasingly focused on the definition of models for the specification of the intended software products. This model-centric development schema is the main ingredient for the Model-Driven Development (MDD) paradigm. In general terms, the MDD approaches propose the automatic generation of software products by means of the transformation of the defined models into the final program code. This transformation process is also known as model compilation process. Thus, MDD is oriented to reduce (or even eliminate) the hand-made programming, which is an error-prone and time-consuming task. Hence, models become the main actors of the MDD processes: the models are the new programming code. In this context, the interoperability can be considered a natural trend for the future of model-driven technologies, where different modeling approaches, tools, and standards can be integrated and coordinated to reduce the implementation and learning time of MDD solutions as well as to improve the quality of the final software products. However, there is a lack of approaches that provide a suitable solution to support the interoperability in MDD processes. Moreover, the proposals that define an interoperability framework for MDD processes are still in a theoretical space and are not aligned with current standards, interoperability approaches, and technologies. Thus, the main objective of this doctoral thesis is to develop an approach to achieve the interoperability in MDD processes. This interoperability approach is based on current metamodeling standards, modeling language customization mechanisms, and model-to-model transformation technologies. To achieve this objective, novel approaches have been defined to improve the integration of modeling languages, to obtain a suitable interchange of modeling information, and to perform automatic interoperability verification.
Giachetti Herrera, GA. (2011). Supporting Automatic Interoperability in Model-Driven Development Processes [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/11108
Palancia

O surgimento e o uso crescente de novas tecnologias têm levado à produção e armazenamento de grandes volumes de dados biomédicos. Tais dados são provenientes de diferentes técnicas, armazenados em formatos de representação diversos e utilizados por diferentes ferramentas. Esta heterogeneidade representa um empecilho ao maior uso desses dados em abordagens integrativas de pesquisa como, por exemplo, a biologia sistêmica. Neste cenário, artefatos de modelagem conceitual, tais como ontologias, têm sido utilizados para organizar e integrar dados heterogêneos de uma forma coerente. A OBO Foundry representa, atualmente, o maior esforço no desenvolvimento de ontologias biomédicas de forma colaborativa. Dentre as ontologias desenvolvidas pela OBO Foundry, destaca-se Ontologia de Relacionamentos (RO-OBO). A RO-OBO provê definições formais para um conjunto de relacionamentos de propósito geral utilizados nas ontologias biomédicas e busca promover a criação de ontologias mais corretas e integráveis. Um perfil UML foi proposto para representar formalmente o conjunto de conceitos e relacionamentos existentes na RO-OBO. Este perfil permite desenvolver modelos UML utilizando os conceitos presentes nesta ontologia, bem como torna possível o desenvolvimento de suporte à validação sintática dos modelos criados em relação a um conjunto de restrições formalmente definidas. Adicionalmente, percebe-se na literatura que o suporte à integração de modelos UML e ontologias OBO, em particular as ontologias representadas na linguagem OBO File Format, é limitado. Neste sentido, este trabalho teve como objetivo geral investigar o suporte ao desenvolvimento de ontologias biomédicas na linguagem UML. De forma específica, investigou-se o desenvolvimento de um editor gráfico, chamado OBO-RO Editor, para o suporte à construção de ontologias utilizando o perfil UML proposto, bem como a integração de ontologias desenvolvidas utilizando UML e ontologias desenvolvidas na linguagem OBO File Format. De forma a atingir nossos objetivos, uma arquitetura de referência foi definida e um processo de desenvolvimento orientado a modelos foi utilizado. A arquitetura definida é composta por uma série de artefatos inter-relacionados os quais são transformados (semi) automaticamente em código de aplicação, possibilitando a obtenção de ciclos de desenvolvimento mais rápidos e confiáveis. O OBO-RO Editor disponibiliza um conjunto de elementos gráficos de modelagem definidos a partir do perfil UML proposto, bem como provê mecanismos para a validação sintática (semi) automática de uma ontologia desenvolvida segundo as restrições definidas neste perfil. Adicionalmente, o OBO-RO Editor também provê suporte à integração de modelos UML a outras ontologias da OBO Foundry, permitindo o reuso e o desenvolvimento menos propenso a erros de ontologias no domínio biomédico.
The development and increasing use of new technologies has resulted in the production and storage of a huge amount of biomedical data. These data are produced using different techniques, stored in different formats and consumed by different (software) tools. This heterogeneity hinders effective data usage in integrative research approaches, including systems biology. In this scenario, conceptual modeling artifacts, such as ontologies, have been used to organize and integrate heterogeneous data in a coherent manner. Nowadays, the OBO Foundry represents the most important effort for the collaborative development of ontologies in the biomedical domain. The OBO Relation Ontology (OBO-RO) can be considered one of the most relevant ontologies in the domain. This ontology provides formal definitions for a number of general purpose relationships used in biomedical ontologies, thus facilitating the integration of existing ontologies and the development of new ontologies in the domain. An UML profile has been proposed to formally define the different types of concepts and relationships provided by the OBO-RO. This profile enables the creation of UML models using such concepts and allows the development of support for the automatic validation of these models based on formal constraints. Additionally, the support for the integration between UML models and OBO ontologies, particularly ontologies represented using the OBO File Format, is limited. In this sense, this project aimed at investigating the support for the development of biomedical ontologies using UML. In particular, we investigated the development of a graphical editor, named OBO-RO Editor, to support ontology development using the proposed UML profile. Additionally, we also investigated the integration of ontologies developed using UML and ontologies developed using the OBO File Format. In order to achieve our goals, we have defined a reference architecture and a model-driven development process. The reference architecture consists of a number of related artifacts that are transformed to application code (semi) automatically. Such characteristic allowed us to obtain faster and more reliable development cycles. The OBO-RO Editor provides a number of graphical elements defined in the proposed UML profile for the modeling of biomedical ontologies and support the (semi) automatic syntactic validation of such ontologies against the contraints defined in the profile. Additionally, OBO-RO Editor also provides support for the integration of developed UML models and other OBO ontologies, allowing the reuse and the accurate development of biomedical ontologies.

This thesis presents our method to integrate formal methods with model-driven engineering. Although a large amount of literature exists with the goal of facilitating the adoption of formal methods for educational and industrial practice, yet the adoption of formal methods in academia and industry is poor. The goal of this research is to improve the adoption of formal methods by automating the generation of formal methods code while maintaining scalability and bridging the gaps between formal analysis and actual implementation of the complete system. Our approach is based on generating formal representations of software abstractions expressed in a textual language, called Umple, which is derived from UML. Software abstractions of interest include class models and state machines. For state machines, we address concerns such as composite and concurrent states separately. The resulting systems are analyzable by back-end analysis engines such as Alloy and nuXmv or NuSMV for model checking. To ensure correctness of our approach, we have adopted simulation, empirical studies and rigorous test-driven development (TDD) methodologies. To guarantee correctness of state machine systems under analysis (SSUAs), we present methods to automatically generate specifications to analyze domain-independent properties such as non-determinism and reachability analysis. We apply these methods in various case studies; certify their conformance with sets of requirements and uncover certain flaws. Our contributions include a) The overall approach, involving having the developer write the system in Umple and generating both the formal system for analysis and the final code from the same model; b) a novel approach to encode SSUAs even in the presence of and-cross transitions; c) a fully automated approach to certify an SSUA to be free from nondeterminism even in the presence of unbounded domains and multiple and-cross transitions within the same enclosing orthogonal state; d) an empirical study of the impact of abstraction on some performance parameters; and e) a translator from Umple to Alloy and SMV.

Model-driven software development can help tackle complexity when developing large software systems. Model-driven development tools facilitate this. Such tools support multiple features and languages; some are multi-platform and support multi-language code generation from models. Umple is a full-featured open source language and modelling tool that we used as a basis for this thesis. Distribution concerns have become a critical part of modern software systems. In this thesis, we present how we extended Umple to support the development of model-driven synchronous or asynchronous distributed systems. Our contributions provide simple syntax, model analysis capabilities, and programming APIs, which allow users to change the configuration of systems both at development and deployment stages. We also demonstrate how a system can be modeled without distribution concerns and easily be transformed to a distributed system through our approach. The contributions of this thesis are: a) Creating a mechanism to distribute objects in Umple; b) Developing new semantics for modelling of distributed objects and providing supporting syntax for this in Umple; c) Investigating different patterns and technologies to implement code generation for distributed systems; d) Implementation, testing, and comparison of the distributed feature in Umple for executable Java code; and e) implementing a mechanism to dynamically modify the distribution plan at runtime.

Este trabalho tem por objetivo propor a utilização de soluções pré-definidas e comprovadas na abordagem MDA, auxiliando o desenvolvedor na resolução de problemas recorrentes ao desenvolvimento de software. A utilização destas soluções pré-definidas leva a um aumento de produtividade no contexto MDA e na geração de software baseado em boas práticas. Para que este objetivo seja cumprido, é empreendida uma análise sobre o MDA e sobre como operacionalizar as transformações entre modelos. Também é empreendida uma análise sobre o suporte fornecido pela UML e sobre reutilização em desenvolvimento orientado a modelos. Por fim este trabalho apresenta partes de uma aplicação protótipo, construída para ser uma prova de conceito de código gerado através da combinação de UML e soluções pré-definidas.
The goal of this work is to propose the use of pre-defined solutions on MDA approach, supporting the developer in solving recurrent problems of software development. The use of these pre-defined solutions leads to an increase of productivity in MDA context, and in the generation of software based on best practices. To reach this goal, an analysis of MDA is undertaken, as well as an analysis of how to enable the transformations between models. It is also undertaken an analysis about the use of UML and the reuse in model driven development. Finally this work presents portions of a prototype application, constructed to be a proof-of-concept of generated code, combining UML and the pre-defined solutions.

The Unified Modelling Language (UML) is intended to express complex ideas in an intuitive and easily understood way. It is important because it is widely used in software engineering and other disciplines. Although an official definition document exists, there is much debate over the precise meaning of UML models. ¶ In response, the academic community have put forward many different proposals for formalising UML, but it is not at all obvious how to decide between them. Indeed, given that UML practitioners are inclined to reject formalisms as non-intuitive, it is not even obvious that the definition should be “formal” at all. Rather than searching for yet another formalisation of UML, our main aim is to determine what would constitute a good definition of UML. ¶ The first chapter sets the UML definition problem in a broad context, relating it to work in logic and the philosophy of science. More specific conclusions about the nature of model driven development are reached in the beginning of Chapter 2. We then develop criteria for a definition of UML. Applying these criteria to the existing definition, we find that it is lacking in clarity. We then set out to test the precision of the definition. The test is to take an apparently inconsistent model, and determine whether it really is inconsistent according to the definition. ¶ Many people have proposed that UML models are graphs, but few have justified this choice using the official definition of UML. We begin Chapter 3 by arguing from the official definition that UML models are graphs and that instantiation is a graph homomorphism into an interpretation functor. The official definition of UML defines the semantics against its abstract syntax, which is in turn defined by a UML model. Chapters 3 and 4 prepare for our test by resolving this apparent circularity. The result is a semantics for the metamodel fragment of the language. ¶ In Chapter 5, we find, contrary to popular belief, that the official definition does provide sufficient semantics to classify the example model as inconsistent. Moreover, the sustained study of the semantics in Chapters 3 to 5 confirms our initial argument that the semantic domain is graphs. The Actions are the building blocks of UML’s prescriptive dynamics. We see that they can be naturally defined as graph transformation rules. Sequence diagrams are the main example of descriptive dynamics, but we find that their official semantics are broken. The “recorded history” approach should be replaced, we suggest, by a graph-oriented dynamic logic. ¶ Chapter 6 presents our early work on dynamic logic for UML sequence diagrams and further explores the proposed semantic repairs. In Chapter 7, guided by the criteria developed in Chapter 2, we critically survey the UML formalisation literature and conclude that an existing body of graph transformation based work known as “dynamic metamodelling” is very close to what is required. ¶ The final chapter draws together our conclusions. It proposes a category theoretic construction to merge models of the syntax and semantic domain, yielding a type graph for the graph transformation system which defines the dynamic semantics of the language. Finally, it outlines the further work required to realise a satisfactory definition of UML.

Graphical modeling is becoming an increasingly important part of software engineering as it provides means of increasing productivity by raising the level of abstraction in software devel-opment. One of the most widely adopted modeling notations is the Unified Modeling Language (UML) which has gained popularity due to its generality and broad applicability. Despite its advantages, this general purpose notation is burdened with the lack of purpose specific model-ing abstractions. The modeling abstractions in the language lack specialized properties and thus models might not precisely express the intentions of the modeler. In consequence, this leads to ineffectiveness of using models in UML. This thesis presents research aimed at improving modeling with UML. By exploiting the language customization mechanisms inherent in UML – stereotypes and profiles – the research presented in the thesis explores such aspects of improving modeling as creating language cus-tomizations or using a customized modeling language. The context, in which the modeling is considered, is delineated by the principles of model driven software development (MDD). The principles recognize the usage of models as the primary artefacts in software development thus providing a solid foundation for considering the use of models in software development. One of the contributions in the thesis is the identification and definition of factors determin-ing the successful realization of MDD in industry. These factors provide means of positioning language customization in the forefront of MDD. Another contribution in the thesis is eliciting and prioritizing a set of criteria for choosing between language customization mechanisms, which is a result of another industrial case study. A series of experiments in academic and industrial environments showed the magnitude of improvements to be expected after replacing a standard modeling language with a customized modeling notation. This series of experiments provided a basis for experimenting with stereo-types and software inspections which indicated a considerable increase in effectiveness of the reading techniques used in software inspections after replacing a standard notation with a cus-tomized one. The results from all empirical studies affected the development of quality assessment crite-ria for stereotypes. The criteria and the exploration of several existing profiles led to the devel-opment of guidelines for creating “good” stereotypes by analyzing existing UML profiles. An additional contribution in the thesis is exploring the usage of an alternative mechanism to stereo-types – model libraries – for adaptation of a modeling language. The way in which model librar-ies can be created in an efficient way is studied by creating a method for extracting knowledge from ontologies into UML domain models. The results of the research presented in the thesis show how to improve modeling with UML by customizing the language with stereotypes. The main contribution is the exploration and evaluation of issues related to creating language customizations and using the customized language.

Model Driven Development (MDD) is considered as a powerful emerging paradigm for developing system software and services. MDD relies heavily on the models to generate part of the code for implementation. It is virtually inevitable that changes at the model level result in breaking the compatibility with the existing code base. The study presented in this thesis is performed in an industrial setting. Our industrial partner is involved in MDD and has experienced compatibility problems described above. The aim of this thesis is to identify the changes that can be made to UML class diagram and investigate what kind of negative impact they pose on the compatibility with already existing Java implementations. Apart from identifying possible model changes and assessing their negative impact the thesis provides suggestions and guidelines of how to perform such modifications so that their negative impact will be minimized.
+46 455-395070

Atualmente, o projeto de sistemas tempo-real embarcados e distribuídos está crescendo em complexidade devido à sua natureza heterogênea e ao crescente número e diversidade de funções que um único sistema desempenha. Sistemas de automação industrial, sistemas eletrônicos em automóveis e veículos aéreos, equipamentos médicos, entre outros, são exemplos de tais sistemas. Tais sistemas são compostos por componentes distintos (blocos de hardware e software), os quais geralmente são projetados concorrentemente utilizando modelos, ferramentas e linguagens de especificação e implementação diferentes. Além disso, estes sistemas tem requisitos específicos e importantes, os quais não representam (por si só) as funcionalidades esperadas do sistema, mas podem afetar a forma como o sistema executa suas funcionalidades e são muito importantes para a realização do projeto com sucesso. Os chamados requisitos não-funcionais são difíceis de tratar durante todo o ciclo de projeto porque normalmente um único requisito não-funcional afeta vários componentes diferentes. A presente tese de doutorado propõe a integração automatizada das fases de projeto de sistemas tempo-real embarcados e distribuídos focando em aplicações na área da automação. A abordagem proposta usa técnicas de engenharia guiada por modelos (do inglês Model Driven Engineering ou MDE) e projeto orientado a aspectos (do inglês Aspect-Oriented Design ou AOD) juntamente com o uso de plataformas previamente desenvolvidas (ou desenvolvida por terceiros) para projetar os componentes de sistemas tempo-real embarcados e distribuídos. Adicionalmente, os conceitos de AOD permitem a separação no tratamento dos requisitos de naturezas diferentes (i.e. requisitos funcionais e não-funcionais), melhorando a modularização dos artefatos produzidos (e.g. modelos de especificação, código fonte, etc.). Além disso, esta tese propõe uma ferramenta de geração de código, que suporta a transição automática das fases iniciais de especificação para as fases seguintes de implementação. Esta ferramenta usa um conjunto de regras de mapeamento, que descrevem como elementos nos níveis mais altos de abstração são mapeados (ou transformados) em elementos dos níveis mais baixos de abstração. Em outras palavras, tais regras de mapeamento permitem a transformação automática da especificação inicial, as quais estão mais próximo do domínio da aplicação, em código fonte para os componentes de hardware e software, os quais podem ser compilados e sintetizados por outras ferramentas para se obter a realização/implementação do sistema tempo-real embarcado e distribuído.
Currently, the design of distributed embedded real-time systems is growing in complexity due to the increasing amount of distinct functionalities that a single system must perform, and also to concerns related to designing different kinds of components. Industrial automation systems, embedded electronics systems in automobiles or aerial vehicles, medical equipments and others are examples of such systems, which includes distinct components (e.g. hardware and software ones) that are usually designed concurrently using distinct models, tools, specification, and implementation languages. Moreover, these systems have domain specific and important requirements, which do not represent by themselves the expected functionalities, but can affect both the way that the system performs its functionalities as well as the overall design success. The so-called nonfunctional requirements are difficult to deal with during the whole design because usually a single non-functional requirement affects several distinct components. This thesis proposes an automated integration of distributed embedded real-time systems design phases focusing on automation systems. The proposed approach uses Model- Driven Engineering (MDE) techniques together with Aspect-Oriented Design (AOD) and previously developed (or third party) hardware and software platforms to design the components of distributed embedded real-time systems. Additionally, AOD concepts allow a separate handling of requirement with distinct natures (i.e. functional and non-functional requirements), improving the produced artifacts modularization (e.g. specification model, source code, etc.). In addition, this thesis proposes a code generation tool, which supports an automatic transition from the initial specification phases to the following implementation phases. This tool uses a set of mapping rules, describing how elements at higher abstraction levels are mapped (or transformed) into lower abstraction level elements. In other words, suchmapping rules allow an automatic transformation of the initial specification, which is closer to the application domain, in source code for software and hardware components that can be compiled or synthesized by other tools, obtaining the realization/ implementation of the distributed embedded real-time system.

When developing domain-specific modeling languages (DSMLs), software engineers have to make a number of important design decisions on the DSML itself, or on the software-development process that is applied to develop the DSML. Thus, making well-informed design decisions is a critical factor in developing DSMLs. To support this decision-making process, the model-driven development community has started to collect established design practices in terms of patterns, guidelines, story-telling, and procedural models. However, most of these documentation practices do not capture the details necessary to reuse the rationale behind these decisions in other DSML projects. In this paper, we report on a three-year research effort to compile and to empirically validate a catalog of structured decision descriptions (decision records) for UML-based DSMLs. This catalog is based on design decisions extracted from 90 DSML projects. These projects were identified - among others - via an extensive systematic literature review (SLR) for the years 2005 - 2012. Based on more than 8,000 candidate publications, we finally selected 84 publications for extracting design-decision data. The extracted data were evaluated quantitatively using a frequent-item-set analysis to obtain characteristic combinations of design decisions and qualitatively to document recurring documentation issues for UML-based DSMLs. We revised the collected decision records based on this evidence and made the decision-record catalog for developing UML-based DSMLs publicly available. Furthermore, our study offers insights into UML usage (e.g. diagram types) and into the adoption of UML extension techniques (e.g. metamodel extensions, profiles).

Executable and Translatable UML (xtUML) is the next abstraction level in software development, where both programming language and software architecture have been abstracted away. xtUML is a well defined UML profile, extended with precise action semantics. This allows the developers to define a problem area, domain, in such a detail that it can be executed. By defining the system with xtUML-models, domains, the system functionality can be verified early in the development process. Translation to code can be done in different ways and this work will be performed in an environment where code is automatically generated with a model compiler.

The goal with a domain is that it should be independent of other domains, reused without modification and exchanged with another domain solving the same problem. However a domain can make assumptions that certain functionality is available and these assumptions are requirements for another domain.

To fulfil these goals there must be a minimal coupling between the domains. This can be solved with the technique Implicit Bridging, where the bridge dependency between domains is defined in a bridge. The dependency is in the form of mappings/coupling between elements in both domains. By defining a bridge interface for a server domain a client domain can use the resources offered by the server domain.

The work performed shows how an implementation of Implicit Bridging could be realized by applying the technique in a microwave oven system. From the system design five different mapping types have been implemented. The applicability and the quality of the implementation have been verified by testing the generated system functionality and also verifying the goals, exchangeability and reuse of domains, of the system.

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The Unified Modeling Language (UML) has far outgrown its initial purpose as a standard visual notation for constructing intuitive, high-level blueprint models of object-oriented software. A series of extension, such as OCL, XMI, ASL, MOF, UML profiles, and different proposed formal semantics, to the language and to its application scope have fedoff each other in synergy. While these extensions constitute a sound starting point to make UML the pivotal element for the Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) and Semantic Web (SW) visions, many other building blocks are still missing, including: (1) Complete formal semantics for UML and OCL; (2) UML inference engine based on such semantics to support model checking and intelligent agent reasoning with UML semantic web ontologies; (3) UML model compilers to fully automate both structural and behavioral code generation from detailed UML/OCL models. In this thesis, we present the MODELOG framework based on a single proposal to address these three issues: it consists of an automatic mapping from fully refined UML/OCL models to the object-oriented logic programs in the Flora-2, an executable and Turing-complete language with a well-defined formal semantics. We developed the MODELOG mapping as model transformations. As source for these transformations, we reused the UML2 and OCL2 metamodels provided by OMG and as target we developed a Flora metamodel. As we experimented and compared two language to implement the transformation: the dedicated transformation language ATL based on OCL, and Flora itself viewed as a model transformation language. As validating case study for MODELOG, we developed the Triangram robotic assembly puzzle. It is an example of planning tasks often executed by agents and it requires a complex class hierarchy together with complex structural and behavioral constraints. The Flora PSM of this puzzle was entirely automatically generated from its UML/OCL model by applying the MODELOG transformations. The main originality of this thesis is twofold. First, it simultaneously tackles various gaps in UML for its new extended role: formal specification language, MDE, semantic web services and agent engineering, Second, it does so without putting forward any new language but only by reusing a theoretically consolidated and efficiently implemented one. In contrast, previous proposals tend be limited to one or two such applications while often proposing new languages. The thesis makes contributions to various fields: For MDE, it shows the feasibility of completely automated full structural and behavioral executable code generation from a UML/OCL PIM, on a non-trivial, complex case study involving automated reasoning; For agile development, it reconcile that the robustness of formal methods with the early testing of fast prototyping, since MODELOG not only generates executable code, but also model checking code from UML/OCL models. For UML and OCL, it provides a fully integrated denotational formal semantics in Transaction Frame Logic on which Flora is based; For logic programming, it provides compositional metamodels of all the languages integrated in the Flora platform that clarify their relations and make them available as source or target language for a variety of MDE tasks such as model checking and fast prototyping; it also provides a way to develop logic programs using the consolidated full-life cycle object-oriented software engineering processes; For agent engineering, it shows how to get combine the complementary strengths of the object-oriented and logic paradigms, the two mostly widely reused in agent-oriented methods; For the semantic web service development, its introduced a highly automated MDE approach allowing to model them visually with UML-based industrial strengths method and CASE tools, and automatically generate their specification in the W3C standard SWSL, which is a XML-enabled variant of Flora

L’omniprésence des systèmes logiciels et le rôle important qu’ils jouent dans la vie quotidienne rendent les utilisateurs de plus en plus exigeants. Entre autre, ils demandent plus de fiabilité et des systèmes qui peuvent s’adapter à leur contexte d’utilisation. Afin de satisfaire ces demandes, les cadres techniques et les méthodes de conception sous-jacents au développement des systèmes doivent être modulaires, flexibles et consistants. L’architecture orientée service (SOA) est un paradigme qui offre des mécanismes permettant une grande flexibilité des architectures des systèmes logiciels tout en réduisant leurs coûts de développement puisqu’elle se base sur des entités modulaires et réutilisables appelées services. Ces services peuvent être réutilisés dans le cadre d’une composition ou d’une chorégraphie de services pour la construction de nouveaux processus métiers transverses. SOA promet aussi d’augmenter la fiabilité des systèmes au travers de la notion de contrat de services. De son côté, le paradigme de l’Ingénierie des modèles (IDM) offre au travers de ses deux principes fondateurs, l’abstraction et l’automatisation, deux moyens puissants de gestion de la complexité des systèmes. Malgré les progrès des deux paradigmes, IDM et SOA, il y a encore des défis à résoudre. Notamment, on peut citer : (1) La vérification rigoureuse des spécifications des systèmes conformes aux principes de SOA. Ce point constitue un défi car pour modéliser ces systèmes, les concepteurs ont besoin de plus d'un point de vue représentant chacun une préoccupation spécifique du système et bien sûr ces points de vue doivent être sémantiquement cohérents. Ce problème est appelé la vérification de la consistance horizontale, une tâche manuellement difficile qui constitue une étape importante pour réduire les incohérences dans les modèles des applications SOA avant de les transformer en d'autres formes (du code, des cas de tests, etc.). (2) La transformation des spécifications des systèmes en artefacts exécutables. Malgré la maturité de l’architecture SOA, la transformation des spécifications des systèmes SOA en artefacts exécutables s'avère encore une étape fastidieuse et est généralement effectué manuellement. En particulier, la transformation des chorégraphies de services en orchestrations exécutables reste un problème en raison de la nécessité de prendre en compte les aspects complexes des systèmes distribués, tels que l’asynchronisme et la concurrence. (3) La vérification de l’exécution. Au moment de la spécification, des comportements inattendus peuvent encore apparaitre lors de l’exécution. Pour cette raison, il est nécessaire de pouvoir vérifier la conformité de l'exécution d’un système par rapport à sa spécification. Ce problème est appelé la vérification de la consistance verticale. Ce travail de thèse propose ainsi une approche de type SOA dirigée par les modèles résolvant les défis mentionnés précédemment. Cette approche comprend une méthodologie en deux étapes pour la vérification de la consistance horizontale et verticale des systèmes SOA spécifiés en utilisant la norme SoaML de l’OMG. Le problème de vérification de la consistance horizontale est résolu au moyen de l'analyse statique de la spécification des systèmes. Le deuxième défi est résolu en spécifiant les règles de transformation d'un modèle de spécification de chorégraphie de services en une orchestration exécutable qui implémente la logique de la chorégraphie tout en prenant en compte la nature asynchrone des communications entre les services distribués. Le problème de vérification de la consistance verticale est résolu par notre approche par l'analyse hors ligne des traces d’exécution d’un système. L’ensemble de la proposition méthodologique a été implanté sous la forme d’une extension à l’outil de modélisation UML open-source Papyrus
As software systems are pervasive and play an important role in everyday life, the users are becoming more and more demanding. They mainly require more reliable systems that automatically adapt to different use cases. To satisfy these requirements, technical frameworks and design methods, upon which the systems development is based, must meet specific objectives mainly modularity, flexibility, and consistency. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a paradigm that offers mechanisms to increase the software flexibility and reduce development costs by enabling service orchestration and choreography. SOA promises also reliability through the use of services contracts as an agreement between the service provider and consumer. Model-driven SOA is a novel and promising approach that strengthens SOA with Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) technics that ease the specification, development, and verification of Service-Oriented Applications by applying abstraction and automation principles. Despite the progress to integrate MDE to SOA, there are still some challenging problems to be solved: (1) Rigorous verification of SOA system specifications. This is a challenging problem because to model SOA systems designers need more than one viewpoint, each of which captures a specific concern of the system. These viewpoints are meant to be semantically consistent with each other. This problem is called horizontal consistency checking and it is an important step to reduce inconsistencies in SOA models before transforming them into other forms (code generation, test cases derivation, etc.). (2) Transformation of systems specifications into executable artifacts. Despite the maturity of SOA, the transformation of system specifications into executable artifacts is usually manual, fastidious and error-prone. The transformation of services choreographies into executable orchestrations particularly remains a problem because of the necessity to take into account critical aspects of distributed systems such as asynchrony and concurrency when executing centralized orchestrations. (3) Runtime verification. Even after verifying Horizontal consistency at design time, there could be unexpected and unspecified data interactions that are unknown during design-time. For this reason, we still need consistency verification at runtime to handle such unforeseen events. This problem is called Vertical consistency checking. This thesis work proposes a Model-driven SOA approach to address the above-mentioned challenges. This approach includes a two-step model-driven methodology to horizontally and vertically verify the consistency of SOA systems specifications described using the SoaML standard from the Object Management Group (OMG). The horizontal consistency checking problem, which is the first challenge, is solved by means of static analysis of the system specification at the design level. The second challenge is solved by specifying the transformation from a choreography specification model to an executable orchestration implementing the choreography logic. Our transformation takes into consideration the asynchronous nature of the communications between distributed services. The vertical consistency checking problem, which is the third challenge, is solved by our approach thanks to offline analysis that allows consistency verification between both design and runtime levels. The entire methodological proposal was implemented as an extension to the open source UML modeling tool Papyrus

In software development it is often crucial that the system implementationfollows the architecture dened through design patterns and a constraint set.In Model-Driven development most artefacts are created using models, butthe architectural design rules is one area where no standard to model therules exists. ArCon, Architecture Conformance Checker, is a tool to checkconformance of architectural design rules on a system model, dened in UML,that implements the system or application. The architectural design rules aredened in a UML model but with a specic meaning, dierent from standardUML, proposed by the authors of ArCon. Within this thesis ArCon wasextended to be able to check models created by the Open-Source modelingtool Papyrus, and integrated as a plugin on the Eclipse platform. The methodused by ArCon, to dene architectural rules, was also given a short evaluationduring the project to get a hint of its potential and future use. The case-studyshowed some problems and potential improvements of the used implementationof ArCon and its supported method.

Esta tese apresenta a Notação Essencial para Mapeamento Objeto-Relacional (em inglês, ENORM), uma notação de propósito geral que representa os conceitos estruturais do Mapeamento Objeto-Relacional (MOR). O objetivo de ENORM é facilitar o projeto através da aplicação clara dos padrões MOR, documentação dos mapeamentos com uma notação independente de plataforma, e tornar-se um repositório para transformações dirigidas por modelos, geração parcial de código e ferramentas de engenharia round-trip. ENORM é uma notação baseada em perfil UML, projetada para representar padrões pertencentes a lógica de modelo do domínio, com objetos do domínio incorporando tanto comportamento como dados. A notação representa padrões adotados por frameworks MOR difundidos no mercado (Active Record, do Ruby; SQLAlchemy, do Python; Entity Framework, da Microsoft .net; JPA, Cayenne, and MyBatis, do Java), seguindo os princípios Não se repita e Convenção sobre Configuração. ENORM foi avaliado por experimentos controlados, comparando a modelagem de estudantes com modelos UML e relacionais separados, atingindo um número significativamente maior de objetivos na maioria dos cenários, sem ser significativamente diferente nos piores cenários experimentais.
This thesis presents the Essential Notation for Object-Relational Mapping (ENORM), a general purpose notation that represents structural concepts of Object- Relational Mapping (ORM). The goal of ENORM is to facilitate the design by the clear application of ORM patterns, document mappings with a platform independent notation, and became a repository for model-driven transformations, partial code generation, and round-trip engineering tools. ENORM is a UML profile based notation, designed to represent patterns within a domain modeling logic, with objects of the domain incorporating both behavior and data. The notation represents patterns adopted by widespread ORM frameworks in the market (Active Record, of Ruby; SQLAlchemy, of Python; Entity Framework, of Microsoft .net; JPA, Cayenne, and MyBatis, of Java), following the Don´t Repeat Yourself and Convention over Configuration principles. ENORM was evaluated by controlled experiments, comparing the modeling by students with the use of separated UML and relational models, achieving significantly more goals in the majority of the scenarios, without being significantly different in the worst experimental scenarios.

Interest for business models and business modeling has increased rapidly since the mid-1990‘s and there are numerous approaches used to create business models. The business model concept has many definitions which can lead to confusion and slower progress in the research and development of business models. A business model ontology (BMO) was created in 2004 where the business model concept was conceptualized based on an analysis of existing literature. A few years later the Business Model Canvas (BMC) was published; a popular business modeling approach providing a high-level, semi-formal approach to create and communicate business models. While this approach is easy to use, the informality and high-level approach can cause ambiguity and it has limited computer-aided support available. In order to propose a solution to address this problem and facilitate the development and communication of Business Model Canvas models, two artifacts are created, demonstrated and evaluated; a structured metamodel for the Business Model Canvas and its implementation in an OMG standards-based modeling tool to provide tool support for BMC modeling.This research is carried out following the design science approach where the artifacts are created to better understand and improve the identified problem. The problem and its background are explicated and the planned artifacts and requirements are outlined. The design and development of the artifacts are detailed and the resulting BMC metamodel is presented as a class diagram in Unified Modeling Language (UML) and implemented to provide tool support for BMC modeling. A demonstration with a business model and an evaluation is performed with expert interviews and informed arguments.The creation of a BMC metamodel exposed some ambiguity in the definition and use of the Business Model Canvas and the importance of graphical presentation and flexibility in the tools used.The evaluation of the resulting artifacts suggests that the artifacts do facilitate the development and communication of the Business Model Canvas models by improving the encapsulation and communication of information in a standardized way and thereby the goals of the research are met.

The nature of Web system development is significantly different from conventional software development. Good method for system development is needed. Analysis show, that main known system development methods are good at describing static web application aspects, but does not provide a good description for modeling web application behavioral characteristics. This work uses model driven approach as one, suitable for dealing with web application development problems. The key aspect of model driven approach is specifying system domain model independent of any particular technology (J2EE, Microsoft .NET, etc.) and then generating platform specific model or its implementation. The UML is user-friendly, easy to use and is useful for describing system effectively. Specification expressed in terms of UML can be rendered into an XML document using the OMG’s XMI DTD for UML, which makes UML suitable for model driven approach implementation. In this work, method for specifying application behavior design using UML was presented. This method gives rules for specifying web application behavior model, suitable for its implementation code generation. The main components used in today’s web application which implementation could be generated from the model were also described. It was shown, that it is possible to generate much of implementation, just using such a model representation in XMI. The main idea presented in this work is that web application development should be model driven as... [to full text]

Modeliais grįsta sistemų architektūra (MDA) yra „Object Management Group“ (OMG) konsorciumo iniciatyva apibrėžti naują požiūrį į programų sistemų kūrimą remiantis modeliais ir automatizuota jų transformacija į programinį kodą. Siekdama standartizuoti šį požiūrį, OMG patvirtino visą eilę standartų, bet esminiai MDA principai ir praktikos glūdi modeliais grįstame sistemų kūrimo stiliuje, kuris yra fundamentalus programų sistemų inžinerijoje. MDA idėjos, pradžioje sukėlusios didelį entuziazmą IT bendruomenėje, ilgainiui peraugo į skepticizmą ir kai kurie autoriai atvirai pradėjo abejoti modeliais grįsto sistemų kūrimo perspektyva. Šiame darbe analizuojamos praktinio MDA taikymo programų sistemų kūrimo procese aspektai ir galimybės, analizuojami galimi sprendimai ir kliūtys, dėl kurių MDA požiūris gali būti sunkiai pritaikomas. Įvairių autorių įvardijami praktiniai MDA taikymo programų sistemų kūrimo procese sunkumai, didelės tam reikalingos investicijos, pastangos ir resursai, tinkamų instrumentų trūkumas, didelė standartų įvairovė ir sudėtingos technologijos iš dalies lėmė išaugusį skepticizmą MDA paradigmai. MDA apibrėžia naujus sistemų kūrimo principus ir standartais apibrėžia technologijas, kurios pagrindžia šiuos principus. Tai neišvengiamai įtakoja patį programų sistemų kūrimo procesą, kuris turi pasipildyti naujomis veiklomis, praktikomis ir technologijomis, kaip kurti sistemas taikant MDA požiūrį. Šiame kontekste būtinas tam tikras pragmatinis požiūris į MDA ir su juo... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]
Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is an approach to using models in software development, which states that models and model-based transformations are a key part of effective automated software development. The Object Management Group (OMG) has defined standards for representing MDA models, but the principles and practice of MDA are rooted in model-based styles of development that have been fundamental to software engineering from its earliest days. Unfortunately, early enthusiasm for Model Driven Architecture (MDA) has dissipated to the point that many people are openly skeptical of the value of any model-driven approach. This paper examines the practical realities of MDA, difficulties and challenges in adopting an MDA approach to software engineering process. While MDA requires additional efforts and high investment to be adopted in software engineering process, it doesn’t provide any means or guidelines for this. This paper argues that to be successful, a pragmatic MDA approach must be executed in context of a sound Enterprise Architecture providing an integrated business architecture and governance structure that enables an organization to respond to business requirements quickly and appropriately.

e-learning, as defined to be the use of information and communications technology (ICT) for supporting the educational processes, has motivated Tanzania to apply ICT in its education system. Tanzania secondary schools in rural areas are geographically and socially isolated. Rural Tanzania secondary schools face a number of problems including ways in getting learning materials, as well as inadequacy in qualified teachers. The impact of these problems is poor performance in National Examinations. This poor performance however is highly noted in science and mathematics subjects. The problem in getting learning materials can be reduced by employing ICT in secondary school education system. This research develops an interactive e-learning management system (e-LMS) to be used by Tanzanian secondary schools. The research is aiming to support teaching and learning functions by allowing creation and storage of learning materials, making them available, easily accessed and sharable among students from different secondary schools in Tanzania in a more organized way. Tanzania has only one curriculum for all secondary schools registered under the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (MoEVT). During development stage it will not be easy to involve all scattered Tanzanian secondary schools. The research is focusing to two selected pilot schools; Kibaha secondary school and Wali-ul-Asr girls’ seminary in Kibaha town, Pwani region. Features of the e-LMS will represent the standard form of any other secondary school registered by the MoEVT. The complete implementation of the e-LMS to these selected pilot schools will later be extended to all other secondary schools in Tanzania. The development uses Object-Oriented System Analysis and Design (OOSAD) approach along with the power of modeling as it has been emphasized by Model Driven Architecture (MDA). Unified Modeling Language (UML) is mainly used in both cases. To create an interoperable system, UML is integrated with extensible markup language (XML) during model transformation from e-LMS Platform Independent Model (PIM) to e-LMS Platform Specific Model (PSM). Development will make use of open source software. For context specific development, participatory action research methodology is adopted and the inputs are well presented in developing e-LMS. Customization of open source learning management system (LMS) platforms is employed to help generate a timely solution to e-LMS development. Finally, this thesis also considers the need for replication and mirroring of the database for the purpose of making learning materials highly available to end-users.

This thesis describes extensions to state machines in the Umple model-oriented programming language to offer queued state machines (QSM), pooled state machines (PSM) and handing of the arrival of unexpected events. These features allow for modeling the behavior of a system or protocol in a more accurate way in Umple because they enable detecting and fixing common design errors such as unspecified receptions. In addition, they simplify the communication between communicating state machines by allowing for asynchronous calls of events and passing of messages between state machines. Also, a pooled state machine (PSM) has been developed to provide a different policy of handling events that avoid unspecified receptions. This mechanism has similar semantics as a queued state machine, but it differs in the way of detecting unspecified receptions because it helps handling these errors. Another mechanism has been designed to use the keyword ‘unspecified’ in whatever state of a state machine the user wants to detect these errors. In this thesis, the test-driven development (TDD) process has been followed to first modify the Umple syntax to add ‘queued,’ ‘pooled,’ and ‘unspecified’ keywords to Umple state machine’s grammar; and second, to make a change to the Umple semantics in order to implement these extensions in Umple. Then, additional modifications have been made to allow for Java code generation from those types of state machines. Finally, more test cases have been written to ensure that these models are syntactically and semantically correct. In order to show the usefulness and usability of these new features, an example is shown as a case study that is modeled using the queued state machine (QSM) besides other small tests cases.

The thesis is focused on software development process and its products from initial designs through the way of implementation until final delivery to customer. The thesis brings up some basic facts about software engineering with further detailed description of one of its parts, the modern models of software life cycles with focus on the agile life cycle because of its significant benefits and effective implementation. This model is represented by Agile Model Driven Development which has been submitted not only theoretically but in practice. Finally, there is also a short description of Unified Modeling Language which is used as a modeling language.

One important phase in software development process is to create a design model of the system which follows all the architectural rules. Often the architectural rules are defined by the system architect and the system model is designed by the system designer. The architect defines the rules in a text file where no standard or pattern is followed. Therefore, there is always the risk of violating the architectural rules by the designer. So manual reviews on the system model should be done by the architect to ensure the system model is valid.In order to remove this manual checking which can be erroneous and time consuming ArCon (Architecture Conformance Checker) was developed by Combitech AB. ArCon is a tool which lets the architect define the architectural rules in the format of UML (Unified Modeling Language) models where the elements of the model have different meaning than the standard UML. ArCon can read this model and extract architectural rules from it and check the system model against those rules and then print all the rule violations.ArCon is an open source tool i.e. free for everyone to download and use. Currently, it supports Papyrus as the UML modeling tool. Papyrus is integrated to Eclipse platform and is a general purpose modeling tool. It supports users with all types of UML diagrams and elements.The idea for this thesis work was to implement a new feature for ArCon in order to facilitate the design process for system designers. The feature should provide the system designers only those types of elements which they are permitted to add to a specific fraction of the system model. The list of permitted element types should be extracted from the architecture model where all the architectural rules are defined in advance. This new support in ArCon was named Domain Specific Modeling (DSM) support.To evaluate the effect of DSM support on the system designers performance a few test sessions, called usability tests, were performed. The participants in the test sessions were a representative sample of software designers. After analyzing the data collected from the test sessions, the pros and cons of the new support were discovered. Furthermore, a few new ideas for enhancing DSM support were generated.

The burst on the availability of smart phones based on the Android platform calls for cost-effective techniques to generate mobile apps for general purpose, distributed business information systems (BIS). To mitigate this problem our research aims at applying model-driven techniques to automatically generate usable prototypes with a sound, maintainable, architecture. Following three base principles: model-based generation, separation of concerns, paradigm seamlessness, we try to answer the main guiding question – how to reduce development time and cost by transforming a given domain model into an Android application? To answer this question we propose to develop an application that follows a generative approach for mobile BIS apps that will mitigate the identified problems. Its input is a platform independent model (PIM), with business rules specified in OCL (Object Constraint Language). We adopted the Design Science Research methodology, that helps gaining problem understanding, identifying systemically appropriate solutions, and in effectively evaluating new and innovative solutions. To better evaluate our solution, besides resorting to third party tools to test specific components integration, we demonstrated its usage and evaluated how well it mitigates a subset of the identified problems in an observational study (we presented our generated apps to an outside audience in a controlled environment to study our model-based centered and, general apps understandability) and communicated its effectiveness to researchers and practitioners.
O grande surto de disponibilidade de dispositivos móveis para a plataforma Android requer, técnicas generativas de desenvolvimento de aplicações para sistemas comuns e/ou distribuídos de informação empresariais/negócio, que otimizem a relação custo-benefício. Para mitigar este problema, esta investigação visa aplicar técnicas orientadas a modelos para, automaticamente, gerar protótipos funcionais de aplicações com uma arquitetura robusta e fácil de manter. Seguindo para tal três princípios base: geração baseada no modelo, separação de aspetos, desenvolvimento sem soturas (sem mudança de paradigma), tentamos dar resposta à pergunta orientadora – como reduzir o tempo e custo de desenvolvimento de uma aplicação Android por transformação de um dado modelo de domínio? De modo a responder a esta questão nós propomos desenvolver uma aplicação que segue uma abordagem generativa para aplicações de informação empresariais/negócio móveis de modo a mitigar os problemas identificados. Esta recebe modelos independentes de plataforma (PIM), com regras de negócio especificadas em OCL (Object Constraint Language). Seguimos a metodologia Design Science Research que ajuda a identificar e perceber o problema, a identificar sistematicamente soluções apropriadas aos problemas e a avaliar mais eficientemente soluções novas e inovadoras. Para melhor avaliar a nossa solução, apesar de recorrermos a ferramentas de terceiros para testar a integração de componentes específicos, também demonstramos a sua utilização, através de estudos experimentais (em um ambiente controlado, apresentamos as nossas aplicações geradas a uma audiência externa que nos permitiu estudar a compreensibilidade baseada e centrada em modelos e, de um modo geral, das aplicações) avaliamos o quanto esta mitiga um subconjunto de problemas identificados e comunicamos a sua eficácia para investigadores e profissionais.

Model driven development (MDD) is on the rise in software engineering and no more so than in the realm of real-time and embedded systems. Being able to leverage the code generation and validation techniques made available through MDD is worth exploring, and is the focus of much academic and industrial research. However given the iterative nature of MDD, the natural evolution of models causes test case generation to occur multiple times throughout a software modeling project. Currently, the existing process of regenerating test cases for a modified model of a system can be costly, inefficient, and even redundant. The focus of this research was to achieve an improved understanding of the impact of typical model evolution steps on both the execution of the model and its test cases, and how this impact can be mitigated by reusing previously generated test cases. In this thesis we use existing techniques for symbolic execution and test case generation to perform an analysis on example models and determine how evolution affects model artifacts; these findings were then used to classify evolution steps based on their impact. From these classifications, we were able to determine exactly how to perform updates to existing symbolic execution trees and test suites in order to obtain the resulting test suites using minimal computational resources whenever possible. The approach was implemented in a software plugin, IncreTesCaGen, that is capable of incrementally generating test cases for a subset of UML-RT models by leveraging the existing testing artifacts (symbolic execution trees and test suites), as well as presenting additional analysis results to the user. Finally, we present the results of an initial evaluation of our tool, which provides insight into the tool’s performance, the effects of model evolution on execution and test case generation, as well as design tips to produce optimal models for evolution.
Thesis (Master, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2012-09-26 14:18:50.838