Applying UML/MARTE on industrial projects: challenges, experiences, and guidelines

in Software and Systems Modeling (2014)

OCLR: a More Expressive, Pattern-based Temporal Extension of OCL

Report (2014)

Modern enterprise information systems often require to specify their functional and non-functional (e.g., Quality of Service) requirements using expressions that contain temporal constraints ... [more ▼]

Modern enterprise information systems often require to specify their functional and non-functional (e.g., Quality of Service) requirements using expressions that contain temporal constraints. Specification approaches based on temporal logics demand a certain knowledge of mathematical logic, which is difficult to find among practitioners; moreover, tool support for temporal logics is limited. On the other hand, a standard language such as the Object Constraint Language (OCL), which benefits from the availability of several industrial-strength tools, does not support temporal expressions. In this paper we propose OCLR, an extension of OCL with support for temporal constraints based on well-known property specification patterns. With respect to previous extensions, we add support for referring to a specific occurrence of an event as well as for indicating a time distance between events and/or scope boundaries. The proposed extension defines a new syntax, very close to natural language, paving the way for a rapid adoption by practitioners. We show the application of the language in a case study in the domain of eGovernment, developed in collaboration with a public service partner. [less ▲]

Using UML for Modeling Procedural Legal Rules: Approach and a Study of Luxembourg’s Tax Law

in 17th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS'14) (2014)

Many laws, e.g., those concerning taxes and social benefits, need to be operationalized and implemented into public administration procedures and eGovernment applications. Where such operationalization is ... [more ▼]

Many laws, e.g., those concerning taxes and social benefits, need to be operationalized and implemented into public administration procedures and eGovernment applications. Where such operationalization is warranted, the legal frameworks that interpret the underlying laws are typically prescriptive, providing procedural rules for ensuring legal compliance. We propose a UML-based approach for modeling pro- cedural legal rules. With help from legal experts, we investigate actual legal texts, identifying both the information needs and sources of com- plexity in the formalization of procedural legal rules. Building on this study, we develop a UML profile that enables more precise modeling of such legal rules. To be able to use logic-based tools for compliance analysis, we automatically transform models of procedural legal rules into the Object Constraint Language (OCL). We report on an application of our approach to Luxembourg’s Income Tax Law providing initial evidence for the feasibility and usefulness of our approach. [less ▲]

Model Based Test Validation and Oracles for Data Acquisition Systems

in IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (2013, November)

Automated Model-in-the-Loop Testing of Continuous Controllers using Search

in 5th Symposium on Search-Based Software Engineering (SSBSE 2013), Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (2013, August)

The number and the complexity of software components embedded in today’s vehicles is rapidly increasing. A large group of these components monitor and control the operating conditions of physical devices ... [more ▼]

The number and the complexity of software components embedded in today’s vehicles is rapidly increasing. A large group of these components monitor and control the operating conditions of physical devices (e.g., components controlling engines, brakes, and airbags). These controllers are known as continuous controllers. In this paper, we study testing of continuous controllers at the Model-in-Loop (MiL) level where both the controller and the environment are represented by models and connected in a closed feedback loop system.We identify a set of common requirements characterizing the desired behavior of continuous controllers, and develop a search-based technique to automatically generate test cases for these requirements. We evaluated our approach by applying it to a real automotive air compressor module. Our experience shows that our approach automatically generates several test cases for which the MiL level simulations indicate potential violations of the system requirements. Further, not only do our approach generates better test cases faster than random test case generation, but we also achieve better results than test scenarios devised by domain experts. [less ▲]

Environment Modeling and Simulation for Automated Testing of Soft Real-Time Embedded Software

in Software and Systems Modeling (2013)

VPML: an approach to detect design patterns of MOF-based modeling languages

in Software and Systems Modeling (2013)

Classification, structuring, and assessment of evidence for safety: A systematic literature review

in International Conference on Software Testing, Verification, and Validation, Luxembourg 2013 (2013)

Stress Testing of Task Deadlines: A Constraint Programming Approach

in The 24th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE 2013), Pasadena, CA, November 2013 (2013)

Safety-critical Real Time Embedded Systems (RTESs) are usually subject to strict timing and performance requirements that must be satisfied for the system to be deemed safe. In this paper, we use ... [more ▼]

Safety-critical Real Time Embedded Systems (RTESs) are usually subject to strict timing and performance requirements that must be satisfied for the system to be deemed safe. In this paper, we use effective search strategies that aim at finding worst case scenarios with respect to deadline misses. Such scenarios can in turn be used to test the target RTES and ensure that, even under worst case conditions, it satisfies its timing requirements. Specifically, we develop a solution based on Constraint Programming (CP) to automate the generation of test cases that reveal, or are likely to, task deadline misses. We evaluate it through a comparison with a recent, state-of-the-art approach based on Genetic Algorithms (GA). In particular, we compare CP and GA in five industry-inspired case studies for efficiency, effectiveness, and scalability. Our experimental results show that, on the largest and more complex case studies, CP performs significantly better than GA. Since CP has interesting properties, such as guaranteeing complete search when there is sufficient time, and enables the definition of effective heuristics to converge faster towards optimal solutions, we conclude that our results are encouraging and suggest this is an advantageous solution for the stress testing of RTESs with respect to timing constraints. [less ▲]

Assessing the Impact of Firewalls and Database Proxies on SQL Injection Testing

in Springer LNCS series (2013)

This paper examines the effects and potential benefits of utilising Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) and database proxies in SQL injection testing of web applications and services. We propose testing the ... [more ▼]

This paper examines the effects and potential benefits of utilising Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) and database proxies in SQL injection testing of web applications and services. We propose testing the WAF itself to refine and evaluate its security rules and prioritise fixing vulnerabilities that are not protected by the WAF. We also propose using database proxies as oracles for black-box security testing instead of relying only on the output of the application under test. The paper also presents a case study of our proposed approaches on two sets of web services. The results indicate that testing through WAFs can be used to prioritise vulnerabilities and that an oracle that uses a database proxy finds more vulnerabilities with fewer tries than an oracle that relies only on the output of the application. [less ▲]