2012
Conference article
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Model-based evaluation of the availability of a CBTC system.
Ferrari A., Itria M. L., Chiaradonna S., Spagnolo G. O.
A metro control system is a software/hardware platform that provides automated mechanisms to enforce the safety of a metropolitan transportation system. In this field, the current technical trend is the Communications-based Train Control (CBTC) solution. CBTC platforms are characterized by a continuous wireless interaction between trains and ground controls. Several degrees of automation are provided, from basic traffic monitoring to unattended train operation. Besides safety issues, a CBTC system is also required to guarantee a high level of availability. These platforms are normally composed of several subsystems and devices, and estimating the overall availability of the system is not a trivial task. Stochastic Activity Networks (SAN) are a powerful formalism that allows modelling and evaluating complex distributed systems. In this paper, a study is presented that shows how SAN models can be employed to evaluate the availability attributes of a CBTC system. The current results show that the SAN technology and the analysis tool adopted, named Möbius, are mature for a profitable employment in industrial practice.Source: Software Engineering for Resilient Systems. 4th International Workshop, pp. 165–179, Pisa, Italy, 27-28 September 2012
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-33176-3_12
Metrics:
Ferrari A., Itria M. L., Chiaradonna S., Spagnolo G. O.
A metro control system is a software/hardware platform that provides automated mechanisms to enforce the safety of a metropolitan transportation system. In this field, the current technical trend is the Communications-based Train Control (CBTC) solution. CBTC platforms are characterized by a continuous wireless interaction between trains and ground controls. Several degrees of automation are provided, from basic traffic monitoring to unattended train operation. Besides safety issues, a CBTC system is also required to guarantee a high level of availability. These platforms are normally composed of several subsystems and devices, and estimating the overall availability of the system is not a trivial task. Stochastic Activity Networks (SAN) are a powerful formalism that allows modelling and evaluating complex distributed systems. In this paper, a study is presented that shows how SAN models can be employed to evaluate the availability attributes of a CBTC system. The current results show that the SAN technology and the analysis tool adopted, named Möbius, are mature for a profitable employment in industrial practice.Source: Software Engineering for Resilient Systems. 4th International Workshop, pp. 165–179, Pisa, Italy, 27-28 September 2012
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-33176-3_12
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doi.org 
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2012
Conference article
Open Access
Automatic analysis of multimodal requirements: a research preview.
Bruni E., Ferrari A., Seyff N., Tolomei G.
[Context and motivation] Traditionally, requirements are documented using natural language text. However, there exist several ap- proaches that promote the use of rich media requirements descriptions. Apart from text-based descriptions these multimodal requirements can be enriched by images, audio, or even video. [Question/Problem] The transcription and automated analysis of multimodal information is an important open question, which has not been sufficiently addressed by the Requirement Engineering (RE) community so far. Therefore, in this research preview paper we sketch how we plan to tackle research chal- lenges related to the field of multimodal requirements analysis. We are in particular focusing on the automation of the analysis process. [Prin- cipal idea/results] In our recent research we have started to gather and manually analyze multimodal requirements. Furthermore, we have worked on concepts which initially allow the analysis of multimodal in- formation. The purpose of the planned research is to combine and extend our recent work and to come up with an approach supporting the au- tomatic analysis of multimodal requirements. [Contribution] In this paper we give a preview on the planned work. We present our research goal, discuss research challenges and depict an early conceptual solution.Source: Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality. 18th International Working Conference, pp. 218–224, Essen, Germany, 19-22 marzo 2012
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-28714-5_19
Metrics:
Bruni E., Ferrari A., Seyff N., Tolomei G.
[Context and motivation] Traditionally, requirements are documented using natural language text. However, there exist several ap- proaches that promote the use of rich media requirements descriptions. Apart from text-based descriptions these multimodal requirements can be enriched by images, audio, or even video. [Question/Problem] The transcription and automated analysis of multimodal information is an important open question, which has not been sufficiently addressed by the Requirement Engineering (RE) community so far. Therefore, in this research preview paper we sketch how we plan to tackle research chal- lenges related to the field of multimodal requirements analysis. We are in particular focusing on the automation of the analysis process. [Prin- cipal idea/results] In our recent research we have started to gather and manually analyze multimodal requirements. Furthermore, we have worked on concepts which initially allow the analysis of multimodal in- formation. The purpose of the planned research is to combine and extend our recent work and to come up with an approach supporting the au- tomatic analysis of multimodal requirements. [Contribution] In this paper we give a preview on the planned work. We present our research goal, discuss research challenges and depict an early conceptual solution.Source: Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality. 18th International Working Conference, pp. 218–224, Essen, Germany, 19-22 marzo 2012
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-28714-5_19
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Zurich Open Repository and Archive 
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2012
Conference article
Restricted
Lessons learnt from the adoption of formal model-based development.
Ferrari A., Fantechi A., Gnesi S.
This paper reviews the experience of introducing formal model-based design and code generation by means of the Simulink/Stateflow platform in the development process of a railway signalling manufacturer. Such company operates in a standard-regulated framework, for which the adoption of commercial, non qualified tools as part of the development activities poses hurdles from the verification and certification point of view. At this regard, three incremental intermediate goals have been defined, namely (1) identification of a safe-subset of the modelling language, (2) evidence of the behavioural conformance between the generated code and the modelled specification, and (3) integration of the modelling and code generation technologies within the process that is recommended by the regulations. These three issues have been addressed by progressively tuning the usage of the technologies across different projects. This paper summarizes the lesson learnt from this experience. In particular, it shows that formal modelling and code generation are actually powerful means to enhance product safety and cost effectiveness. Nevertheless, their adoption is not a straightforward step, and incremental adjustments and refinements are required in order to establish a formal model-based process.Source: NASA Formal Methods Symposium. 4th International Symposium, pp. 24–36, Norfolk, VA, USA, 3-5 April 2012
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-28891-3_5
Metrics:
Ferrari A., Fantechi A., Gnesi S.
This paper reviews the experience of introducing formal model-based design and code generation by means of the Simulink/Stateflow platform in the development process of a railway signalling manufacturer. Such company operates in a standard-regulated framework, for which the adoption of commercial, non qualified tools as part of the development activities poses hurdles from the verification and certification point of view. At this regard, three incremental intermediate goals have been defined, namely (1) identification of a safe-subset of the modelling language, (2) evidence of the behavioural conformance between the generated code and the modelled specification, and (3) integration of the modelling and code generation technologies within the process that is recommended by the regulations. These three issues have been addressed by progressively tuning the usage of the technologies across different projects. This paper summarizes the lesson learnt from this experience. In particular, it shows that formal modelling and code generation are actually powerful means to enhance product safety and cost effectiveness. Nevertheless, their adoption is not a straightforward step, and incremental adjustments and refinements are required in order to establish a formal model-based process.Source: NASA Formal Methods Symposium. 4th International Symposium, pp. 24–36, Norfolk, VA, USA, 3-5 April 2012
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-28891-3_5
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2012
Conference article
Restricted
Using collective intelligence to detect pragmatic ambiguities.
Ferrari A., Gnesi S.
This paper presents a novel approach for pragmatic ambiguity detection in natural language (NL) requirements specifications defined for a specific application domain. Starting from a requirements specification, we use a Web-search engine to retrieve a set of documents focused on the same domain of the specification. From these domain-related documents, we extract different knowledge graphs, which are employed to analyse each requirement sentence looking for potential ambiguities. To this end, an algorithm has been developed that takes the concepts expressed in the sentence and searches for corresponding concept paths within each graph. The paths resulting from the traversal of each graph are compared and, if their overall similarity score is lower than a given threshold, the requirements specification sentence is considered ambiguous from the pragmatic point of view. A proof of concept is given throughout the paper to illustrate the soundness of the proposed strategy.Source: 20th IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering, pp. 191–200, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 24 - 28 September 2012
DOI: 10.1109/re.2012.6345803
Metrics:
Ferrari A., Gnesi S.
This paper presents a novel approach for pragmatic ambiguity detection in natural language (NL) requirements specifications defined for a specific application domain. Starting from a requirements specification, we use a Web-search engine to retrieve a set of documents focused on the same domain of the specification. From these domain-related documents, we extract different knowledge graphs, which are employed to analyse each requirement sentence looking for potential ambiguities. To this end, an algorithm has been developed that takes the concepts expressed in the sentence and searches for corresponding concept paths within each graph. The paths resulting from the traversal of each graph are compared and, if their overall similarity score is lower than a given threshold, the requirements specification sentence is considered ambiguous from the pragmatic point of view. A proof of concept is given throughout the paper to illustrate the soundness of the proposed strategy.Source: 20th IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering, pp. 191–200, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 24 - 28 September 2012
DOI: 10.1109/re.2012.6345803
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2012
Conference article
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A clustering-based approach for discovering flaws in requirements specifications
Ferrari A., Gnesi S., Tolomei G.
In this paper, we present the application of a clustering algorithm to exploit lexical and syntactic relationships occurring between natural language requirements. Our experiments conducted on a real-world data set highlight a correlation between clustering outliers, i.e., requirements that are marked as "noisy" by the clustering algorithm, and requirements presenting "flaws". Those flaws may refer to an incomplete explanation of the behavioral aspects, which the requirement is supposed to provide. Furthermore, flaws may also be caused by the usage of inconsistent terminology in the requirement specification. We evaluate the ability of our proposed algorithm to effectively discover such kind of flawed requirements. Evaluation is performed by measuring the accuracy of the algorithm in detecting a set of flaws in our testing data set, which have been previously manually-identified by a human assessor.Source: 27th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, pp. 1043–1050, Riva del Garda, Trento, ITALY, 26-30 marzo 2012
DOI: 10.1145/2245276.2231939
Metrics:
Ferrari A., Gnesi S., Tolomei G.
In this paper, we present the application of a clustering algorithm to exploit lexical and syntactic relationships occurring between natural language requirements. Our experiments conducted on a real-world data set highlight a correlation between clustering outliers, i.e., requirements that are marked as "noisy" by the clustering algorithm, and requirements presenting "flaws". Those flaws may refer to an incomplete explanation of the behavioral aspects, which the requirement is supposed to provide. Furthermore, flaws may also be caused by the usage of inconsistent terminology in the requirement specification. We evaluate the ability of our proposed algorithm to effectively discover such kind of flawed requirements. Evaluation is performed by measuring the accuracy of the algorithm in detecting a set of flaws in our testing data set, which have been previously manually-identified by a human assessor.Source: 27th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, pp. 1043–1050, Riva del Garda, Trento, ITALY, 26-30 marzo 2012
DOI: 10.1145/2245276.2231939
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2012
Conference article
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Product Line Engineering Applied to CBTC Systems Development
Ferrari A., Spagnolo G. O., Martelli G., Menabeni S.
Communications-based Train Control (CBTC) systems are the new frontier of automated train control and operation. Currently developed CBTC platforms are actually very complex systems including several functionalities, and every installed system, developed by a different company, varies in extent, scope, number, and even names of the implemented functionalities. International standards have emerged, but they remain at a quite abstract level, mostly setting terminology. This paper reports intermediate results in an effort aimed at defining a global model of CBTC, by mixing semi-formal modelling and product line engineering. The effort has been based on an in-depth market analysis, not limiting to particular aspects but considering as far as possible the whole picture. The adopted methodology is discussed and a preliminary model is presented.Source: ISoLA 2012 - 5th International Symposium on Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, pp. 216–230, Heraklion, Greece, 15-18/10/2012
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-34032-1_22
Metrics:
Ferrari A., Spagnolo G. O., Martelli G., Menabeni S.
Communications-based Train Control (CBTC) systems are the new frontier of automated train control and operation. Currently developed CBTC platforms are actually very complex systems including several functionalities, and every installed system, developed by a different company, varies in extent, scope, number, and even names of the implemented functionalities. International standards have emerged, but they remain at a quite abstract level, mostly setting terminology. This paper reports intermediate results in an effort aimed at defining a global model of CBTC, by mixing semi-formal modelling and product line engineering. The effort has been based on an in-depth market analysis, not limiting to particular aspects but considering as far as possible the whole picture. The adopted methodology is discussed and a preliminary model is presented.Source: ISoLA 2012 - 5th International Symposium on Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, pp. 216–230, Heraklion, Greece, 15-18/10/2012
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-34032-1_22
Metrics:
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doi.org | link.springer.com | CNR ExploRA