The System Architect's Assistant for design and construction of distributed systems

Kramer, Jeff; Magee, Jeff; Ng, K.; Sloman, Morris

doi:10.1109/ftdcs.1993.344144

Cited by 19 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…To further explore the potential of the technique, we are applying it to more complex examples, implementing support tools on workstations, and proposing to incorporate this form of analysis support in an environment for the design and construction of distributed systems, the System Architect's Assistant [9]. We are also experimenting a framework to integrate the described technique with a dataflow analysis technique [2,3].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compositional reachability analysis of finite-state distributed systems with user-specified constraints

Cheung

Kramer

1995

SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes

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The software architecture of a distributed system can be described as a hierarchical composition of subsystems, with interacting processes as the leaves of the hierarchy. Process behaviour can be specified using finite-state machines. A global state machine describing the overall system behaviour can be constructed using compositional reachability analysis techniques. These techniques compose the global state machine of a system from its component processes in stages, based on the specified hierarchy. This staged composition may however exacerbate the state explosion problem. A promising way to alleviate this problem is to include, in the analysis of each subsystem, the behaviour constraints imposed by its environment. Behaviour constraints can be derived algorithmically but may be too weak to adequately constrain the compositional analysis.In this paper, we describe a technique which enables software developers to also specify behaviour constraints intuitively. These constraints can be combined with those derived algorithmically. As constraints specified by software developers may be incorrect, the technique incorporates an effective mechanism to detect incorrect constraints and give an indication of how to correct them. Incorporation of the mechanism does not increase the complexity of analysis. The mechanism is supported by augmenting the state machine model with a special state π. The state is used to capture automatically potential errors in the constraints specified by software developers. The mechanism can also be utilised to detect violation of design assumptions. A gas station system is used as a case study in our discussion.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compositional reachability analysis of finite-state distributed systems with user-specified constraints

Cheung

Kramer

1995

SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes

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“…We also plan to implement better support tools on workstations and incorporate this form of analysis support into the System Architect's Assistant [9], an environment for the design and construction of distributed systems.…”

Section: Conclusion and Prospects For Futurementioning

confidence: 99%

Tractable dataflow analysis for distributed systems

Cheung

Kramer²

1994

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

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“…It was from this second part that the notion of media transformations arose. The purpose of these experimental productions was to recreate Ii ve demonstrations of two software engineering tools, the -Viewer (Nuseibeh and Finkelstein, 1992) and the System Architect's Assistant (Kramer et al, 1993), as freestanding multimedia documents. The -Viewer is a prototype environment supporting the framework known as Viewpoint Oriented Software Engineering (VaSE) (Nuseibeh & Finkelstein, 1992).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Media transformations for the representation and communication of multimedia production activities

Morris

1998

Designing Effective and Usable Multimedia Systems

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Case studies made of multimedia document production highlight the need for a means of classifying and describing the transformations of media elements which make up this process. The classification set out here contains twelve types belonging to two categories, constructive and supportive. A set of transformation representation rules provides the framework for succinct communication between production participants. This communication can serve both a descriptive function, describing events as the basis for design rationale, or a prescriptive function outlining detailed stages before they are activated.

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The System Architect's Assistant for design and construction of distributed systems

Cited by 19 publications

References 20 publications

Compositional reachability analysis of finite-state distributed systems with user-specified constraints

Compositional reachability analysis of finite-state distributed systems with user-specified constraints

Tractable dataflow analysis for distributed systems

Media transformations for the representation and communication of multimedia production activities

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