Seminar by Dr. Jon Whittle
Synthesizing State-based Models Automatically from Interaction Scenarios
Dr. Jon Whittle
QSS Group
NASA Ames Research Center
California, USA
Date: Wednesday, April 7, 2004
Time: 3:45 PM
Venue: CS-101
Abstract
Models of software (e.g., models expressed in the Unified Modeling Language - UML) are representations of particular viewpoints of a software system. For example, UML sequence diagrams describe system behavior in terms of the interaction scenarios between communicating components. UML statecharts, on the other hand, describe the internal behavior of individual components. Software developers typically use a variety of notations for modeling viewpoints but have currently no good way to maintain the consistency between viewpoints. This seminar will present an algorithm for maintaining the consistency between interaction scenarios and state-based models by synthesizing state-based models automatically from interaction scenarios. The technique has applications in the generation of code directly from interaction scenarios; in rapid prototyping of early requirements; and in software testing. The technique will be illustrated with a major case study of an air traffic control system carried out at NASA Ames Research Center. More recent work on aspect-oriented modeling with interactions and a methodology for use of the technique will also be presented.
About the Speaker
Dr Whittle has a BA in Mathematics from the University of Oxford, an MSc in Knowledge-based Systems from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, as well as a PhD, also from Edinburgh. He has worked for the last five years as a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, California, where he was also a Technical Area Lead for a number of research projects. His interests lie in the area of software modeling and code generation from high-level specifications. He is an editor of the Journal of Software and Systems Modeling and was Conference Chair for the 2003 International Conference on the Unified Modeling Language in San Francisco, California. He is currently on sabbatical as a Visiting Professor at IISc, Bangalore.