1.0 Participants
Carnegie Mellon University
Graduate Students
Visitors and Postdocs
Staff
2.0 Ongoing Research & Development
The following are the on-going research and development activities for the Composable Software Systems group.
The UniCon toolset has now been acquired by 174 organizations in 34 different countries.
Research continues on the Armani software architecture design language. Armani extends the ACME architecture description language with constructs for capturing architectural design expertise and design constraints. An initial version of the design language has been specified and the language processing infrastructure is in development. In addition to the language itself, initial prototyping is underway on a configurable software architecture design environment based on the Armani language.
Research continues on the next generation of the UniCon language, UniCon 2. We are currently designing the language and the next generation of tools to edit and compile descriptions in the language. UniCon 2 improvements will include improved type checking, improved support for adding connector types, evolvable specifications, support for adding component types, and imporovements in multi-level definition handling.
We continue to use Aesop to developing new styles and analyses for architectural design. We continue to find ways to integrate Aesop with evolving ACME facilities and tools.
We continue to develop extensions of Wright to permit description of dynamically-reconfigurable architectures and allow automated analysis of these descriptions. Also we continue to apply Wright to the DMSO High Level Architecture for Distributed Simulations.
We continue to work on development of bounded generation techniques in Nitpick.
We continue to do research in the area of honesty and responsibility checks for authentication protocols.
We continue to design and implement Lackwit analysis for Java software.
The following represent the accomplishments and the technology transition activities accomplished by the Composable Software Systems group during the reporting period.
Development of a UniCon->ACME(v3.0) translator using the Able group's C++ ACMELib distribution.
Distribution of another release of the ACME Web-generator tool and the automatic graph-layout tool to Lockheed Martin.
Extension of Aesop to support ACME version 3.0 and a new distributed message passing architectural style.
Production of a demonstration integrating ACME, UniCon, and Aesop for EDCS "Demo Days."
Presentation of the "Integration" demonstration at the EDCS "Demo Days" in Seattle. This demonstration highlighted the group's success with the integration of ACME, UniCon, and Aesop.
Development of a performance analyzer for ACME-based architectural descriptions.
Completion of paper (to be submitted) for Nitpick analysis of Mobile IPv6.
Better understanding of honesty and responsibility checks for authentication protocols.
Preliminary model of computation for electronic commerce protocols.
Better understanding of role of imperative modules for expressing architectural connectors.
into a technology demonstration for the July EDCS meeting.
Recently, the Gwydion project gave the Composable Systems Group a demonstration of their current toolset capabilities.
5.0 Publications
The following are the papers that have been authored by the members of this contract during the reporting period. They have been organized into groups based on their status as submitted, accepted, or published. They represent transition of our research to the community at large.
Wing, J.M. Subtyping for Distributed Object Stores
Proceedings of the Second IFIP International Workshop on
Formal Methods for Open Object-based Distributed Systems (FMOODS)
University of Kent at Canterbury, July 1997, pp. 305-318. (invited paper)
Shaw, M., Clements, P.
A Field Guide to Boxology: Preliminary Classification of Architectural Styles for Software Systems.
COMPSAC '97, August, 1997.
Allen, R., Garlan, D., Douence, R.
Specifying Dynamism in Software Architectures
Proceedings of the Workshop on Foundations of Component-Based Software Engineering
Zurich, Switzerland, September, 1997.
Kindred, D., Wing, J.M. Closing the Idealization Gap with Theory Generation
Proceedings of the DIMACS Workshop on Cryptogaphic Protocol Design and Verification
Rutgers, NJ, September, 1997. (extended abstract)
Melton, R., Garlan, D. Architectural Unification
To appear in Proceedings of CASCON'97, November, 1997.
Garlan, D., Tomayko, J.E., Gluch, D.
Agents of Change: Educating Future Leaders in Software Engineering
To appear in IEEE Computer, November, 1997.
Jackson, D., Ng, Y., Wing, J.M. A Nitpick Analysis of Mobile IPv6
Submitted to Formal Aspects of Computing, September 1997.
Allen, R., Garlan, D., Ivers, J.
Formal Modeling and Analysis of Architectural Standards
Submitted for publication, September, 1997.
Spitznagel, B., Garlan, D. Architecture-Based Performance Analysis
Submitted for publication, September, 1997.
Dingel, J., Garlan, D., Jha, S., Notkin, D.
Towards a Formal Treatment of Implicit Invocation
Submitted for publication, August, 1997.
Allen, R., Garlan, D., Douence, R.
Specifying and Analyzing Dynamic Software Architectures
Submitted to Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering (FASE), September, 1997.
The following are the talks, presentations, panels, lectures, workshops, and demonstrations given by the members of this contract during the reporting period. They represent transition of our research to the community at large.
Mary Shaw and Robert DeLine:
EDCS Demo Days
UniCon Demonstration
Demonstration of Integration of UniCon/ACME/Aesop
Seattle, WA, July 1997
Darrell Kindred:
EDCS Demo Days
Revere Demonstration
Seattle, WA, July 1997
Craig Damon:
EDCS Demo Days
Nitpick Demonstration
Seattle, WA, July 1997
Jeannette Wing (invited speaker):
Subtyping for Distributed Object Stores
Second IFIP International Workshop on Formal Methods for Open Object-based Distributed Systems (FMOODS)
University of Kent at Canterbury, July, 1997
Jeannette Wing (invited panelist):
Panel on Funding for Software Research
COMPSAC '97
Washington, DC, August, 1997.
Mary Shaw (invited panelist):
Internet Interactive Learning
COMPSAC '97
Washington, DC, August, 1997.
David Garlan (invited panelist):
Architectural Languages and Design Environments: From Research to Practice.
SEI Symposium
Pittsburgh, PA, August, 1997.
Zhenyu Wang:
A Framework for Software Architecture Debugging Environments
Information Sciences Institute (ISI), University of Southern California (USC)
August, 1997.
Darrell Kindred and Jeannette Wing (workshop):
Closing the Idealization Gap with Theory Generation
DIMACS Workshop on Cryptogaphic Protocol Design and Verification
Rutgers, NJ, September, 1997.
David Garlan: Software Architecture: Practice and Potential.
University of Washington, Seattle WA, September 1997.
David Garlan: Software Architecture: Practice and Potential.
University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, September 1997.
David Garlan: An Overview of Architecture Description Languages.
Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, CA, September 1997.
David Garlan: Software Architecture Research at CMU.
Hewlett Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, CA, September 1997.
Robert Monroe (presentation): Armani
(to) Martin Griss
Hewlett Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, CA, September 1997.
David Garlan and Robert Allen (Tutorial):
Modeling and Analysis of Software Architecture
SIGSOFT '97 Foundations of Software Engineering/European Software Engineering Conference, Zurich, Switzerland, September 1997
Robert Monroe (demonstration): Aesop and ACME
(to) Rockwell Executives
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, September 1997.
Gregory Zelesnik (presentation/demonstration):
Composable Software Systems and UniCon
(to) Rockwell Executives
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, September 1997.
Robert Monroe (demonstration): Aesop and ACME
(to) Rhoda Novak of The Aerospace Corporation
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, September 1997.
Gregory Zelesnik (demonstration): UniCon
(to) Rhoda Novak of The Aerospace Corporation
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, September 1997.
Professor Daniel Jackson has accepted a position at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and has left Carnegie Mellon University.
Jackson was the advisor to three students: Craig Damon, Robert O'Callahan, and Aaron Greenhouse in the CMU School of Computer Science. Professor Jeannette Wing has now become co-advisor for Craig Damon and Robert O'Callahan with Jackson, and Bill Scherlis has now become Aaron Greenhouse's new advisor.
8.0 Plans For The Next Reporting Period
We plan to continue our redesign of the UniCon 2 language and toolset. UniCon 2 improvements will include improved type checking, improved support for adding connector types, evolvable specifications, support for adding component types, and improvements in multi-level definition handling. We plan to re-target UniCon 2 to handle PCs, probably rehosting in the process.
We plan to help Lockheed-Martin identify technology to inporporate into the next demonstration for the EDCS "Demo Days" '98.
We plan to continue our work on applying Wright to HLA, working with DMSO to develop a better architectural standard.
We plan to write up our most recent results on dynamic-Wright, our peformance modelling tools, and our experience with integrating Aesop, UniCon, and ACME.
We plan to continue to develop the Armani constraint language, and investigate the incorporation of that language into a new extension of ACME.
We plan to write up our research in the area of honesty and responsibility checks for Revere.
Three thesis proposals are to be made this next quarter: one based on Craig Damon's Nitpick work, one based on Robert O'Callahan's Lackwit work, and one by Siddhartha Puri on the use of imperative modules for understanding software architectures.