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rCOS: a formal model-driven engineering method for component-based software

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Abstract

Model-driven architecture (MDA) has become a main stream technology for software-intensive system design. The main engineering principle behind it is that the inherent complexity of software development can only be mastered by building, analyzing and manipulating system models. MDA also deals with system complexity by providing component-based design techniques, allowing independent component design, implementation and deployment, and then system integration and reconfiguration based on component interfaces. The model of a system in any stage is an integration of models of different viewpoints. Therefore, for a model-driven method to be applied effectively, it must provide a body of techniques and an integrated suite of tools for model construction, validation, and transformation. This requires a number of modeling notations for the specification of different concerns and viewpoints of the system. These notations should have formally defined syntaxes and a unified theory of semantics. The underlying theory of the method is needed to underpin the development of tools and correct use of tools in software development, as well as to formally verify and reason about properties of systems in mission-critical applications. The modeling notations, techniques, and tools must be designed so that they can be used seamlessly in supporting development activities and documentation of artifacts in software design processes. This article presents such a method, called the rCOS, focusing on the models of a system at different stages in a software development process, their semantic integration, and how they are constructed, analyzed, transformed, validated, and verified.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Wei Ke

  2. Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Macau, Macau, China

    Xiaoshan Li

  3. UNU-IIST, Macau, China

    Zhiming Liu & Volker Stolz

  4. Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Oslo, 0316, Norway

    Volker Stolz

  5. Macao Polytechnic Institute, Macau, China

    Wei Ke

Authors
  1. Wei Ke
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  2. Xiaoshan Li
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  3. Zhiming Liu
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  4. Volker Stolz
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhiming Liu.

Additional information

Wei Ke is a researcher and lecturer of Macao Polytechnic Institute. He received his MSc from Institute of Software of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is currently a PhD student of School of Computer Science and Engineering, Beihang University. His research interests include programming languages, formal methods and tool support for object-oriented and component-based engineering and systems. His recent research focus is model-driven architectures in health informatics.

Xiaoshan Li is an associate professor of Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Macau. He received his PhD in 1994 from Institute of Software of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research interests include formal specification and verification of concurrent and real-time systems, and sound methods for object-oriented and component-based engineering and systems. His recent research focus is software engineering methods in health care.

Zhiming Liu is a Senior Research Fellow of UNU-IIST and the head of Information Engineering and Technology in Health Programme (IETH). Before UNU-IIST, he was a University Lecturer at the University of Leicester and a Research Fellow at the University of Warwick. He holds a master degree from the Institute of Software of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a PhD from the University of Warwick. His research interest is in formal theories and techniques of software engineering. He is internationally known for his work on the Transformational Approach to Fault-Tolerance and Real-Time computing, and the rCOS Method of Model-Driven Design of Component Software. The research of IETH extends and applies these methods to human and environmental health care.

Volker Stolz is a post-doc in the Precise Modelling and Analysis group in the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo, Norway, and Adjunct Research Fellow at UNU-IIST, where he is Principal Investigator of the “Applied Runtime Verification” project. He holds a master and PhD degree in Computer Science from RWTH Aachen, Germany. His current interest is integration of formal methods into main-stream software engineering approaches and tools.

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Ke, W., Li, X., Liu, Z. et al. rCOS: a formal model-driven engineering method for component-based software. Front. Comput. Sci. 6, 17–39 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-012-2901-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-012-2901-5

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