# Presentation: 290634

## A Systems Engineering ToolInteroperability “Plug-fest”

- Peter Denno
- National Institute of Standards and Technology

## Objectives of Presentation

- Overview of a SE tools “plug-fest” sponsored by NIST and DoD
- Motivation and Goals
- Scope & Technical Objectives
- Approach and Plan
- Your role and rules of participation

## Progress in SE Standardization

- SysML and AP233 have sought best practice of,and brought consistency to, expressing key SE concepts. Thus...
- SEs can communicate with other SEs *using diagrams.*
- SEs can communicate *to* SE tools.
- ...But what about tool-to-tool communication?
- How well do disparate SE tools preserve information content in exchanges among them?
- Tool-to-tool interoperability
- Critical to real-world applications, andis the focus of the plug-fest!

## Plug-fest Motivation & Goals

- Motivation:
- The development of complex systems involves many disparate organizations and is performed through their collaboration.
- These organization communicate through the shared conceptualizations of Model-based system engineering (MBSE).
- But the reality of the business environment often does not permit collaborating organizations to standardize on a single SE tool, and often not even the on the same standard (e.g., SysML)
- So, interoperability between disparate tools is a prerequisite to applying MBSE
- Plug-fest Goal:
- Provide facilities for tool developers to ‘exercise’ the interoperability of their implementations

## Conformance and Interoperability

*Conformance testing* investigates whethersystem characteristics violate normative statements of the specification.
*Interoperability testing* investigates the ability to share information, and thus the ability of parties to work jointly toward a goal.
- Conformance ought to lead to interoperability.
- But the spec may fall short

## Testing Exercises

- E1: Test Preservation of Information Content
- Example: Certain information was present in the file read.Is it in the file written?

## Testing Exercises

- E2: Test Comprehension of Content
- Analogy: When we ran a CAD tool plug-fest, participants calculated the volume of a solid exchanged.
- Is there an similar test we can perform on SE data?
- Approach:
- What would any reasonable person infer from the data?
- Are there multiple tools that automate that inference?
- E<n>: Your thought?...

## Exercise Analysis

- Using results from E1 and E2, assess conformance and interoperability.
- If failed at E1 or E2, why?
- Failure on single spec:
- Suggests inadequate spec, or
- Non-conforming implementation.
- Failure on “mixed specs” (e.g. AP233/SysML/CADM):
-  Additional possibility: incompatible conceptualizations.
- Provides input to subsequent versions of the specs and implementations.

## Initial Scope of Plug-fest

**SysML****XMI 2.1**

- SETool

**Test**

**Test**

**Test**

**CADM**
**XML v1.02**

**AP233**

**SysML**

**Test**
**content****preserving**

**Initially, the scope is limited the tools (and other software applications) that implement the model interchange aspects of the following specifications:**
**SysML XMI**
**AP233 (Part 28)**
**CADM (DoD Core Architecture Data Architecture) XML, version 1.02**

**Notes:**
I consider SysML and AP233 as having a common information scope, and thus make a good candidate for our first round of testing.

This is not to say that DoD isn't interested in the other pathways!Indeed they have invested in mapping AP233 to DoDAF, and UPDM. 

## Approach and Schedule

- Gauge interest, get feedback (June/July '06)
- Define exchange scenarios (June/July '06)
- Develop initial exercise material (June/October '06)
- Start out easy. e.g. reqs or state chart scenarios
- You: Implement interfaces (June/Oct '06)
- ...if you haven't already
- We: Provide exercise material. (Nov '06)
- We: Hosts initial round of the plug-fest. (Nov '06)
- That is, get together somewhere to run exercises and/ordiscuss results.

## Ground Rules

- Anyone (with an implementation of any of the specs mentioned) can play.
- Cover your own expenses.
- We will only publish results “of a general nature.”
- Nothing attributable to specific applications / products.
- Detailed results are confidential.

## Things you can do now

- Shore-up your file-based interfaces.
- Provide thoughts on testing scenarios.
- Send me data (or tools) to play with.

## For More Information:http://syseng.nist.gov/se-interop/plug-fest/or peter.denno@nist.gov