OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Manifesto - Model Engineering for Complex Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

Complex systems are hard to define. Nevertheless they are more and more frequently encountered. Examples include a worldwide airline traffic management system, a global telecommunication or energy infrastructure or even the whole legacy portfolio accumulated for more than thirty years in a large insurance company. There are currently few engineering methods and tools to deal with them in practice. The purpose of this Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop on Model Engineering for Complex Systems was to study the applicability of Model Driven Engineering (MDE) to the development and management of complex systems. MDE is a software engineering field based on few simple and sound principles. Its power stems from the assumption of considering everything - engineering artefacts, manipulations of artefacts, etc - as a model. Our intuition was that MDE may provide the right level of abstraction to move the study of complex systems from an informal goal to more concrete grounds. In order to provide first evidence in support of this intuition, the workshop studied different visions and different approaches to the development and management of different kinds of complex systems. This note presents the summary of the discussions.
Quantitative Survey on Extreme Programming Projects
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

In recent years the Extreme Programming (XP) community has grown substantially. Many XP projects have started and a substantial amount are already finished. As the interest in the XP approach is constantly increasing worldwide throughout all software intensive application domains, it was time to start a first survey on XP. This paper presents the results of 45 evaluated questionnaires that have been received during the Summer 2001 survey.
Model-Based Testing of Object-Oriented Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

This paper discusses a model-based approach to testing as a vital part of software development. It argues that an approach using models as central development artifact needs to be added to the portfolio of software engineering techniques, to further increase efficiency and flexibility of the development as well as quality and reusability of results. Then test case modeling is examined in depth and related to an evolutionary approach to model transformation. A number of test patterns is proposed that have proven helpful to the design of testable object-oriented systems. In contrast to other approaches, this approach uses explicit models for test cases instead of trying to derive (many) test cases from a single model.
Testing Agile Requirements Models
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

This paper discusses a model-based approach to validate software requirements in agile development processes by simulation and in particular automated testing. The use of models as central development artifact needs to be added to the portfolio of software engineering techniques, to further increase efficiency and flexibility of the development beginning already early in the requirements definition phase. Testing requirements are some of the most important techniques to give feedback and to increase the quality of the result. Therefore testing of artifacts should be introduced as early as possible, even in the requirements definition phase.
Critical Systems Development Using Modeling Languages. (CSDUML-04): Current Developments and Future Challenges (Report on the Third International Workshop)
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

We give a short report on the contributions to and some discussions made and conclusions drawn at the Third International Workshop on Critical Systems Development Using Modeling Languages (CSDUML'04).
Techniques Enabling Generator Refactoring
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

This paper presents our approach to use refactoring techniques together with code generation. Refactoring is particularly useful if not only the generated classes but also the generator itself can be adapted in an automatic fashion. We have developed a simple demonstration prototype to illustrate this. The demonstration is based on a special technique where the template for the code generation is defined as compilable source code. The directives to ll out this template prototype to the actual classes are embedded in the source as comments.
System-Model-Based Simulation of UML Models
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

Previous work has presented our ongoing e orts to define a "reference semantics" for the UML, that is, a mathematically defined system model that is envisaged to cover all of the UML eventually, and that also carefully avoids the introduction of any unwarranted restrictions or biases. Due to the use of underspecification, the system model is not executable. This paper shows how the system model can serve as the basis for a highly customizable execution and simulation environment for the UML. The design and implementation of a prototype of such an environment is described and its use for the experimentation with different semantic variation points is illustrated.
Textbased Modeling
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

As modeling becomes a crucial activity in software development the question may be asked whether currently used graphical representations are the best option to model systems efficiently. This position paper discusses the advantages of text-based modeling over commonly used graphical representations. It is inspired through the advent of new extensible development tools like Eclipse. The discussion is illustrated by showing a textual version of UML state machines as Eclipse plugins.
Integrated Definition of Abstract and Concrete Syntax for Textual Languages
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

An understandable concrete syntax and a comprehensible abstract syntax are two central aspects of defining a modeling language. Both representations of a language significantly overlap in their structure and also information, but may also differ in parts of the information. To avoid discrepancies and problems while handling the language, concrete and abstract syntax need to be consistently defined. This will become an even bigger problem, when domain specific languages will become used to a larger extent. In this paper we present an extended grammar format that avoids redundancy between concrete and abstract syntax by allowing an integrated definition of both for textual modeling languages. For an amendment of the usability of the abstract syntax it furthermore integrates meta-modeling concepts like associations and inheritance into a well-understood grammar-based approach. This forms a sound foundation for an extensible grammar and therefore language definition.
Modelling Automotive Function Nets with Views for Features, Variants, and Modes
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

Modelling the logical architecture of an automotive system as one central step in the development process leads to an early understanding of the fundamental functional properties of the system under design. This supports developers in making design decisions. However, due to the large size and complexity of the system and hence the logical architecture, a good notation, method and tooling is necessary. In this paper, we show how logical architectures can be modelled succinctly as function nets using a SysML-based notation. The usefulness for developers is increased by comprehensible views on the complete model that describe automotive features, variants, and modes.
Modeling Variants of Automotive Systems using Views
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

This paper presents an approach of modeling variability of automotive system architectures using function nets, views and feature diagrams. A function net models an architecture hierarchically and views are used to omit parts of such a model to focus on certain functionalities. In combination with feature diagrams that describe valid variants, the concepts of feature and variant views are introduced to model architectural variants. The relationship between views, variants and the underlying complete architectural model is discussed. Methodological aspects that come along with this approach are considered.
MontiCore: A Framework for the Development of Textual Domain Specific Languages
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

In this paper we demonstrate a framework for efficient development of textual domain specific languages and supporting tools. We use a redundance-free and compact definition of a readable concrete syntax and a comprehensible abstract syntax as both representations significantly overlap in their structure. To further improve the usability of the abstract syntax this definition format integrates additional concepts like associations and inheritance into the well-understood grammar-based approach. Modularity concepts like language inheritance and embedding are used to simplify the development of languages based on already existing ones. In addition, the generation of editors and a template approach for code generation is explained.
Redprint: Integrating API specific "instant example" and "instant documentation" display interface in IDEs
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2014
Year: 2014

Software libraries for most of the modern programming languages are numerous, large and complex. Remembering the syntax and usage of APIs is a difficult task for not just novices but also expert programmers. IDEs (Integrated Development Environment) provide capabilities like autocomplete and intellisense to assist programmers; however, programmers still need to visit search engines like Google to find API (Application Program Interface) documentation and samples. This paper evaluates Redprint - a browser based development environment for PHP that integrates API specific "Instant Example" and "Instant Documentation" display interfaces. A comparative laboratory study shows that integrating API specific "Instant Example" and "Instant Documentation" display interfaces into a development environment significantly reduces the cost of searching and thus significantly reduces the time to develop software.
Visual Words for Automatic Lip-Reading
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2014
Year: 2014

Lip reading is used to understand or interpret speech without hearing it, a technique especially mastered by people with hearing difficulties. The ability to lip read enables a person with a hearing impairment to communicate with others and to engage in social activities, which otherwise would be difficult. Recent advances in the fields of computer vision, pattern recognition, and signal processing has led to a growing interest in automating this challenging task of lip reading. Indeed, automating the human ability to lip read, a process referred to as visual speech recognition, could open the door for other novel applications. This thesis investigates various issues faced by an automated lip-reading system and proposes a novel "visual words" based approach to automatic lip reading. The proposed approach includes a novel automatic face localisation scheme and a lip localisation method.
Angle of Arrival Detection with Fifth Order Phase Operators
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2014
Year: 2014

In this paper, a fifth order propagator operators are proposed for estimating the Angles Of Arrival (AOA) of narrowband electromagnetic waves impinging on antenna array when its number of sensors is larger than the number of radiating sources. The array response matrix is partitioned into five linearly dependent phases to construct the noise projector using five different propagators from non diagonal blocks of the spectral matrice of the received data; hence, five different estimators are proposed to estimate the angles of the sources. The simulation results proved the performance of the proposed estimators in the presence of white noise comparatively to high resolution eigen based spectra.
Agile Modeling with the UML
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

This paper discusses a model-based approach to software development. It argues that an approach using models as central development artifact needs to be added to the portfolio of software engineering techniques, to further increase efficiency and flexibility of the development as well as quality and reusability of the results. Two major and strongly related techniques are identified and discussed: Test case modeling and an evolutionary approach to model transformation.
Achieving Full DoF in Heterogeneous Parallel Broadcast Channels with Outdated CSIT
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2014
Year: 2014

We consider communication over heterogeneous parallel channels, where a transmitter is connected to two users via two parallel channels: a MIMO broadcast channel (BC) and a noiseless rate-limited multicast channel. We characterize the optimal degrees of freedom (DoF) region of this setting when the transmitter has delayed channel state information (CSIT) regarding the MIMO BC. Our results show that jointly coding over the two channels strictly outperforms simple channel aggregation and can even achieve the instantaneous CSIT performance with completely outdated CSIT on the MIMO BC in the sum DoF sense; this happens when the multicast rate of the second channel is larger than a certain threshold. The main idea is to send information over the MIMO BC at a rate above its capacity and then use the second channel to send additional side information to allow for reliable decoding at both receivers. We call this scheme a two-phase overload-multicast strategy. We show that such a strategy is also sum DoF optimal for the K-user MIMO BC with a parallel multicast channel when the rate of the multicast channel is high enough and can again achieve the instantaneous CSIT performance (optimal sum DoF) with completely outdated CSIT. For the regime where the capacity of the multicast channel is small, we propose another joint coding strategy which is sum DoF optimal.
An Upper Bound on the Convergence Time for Quantized Consensus of Arbitrary Static Graphs
Venue: arXiv cs.SY 2014
Year: 2014

We analyze a class of distributed quantized consensus algorithms for arbitrary static networks. In the initial setting, each node in the network has an integer value. Nodes exchange their current estimate of the mean value in the network, and then update their estimation by communicating with their neighbors in a limited capacity channel in an asynchronous clock setting. Eventually, all nodes reach consensus with quantized precision. We analyze the expected convergence time for the general quantized consensus algorithm proposed by Kashyap et al \cite{Kashyap}. We use the theory of electric networks, random walks, and couplings of Markov chains to derive an $O(N^3\log N)$ upper bound for the expected convergence time on an arbitrary graph of size $N$, improving on the state of art bound of $O(N^5)$ for quantized consensus algorithms. Our result is not dependent on graph topology. Example of complete graphs is given to show how to extend the analysis to graphs of given topology.
Reconfigurable Decorated PT Nets with Inhibitor Arcs and Transition Priorities
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2014
Year: 2014

In this paper we deal with additional control structures for decorated PT Nets. The main contribution are inhibitor arcs and priorities. The first ensure that a marking can inhibit the firing of a transition. Inhibitor arcs force that the transition may only fire when the place is empty. an order of transitions restrict the firing, so that an transition may fire only if it has the highest priority of all enabled transitions. This concept is shown to be compatible with reconfigurable Petri nets.
Developing the UML as a Formal Modelling Notation
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is rapidly emerging as a de-facto standard for modelling OO systems. Given this role, it is imperative that the UML have a well- defined, fully explored semantics. Such semantics is required in order to ensure that UML concepts are precisely stated and defined. In this paper we describe and motivate an approach to formalizing UML in which formal specification techniques are used to gain insight into the semantics of UML notations and diagrams. We present work carried out by the Precise UML (PUML) group on the development of a precise semantic model for UML class diagrams. The semantic model is used as the basis for a set of diagrammatical transformation rules, which enable formal deductions to be made about UML class diagrams. It is also shown how these rules can be used to verify whether one class diagram is a valid refinement (design) of another. Because these rules are presented at the diagrammatical level, it will be argued that UML can be successfully used as a formal modelling tool without the notational complexities that are commonly found in formal specification techniques.
Rate-constrained Energy Services: Allocation Policies and Market Decisions
Venue: arXiv cs.SY 2014
Year: 2014

The integration of renewable generation poses operational and economic challenges for the electricity grid. For the core problem of power balance, the legacy paradigm of tailoring supply to follow random demand may be inappropriate under deep penetration of uncertain and intermittent renewable generation. In this situation, there is an emerging consensus that the alternative approach of controlling demand to follow random supply offers compelling economic benefits in terms of reduced regulation costs. This approach exploits the flexibility of demand side resources and requires sensing, actuation, and communication infrastructure; distributed control algorithms; and viable schemes to compensate participating loads. This paper considers rate-constrained energy services which are a specific paradigm for flexible demand. These services are characterized by a specified delivery window, the total amount of energy that must be supplied over this window, and the maximum rate at which this energy may be delivered. We consider a forward market where rate-constrained energy services are traded. We explore allocation policies and market decisions of a supplier in this market. The supplier owns a generation mix that includes some uncertain renewable generation and may also purchase energy in day-ahead and real-time markets to meet customer demand. The supplier must optimally select the portfolio of rate-constrained services to sell, the amount of day-ahead energy to buy, and the policies for making real-time energy purchases and allocations to customers to maximize its expected profit. We offer solutions to the supplier's decision and control problems to economically provide rate constrained energy services.
Semantically-Informed Syntactic Machine Translation: A Tree-Grafting Approach
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2014
Year: 2014

We describe a unified and coherent syntactic framework for supporting a semantically-informed syntactic approach to statistical machine translation. Semantically enriched syntactic tags assigned to the target-language training texts improved translation quality. The resulting system significantly outperformed a linguistically naive baseline model (Hiero), and reached the highest scores yet reported on the NIST 2009 Urdu-English translation task. This finding supports the hypothesis (posed by many researchers in the MT community, e.g., in DARPA GALE) that both syntactic and semantic information are critical for improving translation quality---and further demonstrates that large gains can be achieved for low-resource languages with different word order than English.
Software & Systems Engineering Process and Tools for the Development of Autonomous Driving Intelligence
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

When a large number of people with heterogeneous knowledge and skills run a project together, it is important to use a sensible engineering process. This especially holds for a project building an intelligent autonomously driving car to participate in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. In this article, we present essential elements of a software and system engineering process for the development of artificial intelligence capable of driving autonomously in complex urban situations. The process includes agile concepts, like test first approach, continuous integration of every software module and a reliable release and configuration management assisted by software tools in integrated development environments. However, the most important ingredients for an efficient and stringent development are the ability to efficiently test the behavior of the developed system in a flexible and modular simulator for urban situations.
Causal/Predictive Imperfect Channel State Information in Block-Fading Channels
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2014
Year: 2014

We consider a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) block-fading channel with a general model for channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). The model covers systems with causal CSIT, where only CSIT of past fading blocks is available, and predictive CSIT, where CSIT of some future fading blocks is available. The optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) and rate-diversity tradeoff (RDT) of the channel are studied under long-term power constraints. The impact of imperfect (mismatched) CSIT on the optimal DMT and RDT is also investigated. Our results show the outage diversity gain obtained by providing imperfect causal/predictive CSIT, leading to new insights into system design and analysis.
Deep Learning Representation using Autoencoder for 3D Shape Retrieval
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2014
Year: 2014

We study the problem of how to build a deep learning representation for 3D shape. Deep learning has shown to be very effective in variety of visual applications, such as image classification and object detection. However, it has not been successfully applied to 3D shape recognition. This is because 3D shape has complex structure in 3D space and there are limited number of 3D shapes for feature learning. To address these problems, we project 3D shapes into 2D space and use autoencoder for feature learning on the 2D images. High accuracy 3D shape retrieval performance is obtained by aggregating the features learned on 2D images. In addition, we show the proposed deep learning feature is complementary to conventional local image descriptors. By combing the global deep learning representation and the local descriptor representation, our method can obtain the state-of-the-art performance on 3D shape retrieval benchmarks.
Feature Specification and Refinement with State Transition Diagrams
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

In this paper, we introduce a graphic specification technique, called state transition diagrams (STD), and show the application to the feature interaction problem. Using a stream-based formal semantics, we provide refinement rules for STDs. Refinements define an implementation relation on STD specifications. We view features as particular refinements which add previously unspecified behavior to a given STD specification. The refinement relation is then used to add features, and to define the notion of conflicting features. Our techniques are demonstrated by a systematic development of an example given in [25].
A stream-based mathematical model for distributed information processing systems - SysLab system model
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

In the SysLab project we develop a software engineering method based on a mathematical foundation. The SysLab system model serves as an abstract mathematical model for information systems and their components. It is used to formalize the semantics of all used description techniques such as object diagrams state automata sequence charts or data-flow diagrams. Based on the requirements for such a reference model, we define the system model including its different views and their relationships.
Stepwise Refinement of Data Flow Architectures
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2014
Year: 2014

This paper aims at integrating heterogeneous documents used in pragmatic software develpoment methods to describe views with a formal refinement based software development process. Therefore we propose an integrated semantics of heterogeneous documents based on a common system model and a set of syntactic development steps with a welldefined semantics for document evolution. The use of the development steps is demonstrated in a small example.