Generic Fault Tolerant Software Architecture Reasoning and Customization
This paper proposes a novel heterogeneous software architecture GFTSA (Generic Fault Tolerant Software Architecture) which can guide the development of safety critical distributed systems. GFTSA incorporates an idealized fault tolerant component concept, and coordinated error recovery mechanism in the early system design phase. It can be reused in the high level model design of specific safety critical distributed systems with reliability requirements. To provide precise common idioms & patterns for the system designers, formal language Object-Z is used to specify GFTSA. Formal proofs based on Object-Z reasoning rules are constructed to demonstrate that the proposed GFTSA model can preserve significant fault tolerant properties. The inheritance & instantiation mechanisms of Object-Z can contribute to the customization of the GFTSA formal model. By analyzing the customization process, we also present a template of GFTSA, expressed in x-frames using the XVCL (XML-based Variant Configuration Language) methodology to make the customization process more direct & automatic. We use an LDAS (Line Direction Agreement System) case study to illustrate that GFTSA can guide the development of specific safety critical distributed systems

title: A Z Approach in Validating ORA-SS Data Models
abstract: The rapid growth of the World Wide Web has resulted in more data being accessed over the Internet. In turn there is an increase in the use of semistructured data, which plays a crucial role in many web applications particularly with the introduction of XML and its related technologies. This increase in use makes the design of good semistructured data structures essential. The Object Relationship Attribute model for Semistructured data (ORA-SS) is a graphical notation for designing and representing semistructured data. In this paper, we demonstrate an approach to formally validate the ORA-SS data models in order to enhance the correctness of semistructured data design. A mathematical semantics for the ORA-SS notation is defined using the Z formal language, and further validation processes are carried out to check the correctness of the semistructured data models at both the schema and instance levels.

title: XML-Based Static Type Checking and Dynamic Visualization for TCOZ
abstract: Timed Communicating Object Z(TCOZ) combines Object-Z's strengths in modelling complex data and state with TCSP's strengths in modeling real-time concurrency. Based on our previous work on the XML environment for TCOZ, this paper firstly demonstrates the development of a type checker for detecting static semantic errors of the TCOZ specification, then illustrates a transformation tool to automatically project TCOZ models into UML statechart diagrams for visualising the dynamic system behaviour.

title: Validating Semistructured Data Using OWL
abstract: Semistructured data has become prevalent in both web applications and database systems. This rapid growth in use makes the design of good semistructured data essential. Formal semantics and automated reasoning tools enable us to reveal the inconsistencies in a semistructured data model and its instances. The Object Relationship Attribute model for Semistructured data (ORA-SS) is a graphical notation for designing and representing semistructured data. This paper presents a methodology of encoding the semantics of ORA-SS in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and automatically validating the semistructured data design using the OWL reasoning tool – RACER. Our methodology provides automated consistency checking of an ORA-SS data model at both the schema and instance levels.

title: Object-Z web environment and projections to UML
abstract: This paper presents the XML/XSL approach to the development of a web environment for the formal speci cation language Object-Z. The projection techniques and tools from Object-Z (in XML) to UML (in XMI) are developed using XSL Transformations (XSLT). Furthermore, Object-Z (itself) is used to specify and design the essential functionalities of the web environment and the projection tools to UML. In a sense, the paper also demonstrates a formal approach to modeling web applications.

title: A tools environment for developing and reasoning about ontologies
abstract: Started in the beginning of 2001, the semantic Web is regarded by many as the next generation of the Web. Ontology languages are the building blocks of semantic Web as they provide basic vocabularies for data markups: the ontologies. The correctness of shared ontologies is crucial to the proper functioning of agents. Hence ensuring the consistency of ontologies is a central issue in both the design and deployment phases of any semantic Web-aware application. Our experiences show that semantic Web is a novel and fruitful application domain for formal languages and their mature reasoning tool support. In order to ease the application of formal methods and tools to the semantic Web, we developed an integrated tools environment to support systematic development of OWL ontologies and then transformation, reasoning assistance and querying of them.

title: A Data Mining Based Intrusion Detection Model
abstract: Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) have become a critical part of security systems. The goal of an intrusion detection system is to block intrusion effectively and accurately. However, the performance of IDS is not satisfying. In this paper, we study the issue of building a data mining based intrusion detection model to raise the detection performance. The key ideas are to use data mining techniques to discover consistent and useful patterns for intrusion and use the set of patterns to recognize intrusion. By applying statistics inference theory to this model, the patterns mined from a set of test data are effective to detect the attacks in the same category, and therefore can detect most novel attacks that are variants of known attacks.

title: Indexing and Retrieval of Historical Aggregate Information about Moving Objects
abstract: Spatio-temporal databases store information about the positions of individual objects over time. In many applications however, such as traffic supervision or mobile communication systems, only summarized data, like the average number of cars in an area for a specific period, or phones serviced by a cell each day, is required. Although this information can be obtained from operational databases, its computation is expensive, rendering online processing inapplicable. A vital solution is the construction of a spatiotemporal data warehouse. In this paper, we describe a framework for supporting OLAP operations over spatiotemporal data. We argue that the spatial and temporal dimensions should be modeled as a combined dimension on the data cube and present data structures, which integrate spatiotemporal indexing with pre-aggregation. While the well-known materialization techniques require a-priori knowledge of the grouping hierarchy, we develop methods that utilize the proposed structures for efficient execution of ad-hoc group-bys. Our techniques can be used for both static and dynamic dimensions.

title: Fault-tolerant grid architecture and practice
abstract: Grid computing emerges as effective technologies to couple geographically distributed resources and solve large-scale computational problems in wide area networks. The fault tolerance is a significant and complex issue in grid computing systems. Various techniques have been investigated to detect and correct faults in distributed computing systems. Unreliable fault detection is one of the most effective techniques. Globus as a grid middleware manages resources in a wide area network. The Globus fault detection service uses the well-known techniques based on unreliable fault detectors to detect and report component failures. However, more powerful techniques are required to detect and correct both system-level and application-level faults in a grid system, and a convenient toolkit is also needed to maintain the consistency in the grid. A fault-tolerant grid platform (FTGP) based on an unreliable fault detector and the Globus fault detection service is presented in this paper. The platform offers effective strategies in such three aspects as grid key components, user tasks, and high-level applications.

title: Lazy snapping
abstract: In this paper, we present Lazy Snapping, an interactive image cutout tool. Lazy Snapping separates coarse and fine scale processing, making object specification and detailed adjustment easy. Moreover, Lazy Snapping provides instant visual feedback, snapping the cutout contour to the true object boundary efficiently despite the presence of ambiguous or low contrast edges. Instant feedback is made possible by a novel image segmentation algorithm which combines graph cut with pre-computed over-segmentation. A set of intuitive user interface (UI) tools is designed and implemented to provide flexible control and editing for the users. Usability studies indicate that Lazy Snapping provides a better user experience and produces better segmentation results than the state-of-the-art interactive image cutout tool, Magnetic Lasso in Adobe Photoshop.

title: Bounding completion times of jobs with arbitrary release times and variable execution times
abstract: In many real-time systems, the workload can be characterized as a set of jobs with linear precedence constraints among them. Jobs often have variable execution times and arbitrary release times. We describe three algorithms that can be used to compute upper bounds on completion times of such jobs scheduled on a priority-driven basis. The algorithms have different performance and complexity. Simulation was performed to compare their performance.