A framework for modelling feature variability and dependencies in software product lines. In most Australian software development organisations software products are developed individually rather than product line based. This project will promote the awareness of product line based software development and provide a frontier technology, the effective feature modelling approaches, to help Australian software industry transform from the single product based development to the product line based de ....A framework for modelling feature variability and dependencies in software product lines. In most Australian software development organisations software products are developed individually rather than product line based. This project will promote the awareness of product line based software development and provide a frontier technology, the effective feature modelling approaches, to help Australian software industry transform from the single product based development to the product line based development to achieve significant improvement on the productivity and the quality of the software development. This improvement will dramatically reduce the cost of software products and alleviate the pressure of skill shortage that currently threatens Australian economy.Read moreRead less
Provably Correct on-chip Communication-based Design. This project falls in the priority area of Frontier Technologies for Building and Transforming Australian Industries. Embedded systems have complex communication architectures and functionalities due to their mission- and time-critical applications. This project will develop verifiable algorithms and techniques for design reuse to address them, help solve outstanding problems in the VLSI/SoC community and to lift the country's visibility and ....Provably Correct on-chip Communication-based Design. This project falls in the priority area of Frontier Technologies for Building and Transforming Australian Industries. Embedded systems have complex communication architectures and functionalities due to their mission- and time-critical applications. This project will develop verifiable algorithms and techniques for design reuse to address them, help solve outstanding problems in the VLSI/SoC community and to lift the country's visibility and credibility in the area. The economic benefits are better techniques for design reuse for embedded systems that may be integrated into existing Computer Aided Design environments, with potential to commercialise the algorithms to Electronic Design Automation and vendors.Read moreRead less
Fault-tolerant CORBA-based distributed systems. The focus of this research is Fault-Tolerant CORBA-based Distributed Systems. An implementation of the CORBA Fault Tolerance specification will be produced and evaluated against performance, interoperability and compliance criteria. A model for the management of degradation behaviour in distributed systems will be developed and an implementation produced. Novel algorithms, models and approaches to fault tolerance and degradation management will be ....Fault-tolerant CORBA-based distributed systems. The focus of this research is Fault-Tolerant CORBA-based Distributed Systems. An implementation of the CORBA Fault Tolerance specification will be produced and evaluated against performance, interoperability and compliance criteria. A model for the management of degradation behaviour in distributed systems will be developed and an implementation produced. Novel algorithms, models and approaches to fault tolerance and degradation management will be developed. Convincing demonstration applications will be produced to illustrate the widespread relevance of fault-tolerant and degradable systems to real-world domains such as telecommunications, commercial systems and defence.Read moreRead less
Redesigning Typesetting for the Digital Age: Multilingual Layout on Multiple Media. We propose to create and develop a new model for character-level automatic typesetting, much more flexible than existing approaches. This model will support quality typesetting of all of the modern - and many ancient - languages and scripts, on media such as paper, computer screen, paper maps and online maps, for regular and safety-critical applications.
The fundamental innovations in this proposal are the us ....Redesigning Typesetting for the Digital Age: Multilingual Layout on Multiple Media. We propose to create and develop a new model for character-level automatic typesetting, much more flexible than existing approaches. This model will support quality typesetting of all of the modern - and many ancient - languages and scripts, on media such as paper, computer screen, paper maps and online maps, for regular and safety-critical applications.
The fundamental innovations in this proposal are the use of a tree-structured parameter space (generalization of Unix environment variables) and a multiple-pass approach to typesetting (as used in compilers). These innovative techniques will be integrated into computer software used worldwide.Read moreRead less
Design-Driven Requirements for Internet-Enabled System Development. The nature of Web system development is significantly different from conventional, software and IT development. Amongst other factors, there is substantial uncertainty in both clients' understanding of their needs and developers' understanding of the systems domain. We will develop an uncertainty model relevant to the development model relevant to the development of internet-enabled systems, and then use this model to adapt th ....Design-Driven Requirements for Internet-Enabled System Development. The nature of Web system development is significantly different from conventional, software and IT development. Amongst other factors, there is substantial uncertainty in both clients' understanding of their needs and developers' understanding of the systems domain. We will develop an uncertainty model relevant to the development model relevant to the development of internet-enabled systems, and then use this model to adapt the design process to support elicitation of requirements, as well as developing support for this adapted process. This will facilitate the development of systems that more accurately reflect clients' needs, and result in an understanding of what would be involved in reducing development costs.Read moreRead less
Supporting co-evolution of business processes and Web systems. This research will provide significant benefit to the Australian Internet and e-commerce industries (valued by the ABS as in excess of $11b/year). It will result in improved products that better satisfy specific business needs (and hence improved competitiveness in a global market). Development cycles will shorten (as the likelihood of redevelopment decreases) and costs of development will fall. Finally, the models and tools to be ....Supporting co-evolution of business processes and Web systems. This research will provide significant benefit to the Australian Internet and e-commerce industries (valued by the ABS as in excess of $11b/year). It will result in improved products that better satisfy specific business needs (and hence improved competitiveness in a global market). Development cycles will shorten (as the likelihood of redevelopment decreases) and costs of development will fall. Finally, the models and tools to be developed will facilitate the transition of traditional organisations into the new economy, as the outcomes of this research will provide a transparent cost-effective approach for identifying and clarifying the evolving business domain and the requirements of companies.Read moreRead less
Intelligent Model Checking. Real-world systems are typically so complex that software engineers require specialised CAD tools to debug and verify a design. Model checking is a formal method that is used extensively for this purpose, particularly for mission-critical systems. In this work, a new kind of verifying tool, based on model checking, is developed. This new model checker is intelligent because a heuristic search is integrated into the underlying formalism. It is not exhaustive, and is mo ....Intelligent Model Checking. Real-world systems are typically so complex that software engineers require specialised CAD tools to debug and verify a design. Model checking is a formal method that is used extensively for this purpose, particularly for mission-critical systems. In this work, a new kind of verifying tool, based on model checking, is developed. This new model checker is intelligent because a heuristic search is integrated into the underlying formalism. It is not exhaustive, and is more efficient than a traditional model checker during the design phase because it does only a minimum amount of work in its search for a fault.Read moreRead less
An Integrative and Interactive Approach for Co-estimation of Multiple Sequence Alignment and Phylogeny Reconstruction. In this project innovative IT methods will be developed to assist biologists to solve complex and important biological problems. Many important applications in computational biology need very accurate and reliable tools for multiple sequence alignment and phylogeny reconstruction. Unfortunately, current existing tools are unreliable and are prone to serious errors when applied t ....An Integrative and Interactive Approach for Co-estimation of Multiple Sequence Alignment and Phylogeny Reconstruction. In this project innovative IT methods will be developed to assist biologists to solve complex and important biological problems. Many important applications in computational biology need very accurate and reliable tools for multiple sequence alignment and phylogeny reconstruction. Unfortunately, current existing tools are unreliable and are prone to serious errors when applied to large and divergent biological sequences. The success of this project will not only make significant contribution to the relevant research fields, but also help achieve goals in certain real-life biological research projects which are unique and important to Australia.Read moreRead less
Managing Knowledge in Web-Driven Organisational Evolution. Organisations are increasingly concerned with the effective utilisation of Web technologies, and especially the ways in which these technologies can be used to improve their business. Effective management of knowledge about the interplay between the organisation and technical drivers of this technology adoption will enable a much-enhanced process for leveraging emerging information and communication technologies. This project aims to li ....Managing Knowledge in Web-Driven Organisational Evolution. Organisations are increasingly concerned with the effective utilisation of Web technologies, and especially the ways in which these technologies can be used to improve their business. Effective management of knowledge about the interplay between the organisation and technical drivers of this technology adoption will enable a much-enhanced process for leveraging emerging information and communication technologies. This project aims to link related research at UTS and Southampton University to understand how tools might support this knowledge management. Outcomes will include the creation of specific tools (and techniques for using them) within the context of managing organisational uptake of new technologies.Read moreRead less
Formalising and automating the elicitation and reconciliation of requirements from multiple stakeholders. It is well recognised that requirements specifications are often error-prone and that it is much cheaper to detect and fix these errors early in the software development life cycle than later. A major problem with requirements determination is that each and every stakeholder has his/her own representation of the enterprise reality. This project seeks to take these views and use set-theore ....Formalising and automating the elicitation and reconciliation of requirements from multiple stakeholders. It is well recognised that requirements specifications are often error-prone and that it is much cheaper to detect and fix these errors early in the software development life cycle than later. A major problem with requirements determination is that each and every stakeholder has his/her own representation of the enterprise reality. This project seeks to take these views and use set-theoretical techniques from Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) to automatically generate and compare the underlying conceptual models. A process model based on FCA has been proposed which we will extend and empirically evaluate in this project. The result will be a more rigorous and yet pragmatic approach to requirements engineering which offers the greatest economic leverage.Read moreRead less