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
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
Achieving Tailored Industrial Software Process Improvement with Experience Repositories and Electronic Process Guides. There is a well-recognised need for organisations to improve their software development processes in order to achieve higher software quality and greater efficiencies in development. The use of electronic process guides and experience repositories have been two technologies independently proposed to achieve these aims. This research will develop a framework, methods and tools ....Achieving Tailored Industrial Software Process Improvement with Experience Repositories and Electronic Process Guides. There is a well-recognised need for organisations to improve their software development processes in order to achieve higher software quality and greater efficiencies in development. The use of electronic process guides and experience repositories have been two technologies independently proposed to achieve these aims. This research will develop a framework, methods and tools to allow integration of experience repositories and electronic process guides to facilitate process tailoring, process improvement, and project management. The result will be significant improvements in software development productivity and quality.Read moreRead less
Viewable Measures for Component-Based Software Engineering. Software costs over US$300 billion per year worldwide with around 70% of large projects failing to complete in time. Reliable estimation of development effort is a great challenge in Software Engineering. This project aims to develop a reliable multi-dimensional software size measure and an effort estimation model for a new method of development called component based software engineering. We will validate our results theoretically and ....Viewable Measures for Component-Based Software Engineering. Software costs over US$300 billion per year worldwide with around 70% of large projects failing to complete in time. Reliable estimation of development effort is a great challenge in Software Engineering. This project aims to develop a reliable multi-dimensional software size measure and an effort estimation model for a new method of development called component based software engineering. We will validate our results theoretically and test it against empirical data from software industry. We will provide novel visualization techniques to comprehend measurements of large systems. The outcomes will help software projects better estimate deadlines and budgets thus reducing costs significantly.Read moreRead less
Eat and Dream: effective automatic testing and debugging for real-life embedded wireless communications software. Embedded software is a key enabling technology for the majority of Australian manufacturing industries, including strategically important sectors such as the automotive industry. Embedded wireless communication technologies are playing an increasingly significant role in Australia with a wide range of critical applications ranging from natural disaster early warning to personal healt ....Eat and Dream: effective automatic testing and debugging for real-life embedded wireless communications software. Embedded software is a key enabling technology for the majority of Australian manufacturing industries, including strategically important sectors such as the automotive industry. Embedded wireless communication technologies are playing an increasingly significant role in Australia with a wide range of critical applications ranging from natural disaster early warning to personal health monitoring. Embedded wireless communications software, however, is difficult to test and debug owing to the complexity of the operational environment and complications arising from the interplay between software and hardware. This project will develop an effective and automatic technology to alleviate these difficulties and achieve higher quality software.Read moreRead less
A Generic Software Architecture for Web-Based Applications on Micro-Mobile Systems. The next generation of computers that will capture the imagination of the society are likely to be micro-mobile devices such as personal digital assistants, mobile phones, smartcards and chips embedded in home and office items. Developing applications for information processing using a wireless network of such devices is an emerging challenge. This project will develop and evaluate a generic architecture for web- ....A Generic Software Architecture for Web-Based Applications on Micro-Mobile Systems. The next generation of computers that will capture the imagination of the society are likely to be micro-mobile devices such as personal digital assistants, mobile phones, smartcards and chips embedded in home and office items. Developing applications for information processing using a wireless network of such devices is an emerging challenge. This project will develop and evaluate a generic architecture for web-based applications on micro-mobile devices. This will make it easy to design applications that can seamlessly interact with different kinds of devices. The project will be carried out in partnership with Total Internet Centre, a Newcastle based regional enterprise.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
Visual analytics for massive multivariate networks. Visual analytics for massive multivariate networks. This project aims to create methods to visually analyse massive multivariate networks. The amount of network data available has exploded in recent years: software systems, social networks and biological systems have millions of nodes and billions of edges with multivariate attributes. Their size and complexity makes these data sets hard to exploit. More efficient ways to understand the data ar ....Visual analytics for massive multivariate networks. Visual analytics for massive multivariate networks. This project aims to create methods to visually analyse massive multivariate networks. The amount of network data available has exploded in recent years: software systems, social networks and biological systems have millions of nodes and billions of edges with multivariate attributes. Their size and complexity makes these data sets hard to exploit. More efficient ways to understand the data are needed. This project will design, implement and evaluate visualisation methods for massive multivariate network data sets. This research is expected to be used by Australian software development, biotechnology and security companies to exploit their data.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