Model-Based Detection of Emergent Behavior in Distributed Systems using an ontology-based approach

Lack of central control makes the design of distributed software systems a challenging task because of possible unwanted behavior at runtime, commonly known as emergent behavior. In fact many faults are introduced into the system at this stage of the software development life cycle. Therefore discovering and removing design validation of distributed software systems prior to the implementation phase is greatly desirable as it results in huge savings in time and cost. Developing methodologies to detect emergent behavior prior to the implementation stage of the system can lead to huge savings in time and cost. However manual review of requirements and design documents for real-life systems is inefficient and error prone; thus automation of analysis methodologies is considered greatly beneficial. This paper proposes the utilization of an ontology based approach to analyze system requirements expressed by a set of message sequence charts (MSC). This methodology involves building a domain-specific ontology of the system, and examines the requirements based on this ontology. The advantages of this approach in comparison with other methodologies are its consistency and increased level of automation.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Behrouz H. Far

Student:

Mohammad Moshirpour

Partner:

SoftAlive Inc.

Discipline:

Engineering - computer / electrical

Sector:

Information and communications technologies

University:

University of Calgary