Modelling and Simulation Based Design
Winter Term 2005 COMP 762B (CRN 5879)

• Lecturer: Prof. Hans Vangheluwe
• TA: Amaranth Wei He
• Office hours: McConnell 328, Monday 16:00 - 18:00.
• Course venue: McConnell 320, Monday 10:00 - 11:30 and Wednesday 10:30 - 12:00.
• Prerequisites: COMP 522 " Modelling and Simulation".

  For those who have not taken this course, a test will be given on some of the COMP 522 subjects (Petri Nets and Statecharts). Notes will be made available upon request.

• The 2005 Incarnation of this course is similar to the 2004 version.
  Have a look at the 2004 website.

The course

Goals

The purpose of this course is to look at the State of The Art in Modelling and Simulation on the one hand and Software (and to a far lesser extent Hardware) Design on the other hand. The goal is to get some insight into the development of truly complex systems. The focus will be on the use of multiple modelling formalisms and their interrelationships to study and design such complex systems. We will study meta-modelling extensively in this context. In the software realm, we will study the recent evolutions of the Unified Modelling Language (UML) and how the UML fits in the broader context of computer-automated multi-paradigm modelling and simulation (CAMPaM).

Method and Evaluation

The course will study research publications in the literature. You should be capable of independent, critical reading. Students will be expected to give two presentations, and to evaluate the other presentations.
The presentations should be prepared in an electronic form that can be used to create an online resource. The first presentation reviews work from the literature. The second presentation presents the result of a small research project which builds on the material you have studied.
You will be evaluated on your presentation, your presentation evaluations (how well you understood other presentations), and your project.

You will also be graded on your work during in-class tutorials (building for example a small modelling environment using meta-modelling and graph rewriting).

Warning: you will have to learn Python on your own and use the AToM3 meta-modelling tool.

Announcements

Presentations

Presentation evaluation form [pdf] [txt] (please submit via e-mail no later than one day after the presentation).

Resources

The Unified Modeling Language UML (and its consistency problems)

• Perdita Stevens. The Unified Modelling Language. ETAPS 2000 tutorial [pdf].
• <<UML 2002>> workshop on Consistency Problems in UML-based Software Development.
• <<UML 2003>> workshop on Consistency Problems in UML-based Software Development.
• Karsten Hoelscher and Bjoern Cordes. UML Interaction Diagrams: Correct translation of Sequence Diagrams into Collaboration Diagrams" thesis. University of Bremen, Department of Computer Science. 2003.

Statecharts and beyond

• David Harel. Statecharts: A Visual Formalism for Complex Systems. Science of Computer Programming. Volume 8. 1987. pp. 231 - 274. [pdf].
• David Harel. On Visual Formalisms. Communications of the ACM. Volume 31, No. 5. 1988. pp. 514 - 530. [pdf].
• David Harel and Amnon Naamad, The STATEMATE semantics of statecharts. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) Volume 5 , Issue 4 (October 1996) pp.293 - 333. [pdf].
• Bran Selic's presentation (Montreal, 7 March 2003)
  Preview of UML 2.0 and MDA. [pdf] demonstrates the introduction of connectors and ports in UML 2.0 to enhance modularity.
• A report on "Executable UML" (with a chat program example, using UML 2.0 constructs in Telelogic's Tau tool) by Geir Melby of Agder University College. [pdf].
• DCharts introduced in Thomas Feng's M.Sc. thesis: Modelling and Simulation with DCharts, a Modular and Expressive Formalism.
• Michael von der Beeck. A structured operational semantics for UML-statecharts. Software and Systems Modeling. Volume 1, No. 2 pp.130 - 141 . December 2002. [pdf].
• David Harel. Can Behavioral Requirements be Executed ? [ps]. Introduces Play-in/Play-out.
• David Harel and Hillel Kugler. Synthesizing state-based object systems from LSC specifications. International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science, Vol. 13, No.1. 2002. pp. 5-51. World Scientific Publishing Company. [ps].
• David Harel and Rami Marelly. Specifying and Executing Behavioral Requirements: The Play-In/Play-Out Approach [pdf]. Software and Systems Modeling. Volume 2, Number 2. July 2003. pp. 82 - 107.

Multi-Paradigm Modelling

• Hans L. Vangheluwe, Juan de Lara, and Pieter J. Mosterman. An introduction to multi-paradigm modelling and simulation. In Fernando Barros and Norbert Giambiasi, editors, Proceedings of the AIS'2002 Conference (AI, Simulation and Planning in High Autonomy Systems), pages 9 -- 20, April 2002. Lisboa, Portugal. [paper (pdf)].
• Hans L. Vangheluwe, Juan de Lara, and Ghislain C. Vansteenkiste. A software architecture for multi-paradigm modelling. 4th Middle East Symposium on Simulation and Modelling. Society for Computer Simulation International, September 2002. Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. [keynote presentation (pdf)].
• ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (TOMACS). Special Issue on Computer Automated Multi-paradigm Modeling.
• Jonathan Sprinkle's course at UC Berkeley on Model-Integrated Computing.

Meta-modelling

• Colin Atkinson and Thomas Kuhne. Rearchitecting the UML infrastructure [pdf]. ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (TOMACS). Volume 12, Issue 4. pp 290 - 321. October 2002.
• Daniel Varro and Andras Pataricza. VPM: A visual, precise and multilevel metamodeling framework for describing mathematical domains and UML (The Mathematics of Metamodeling is Metamodeling Mathematics) [pdf]. Software and Systems Modeling. Volume 2, No. 3 pp. 187 - 210. October 2003.

Graph Transformation

• L. Baresi and R. Heckel, Tutorial Introduction to Graph Transformation: A Software Engineering Perspective. In Corradini, A.,H. Ehrig, H.-J. Kreowski und G. Rozenberg (Editors): Proc. 1st Int. Conference on Graph Transformation (ICGT 02), Barcelona, Spain, Volume 2505 of Lecture Notes in Comp. Science. Springer-Verlag, Oktober 2002. [ps].
• L. Baresi and R. Heckel, Foundations and Applications of Graph Transformation: An introduction from a software engineering perspective. [presentation (pdf)].
• D. Blostein, H. Fahmy and A. Grbavec, Practical Use of Graph Rewriting [pdf].

Meta-modelling and Graph Transformation in AToM³

• AToM³, A Tool for Multi-formalism, Meta-Modelling.
• PacMan.tgz
• Atom3_2.2.minimal.tgz (Queueing formalism).
• AToM3-Traffic.tgz.

Model Driven Architecture

• The OMG's MDA pages.
• Anneke Kleppe, Jos Warmer, Wim Bast. MDA Explained: The Model Driven Architecture--Practice and Promise. (a high-level introduction). [Amazon].
• Bran Selic's presentation (Montreal, 7 March 2003)
  "Preview of UML 2.0 and MDA". [pdf]
• U2 partners' April 2003 "UML 2.0 Superstructure" [pdf] [xmi] [petal(rose)].
• Mapping a UML Platform Independent Model onto an ASP.NET web application. Presentation (McGill, 9 April 2003) by Michel Brassard from Codagen. [pdf]

Refactoring

• The refactoring home page.
• The refactoring catalog.

Miscellaneous interesting links

• The Software and Systems Modeling journal.
• student project reports from Agder University College.

Maintained by Hans Vangheluwe. February 2005.