Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems

Announcements

The (written) theory exam takes place on Monday 26 January 2015, 09:00 -- 12:00 in M.G.005. Use of your notes or other materials such as laptops is not allowed (aka "closed book").

Here is a list of Exam Topics/Questions

The course will make extensive use of the object-oriented programming language Python. We will advise you to prepare for this course by learning the language, if you don't already know it.

A useful tutorial can be found at: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/

The course will be taught

08:30 - 10:30 on Monday
10:45 - 12:45 on Thursday

During these session theory (during most of the term) in M.G.004, lab in M.G.025 when appropriate, and some oral evaluation sessions (M.G.317, M.G.330, ...) are planned.

Schedule (gets updated as the semester progresses)

Week	Date	Type	Room	Subject
1	Monday 22 September 08:30 -- 10:30			No class
1	Thursday 25 September 10:45 -- 12:45			Academic opening and Studay - no class (moved to Friday)
1	Friday 26 September 16:00 -- 18:00	Theory	G.016	Course introduction: goals, structure, evaluation, planning, Python! Causes of complexity, Software Intensive Systems
2	Monday 29 September 08:30 -- 10:30			No class (moved to Friday)
2	Thursday 2 October 10:45 -- 12:45	Theory	G.004	UML notations: Class Diagrams, Sequence Diagrams, Regular Expressions, FSA
2		Assignment	G.004	UML notations -- assignment #1
2	Friday 3 October 16:00 -- 18:00	Theory	G.016	The structure of modelling languages
3	Monday 6 October 08:30 -- 10:30	Theory	G.004	No class
3	Thursday 9 October 10:45 -- 12:45	Theory	G.004	No class
3	Sunday 12 October	Deadline		Assignment 1: Requirements Checking
4	Monday 13 October 08:30 -- 10:30	Theory	G.004	Algebraic Causal Block Diagrams (un-timed), loop detection and solving
4	Thursday 16 October 10:45 -- 11:45	Theory	G.004	Discrete-Time Causal Block Diagrams
4		Assignment	G.004	Alg+DT CBD -- assignment #2
4	Thursday 16 October 11:45 -- 12:45 ++	Oral Evaluation	G.317	Assignment 1: Requirements Checking
5	Monday 20 October 08:30 -- 10:30	Theory	G.004	Continuous-Time Causal Block Diagrams
5		Assignment	G.004	CT CBD -- assignment #3
5	Thursday 23 October 10:45 -- 12:45	Theory	G.004	Petri Nets
5	Sunday 26 October	Deadline		Assignment 2: Algebraic and Discrete-Time CBDs
6	Monday 27 October 08:30 -- 10:30	Theory	G.004	No class
6	Thursday 30 October 10:45 -- 12:45	Theory	G.004	Petri nets
6	Sunday 2 November	Deadline		Assignment 3: Continuous-Time CBD
7	Monday 3 November 08:30 -- 10:30	Theory	G.004	Petri nets (analysis), the tool pipe2
7		Assignment	G.004	Petri nets -- assignment #4
7	Thursday 6 November 10:45 -- 12:45	Theory	G.004	Higraphs and Statecharts
8	Monday 10 November 08:30 -- 10:30			No class
8	Thursday 13 November 09:45 -- 15:30	Oral Evaluation	G.028	Assignments 2 and 3: Algebraic, Discrete-Time and Continuous-Time CBDs
8	Thursday 13 November 11:45 -- 12:45	Theory	G.004	Statecharts
8	Sunday 16 November	Deadline		Assignment 4: Petri Nets
9	Monday 17 November 08:30 -- 10:30	Theory	G.004	Statecharts
9	Thursday 20 November 10:45 -- 12:45	Theory	G.004	Discrete-Event World Views: Event Scheduling, Activity Scanning Gathering statistics
10	Monday 24 November 08:30 -- 10:30	Assignment	G.025	Statecharts hands-on, assignment #5
10	Thursday 27 November 10:45 -- 12:45	Theory	G.004	Atomic DEVS
11	Monday 1 December 08:30 -- 10:30	Theory	G.004	Coupled DEVS (flattening)
11		Assignment	G.004	DEVS -- assignment #6
11	Thursday 4 December 10:45 -- 12:45	Oral Evaluation	G.317	Assignment 4: Petri nets
10	Sunday 7 December	Deadline		Assignment 5: Statecharts
12	Monday 8 December 08:30 -- 10:30	Theory	G.004	Systems Theory
12	Thursday 11 December 10:45 -- 12:45	Theory	G.004	Population Dynamics and Forrester System Dynamics Course overview: how it all fits together Exam questions
12	Sunday 14 December	Deadline		Assignment 6: DEVS
13	Monday 15 December 08:30 -- 10:30	Theory	G.004	No class
13	Thursday 18 December 10:45 -- 12:45	Oral Evaluation	G.330	Assignments 5 and 6: Statecharts and DEVS
	TBA	Theory Exam	G.005	Selected Topics

Lectures

Overview

presentation [pdf]

Modelling and Simulation to Tackle Complexity

presentation [pdf] exploring the causes of complexity.

Modelling and Simulation Foundations: Systems Specification

presentation [pdf]

notes [pdf]

Formalisms: Causal Block Diagrams (CBDs)

Analog computers and CSMP [pdf]

CSMP: Robert D. Brennan: Digital simulation for control system design. DAC. New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, May 16-19, 1966. [pdf]

(old) Blackboard Scribbles.

Topological Sorting and Strong Component algorithms.

Lecture on Algebraic and Discrete-Time CBDs [video].

Lecture on Continuous-Time CBDs [video].

Note: the above are not recordings of this year's class, but rather of an older version of the course, with the same content however.

Formalisms: Petri Nets

presentation[pdf]

Christos G. Cassandras. Discrete Event Systems. Irwin, 1993. Chapters 4, 5. [pdf (MoSIS access only)].

Carl Adam Petri. Kommunikation mit Automaten. 1962. (this is Petri's doctoral dissertation).

Tadao Murata. Petri nets: Properties, analysis and applications. Proceedings of the IEEE, 77(4):541-580, April 1989.

James L. Peterson. Petri Net Theory and the Modeling of Systems. Prentice Hall, 1981.

Formalisms: Statecharts

Higraphs presentation[pdf]. Statecharts presentation[pdf].

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] [pdf (MoSIS access only)].

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] [pdf (MoSIS access only)].

D. Harel and M. Politi. Modeling Reactive Systems with Statecharts: The STATEMATE Approach. McGraw-Hill, 1998. (available online).

David Harel and Hillel Kugler. The Rhapsody Semantics of Statecharts (or, On the Executable Core of the UML). Springer, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3147. 2004. pp. 325 - 354. [pdf]

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].

The digital watch assignment (not an assignment this year).

Assignments

Checking requirements using Sequence Diagrams and Trace Matches of a chat room.
Causal Block Diagrams (un-timed, discrete-time).
Causal Block Diagrams (continuous-time).
Petri net modelling and analysis of a chat room.
Statecharts modelling, simulation, synthesis, and testing of a chat room.
DEVS modelling and simulation for performance analysis of a networked chat room.

These assignments will be completed in groups of two students (optionally alone). Your solutions should be submitted to Blackboard. During the evaluation moments (see schedule), you will clarify your solution individually.

Oral Evaluation Assignment 1: Requirements Checking

Date: 16 October 2014

Place: G.317 (Bart Meyers' office, 3rd floor)

Jeroen De Busser and Thomas Pinna	10:20
Nicolas Demarbaix	10:30
Ahmad Othman	12:10
Bozhidara Ognyanova Ivanova	12:20
Ruben Mennes and Eveline Ververs	12:30
Jens Smits	12:40
Joeri Reyns and Joran Dox	17:00
Sara Sali	17:20
Michael Deckers and Yves Maris	17:30
Brent van Bladel and Matthias Verstappen	17:40
Hannu Viinikainen	17:50
Konstantinos Theodorakos	18:00
Tihon Tomic	18:10
Bart Cools	18:20
Andrea Zaccara and Addis Alemayehu Gebremichael	18:30
Glenn Van de Water	18:40
Zdenek Rosa and Marek Svepes	18:50

Oral Evaluation Assignment 2-3: Causal Block Diagrams

Date: 13 November 2014

Place: G.017 (ground floor)

Jens Smits	09:45
Michael Deckers + Yves Maris	10:00
Thomas Pinna + Jeroen De Busser	10:15
Sari Sali + Bozhidara Ognyanova	10:45
Ruben Mennes + Eveline Ververs	11:00
Ahmad Othman	11:15
Glenn Vandewater	11:30
Bart Cools + Nicolas Demarbaix	13:15
Hannu Viikainen	13:30
Joran Dox + Joeri Reyns	13:45
Konstantinos Theodorakos	14:00
Marek Svepes + Rosa Zdenek	14:30
Matthias Verstappen + Brent Van Bladel	14:45
Andrea Zaccara + Addis Alemayehu Gebremichael	15:30
Tihon Tomic	16:00

Oral Evaluation Assignment 4: Petri nets

Date: 4 December 2014

Place: G.317 (Bart Meyers' office, 3rd floor)

Ahmad Othman and Tihon Tomic	10:30
Andrea Zaccara	10:40
Brent van Bladel and Matthias Verstappen	11:00
Glenn Van de Water	11:10
Hannu Viinikainen	11:20
Jens Smits	11:30
Jeroen Debusser and Thomas Pinna	11:40
Joran Dox and Joeri Reyns	12:00
Konstantinos Theodorakos	12:10
Michael Deckers and Yves Maris	12:20
Ruben Mennes and Eveline Ververs	12:30
Sara Sali and Bozhidara Ognyanova	12:40
Zdenek Rosa and Marek Svepes	13:00
Nicolas Demarbaix and Bart Cools	13:10
Addis Alemayehu Gebremichael	13:20

Oral Evaluation Assignment 5-6: Statecharts & DEVS

Date: 18 December 2014

Place: G.330 (Yentl Van Tendeloo's office, 3rd floor)

Thomas Pinna	8:50
Brent van Bladel	9:00
Konstantinos Theodorakos	9:10
Eveline Ververs	9:20
Jens Smits	9:30
Addis Alemayehu Gebremichael	9:40
Jeroen De Busser	9:50
Matthias Verstappen	10:00
Tihon Tomic	10:10
Joran Dox	10:20
Rosa Zdenek	10:40
Andrea Zaccara	10:50
Bozhidara Ivanova	11:00
Nicolas Demarbaix	11:10
Sara Sali	11:20
Marek Svepes	11:30
Glenn Van de Water	11:40
Yves Maris	11:50
Ahmad Othman	13:00
Joeri Reyns	13:10
Michael Deckers	13:20
Hannu Viinikainen	13:40
Ruben Mennes	13:50

Announcements

Schedule (gets updated as the semester progresses)

Week

Date

Type

Room

Subject