Henry Muccini got its PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of Rome - La Sapienza - in 2002. He is an assistant professor at the University of L'Aquila since 2002, and he has been visiting professor at Information & Computer Science, University of California, Irvine in 2001. Henry's research interests are on software architecture, component-based systems, model-based analysis, testing and model-checking, Web-oriented modeling and product family engineering. Henry Muccini teaches different courses at the University of L'Aquila (Software Engineering II, Modeling Web Applications with the UML, Analysis and Testing of Component-based Systems and Architectures), he has tought courses on Software Quality and Component-based systems at the University of California Irvine, and he is a consultant in some companies. His research and development collaborations are with some research institutes (CNR, Vrije Universiteit, University of California) and companies (Siemens CNX, Terma GmbH, Micron, Marconi).

Objetivos del curso:

In recent years, the study of software architecture (SA) has emerged as an autonomous discipline requiring its own concepts, formalisms, methods, and tools. SA represents a very promising approach since it handles the design and analysis of complex distributed systems and tackles the problem of scaling up in software engineering. Through suitable abstractions, it provides the means to make large applications manageable. SAs support the formal modeling of a system, allowing for both a topological (static) description and a behavioral (dynamic) one. SA specifications can be usefully employed in testing and analysis.

The course, after an introduction to SA and SA modeling, will describe an approach for SA-based conformance testing: architectural tests are selected from a Labelled Transition System (LTS) representing the SA behavior and are then refined into concrete tests to be executed on the implemented system. By employing SA-based testing, conformance between the implementation and the system (architectural) specification is validated. SA-based regression testing methods enable reuse of earlier saved results to test if a modified implementation/architecture conforms to the evolved software architecture. The
approach we consider both top-down and bottom-up evolution - that is, does a slightly modified implementation conform to the initial architecture? or does the (modified) implementation conform an evolved architecture? SA-based model-checking is a very important technique to validate the architectural specification conformance to certain requirements. The course will describe our approach for SA-based model-checking and the tool Charmy developed at the University of L’Aquila. To conclude, the course will show how SA-based model-checking and testing may be combined together in a reasonable analysis process in order to validate SA specifications with respect to requirements and source code with respect to the SA specification.

Programa:

If we consider that the course is organized in five classes of three hours, we can imagine a rough distribution of the contents as follows:

Lecture 1: Introduction to Software Architecture

• What is an SA
• Concepts of Components, Connectors, interfaces
• An Example

• Testing basics
• Specification-based testing basics
• SA-based Testing
• An Example

• Why Regression Testing
• Regression Testing Techniques
• Regression Testing at the architectural level

• Model-Checking basics
• Model-checking at the SA level
• The Charmy approach and tool

• Model-checking vs. testing
• Combining pros
• Using Model checking for generating test sequences
• The TeStor approach and tool

Requisitos

This course does not impose any specific prerequisite. Needless to say, a general idea of component-based systems and software architecture would allow the attendees to better understand the course.

Bibliografía