Software Engineering || Net-Centric Computing || Postdoc & Visiting Scholars

   Integral : A Petri-net approach to distributed software development

       As the architecture of modern software systems continues to evolve in a distributed fashion, development of such systems becomes increasingly complex, which requires the integration of more sophisticated specification techniques, tools, and procedures into the conventional methodology.  An essential capability of an integrated software development environment is a formal specification method to effectively capture the system's functional requirements as well as its performance requirements.  Moreover, a validation and verification (V& V) system based on a formal specification method is of paramount importance to the development and maintenance of distributed systems.

    In the last decade, there has been an increasing interest in integrating software techniques and tools at the specification level.  It is also noted that an effective way of achieving such integration is by using wide-spectrum specification techniques.  In view of these needs, an integrated V&V system, called Integral, has been developed to provide a set of comprehensive and homogeneous analysis capabilities to both the specification and testing phases of the life-cycle of distributed software systems.  The underlying software model that supports various V& V activities in Integral is primarily based on Petri nets and is intended to be wide spectrum. Our wide-spectrum specification languages is called DIStributed Communication-Oriented Language (DISCOL) which has a formal syntax and the corresponding(operational) semantics. The ultimate goal of this research is to demonstrate to the software industry, domestic or foreign, the availability and applicability of a new, Petri-net-based software development paradigm.  Integral is essentially a prototype V& V system to support such a paradigm.

International Center for Software Engineering

Iowa State Univerisity,  Department of Computer Science

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