Project 3. Formal Methods for the Synthesis of Modular Systems with Real-Time Rule Checking.

Participants: Vimal Mayank, Mark Austin, Natasha Kositsyna, Dave Everett (NASA Goddard) Support: NSF, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Project Objectives (....August, 2002 - August, 2005) Methodologies for the team development of system-level architectures need to support the following activities: Synthesis of good design alternatives from modular components; Integration of the design team efforts into a working system; and Evaluation mechanisms that provide a designer with critical feedback on the feasibility of a system architecture, and make suggestions for design concept enhancement. The purpose of this project is to develop methodologies and tools for the synthesis, management, and visualization of system-level architectures likely to be found in the NASA Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) project. The research and development will leverage advances in Semantic Web technologies. Immediate Research Challenge How to bridge the gap between results of the top-down decomposition process and needs of a bottom-up implementation, supported by reuse of subsystems and early detection of errors? Minimal Needs for a System-Level Design Tool... Support for Automatic Processing of "Appropriate" Requirements We view system architectures as collections of modules, connectors, and rules for system assembly. Figure 1. Synthesis of System Architectures Supported by Product Descriptions on Web Evaluation mechanisms should provide the designer with critical feedback on the feasibility and correctness of the system architecture. Support for Management and Integration of Design Team Efforts Complicated "requirements and design" subsystems will be modeled graphs. Figure 2. Simplified Assembly of System Architectures via Merging of Graphs. We need to be able to merge graph models and remove inconsistencies among viewpoints. Visualization ... Due to the large number of components in many engineering systems, viewing and comprehending the entire system is impossible. Proposed solution: Decomposition of complex systems into hierarchies enables subsystems to be isolated and studied independently. Customized visualization of the subsystem structure ....

Section 11-1: April, 2003.