Model inspections in the engineering of collaborative cyber‐physical systems with instance‐level review diagrams. Issue 5 (17th October 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Daun, Marian; Brings, Jennifer; Weyer, Thorsten
• Other Names: Steinmacher Igor guestEditor.; Clarke Paul guestEditor.; Tuzun Eray guestEditor.; Britto Ricardo guestEditor.
• Is Part Of: Journal of software. Volume 35:Issue 5(2023)
• Page Start: n/a
• Page End: n/a
• Publication Date: 2021-10-17
• Subjects: controlled experiment -- cyber‐physical systems -- message sequence charts -- review model -- validation; Software engineering -- Periodicals; Computer software -- Development -- Periodicals; Software maintenance -- Periodicals; 005.1
• DOI: 10.1002/smr.2392
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2047-7473

Abstract

Abstract: Model inspections are important to ensure high‐quality software and to satisfy legal obligations in model‐based engineering processes. As model‐based specifications are typically documented on type‐level, errors concerning the interactions between multiple system instances can go unnoticed. For collaborative cyber‐physical systems (CPS), a plethora of possible instance‐level configurations need to be taken into account. Therefore, we propose the definition of instance‐level review diagrams that show representative interactions of instance‐level configurations that help detect defects in the system specification. To evaluate the approach, we conducted a controlled experiment whose results indicate that instance‐level review diagrams have—compared with type‐level diagrams—important positive effects on reviewing processes for behavioral specifications of CPS. Specifically, the experiment provides empirical evidence that instance‐level review diagrams are significantly more expressive and effective than type‐level diagrams. Abstract : This paper contributes a definition of instance‐level review diagrams in message sequence charts notation and reports results of a controlled experiment to evaluate instance‐level review diagrams. Results show that instance‐level review models support the validation of behavior specifications of collaborative cyber‐physical systems that operate in changing system network configurations.