Systems such as social networks, search engines or trading platforms operate geographically distant sites that continuously generate streams of events at high-rate. Such events can be access logs to web servers, feeds of messages from participants of a social network, or financial data, among others. The ability to timely detect trends and popularity variations is of paramount importance in such systems. In particular, determining what are the most popular events across all sites allows to capture the most relevant information in near real-time and quickly adapt the system to the load. This paper presents TOPiCo, a protocol that computes the most popular events across geo-distributed sites in a low cost, bandwidth-efficient and timely manner. TOPiCo starts by building the set of most popular events locally at each site. Then, it disseminates only events that have a chance to be among the most popular ones across all sites, significantly reducing the required bandwidth. We give a correctness proof of our algorithm and evaluate TOPiCo using a real-world trace of more than 240 million events spread across 32 sites. Our empirical results shows that (i) TOPiCo is timely and cost-efficient for detecting popular events in a large-scale setting, (ii) it adapts dynamically to the distribution of the events, and (iii) our protocol is particularly efficient for skewed distributions.
This paper presents a catalog of smells in the context of interactive applications. These so-called usability smells are indicators of poor design on an application's user interface, with the potential to hinder not only its usability but also its maintenance and evolution. To eliminate such usability smells we discuss a set of program/usability refactorings. In order to validate the presented usability smells catalog, and the associated refactorings, we present a preliminary empirical study with software developers in the context of a real open source hospital management application. Moreover, a tool that computes graphical user interface behavior models, giving the applications' source code, is used to automatically detect usability smells at the model level.
Diagnosing unwanted behaviour in Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) is crucial to ascertain agents’ correct operation. However, generation of MAS models is both error-prone and time intense, as it exponentially increases with the number of agents and their interactions. In this paper, we propose a light-weight, automatic debugging-based technique, coined ESFL-MAS, which shortens the diagnostic process, while only relying on minimal information about the system. ESFL-MAS uses a heuristic that quantifies the suspiciousness of an agent to be faulty; therefore, different heuristics may have different impact on the diagnostic quality. Our experimental evaluation shows that 10 out of 42 heuristics yield the best diagnostic accuracy (96.26% on average).
PVSio-web is a graphical environment for facilitating the design and evaluation of interactive (human-computer) systems. Using PVSio-web, one can generate and evaluate realistic interactive prototypes from formal models. PVSio-web has been successfully used over the last two years for analyzing commercial, safety-critical medical devices. It has been used to create training material for device developers and device users. It has also been used for medical device design, by both formal methods experts and non-technical end users.
This paper presents the latest release of PVSio-web 2.0, which will be part of the next PVS distribution. The new tool architecture is discussed, and the rationale behind its design choices are presented
Tools are needed that overcome the barriers preventing development teams using formal verification technologies. We present our work integrating PVSio-web with the Overture development and analysis environment for VDM. PVSio-web is a graphical environment for modelling and prototyping interactive systems. Prototypes developed within PVSio-web can closely resemble the visual appearance and behaviour of a real system. The behaviour of the prototypes is entirely driven by executable formal models. These formal models can be generated automatically from Emucharts, graphical diagrams based on the Statechart notation. Emucharts conveniently hides aspects of the formal syntax that create barriers for developers and domain experts who are new to formal methods. Here, we present the implementation of a VDM-SL model generator for Emucharts. An example is presented based on a medical device. It demonstrates the benefits of using Emucharts to develop a formal model, how PVSio-web can be used to perform lightweight formal analysis, and how the developed VDM-SL model generator can be used to produce a model that can be further analysed within Overture.
Integrated clinical environments (ICEs) consist of interoperable medical devices that seamlessly exchange data and commands to create safety interlocks and closed loop controls to improve the quality of care delivered to the patient. Currently at the prototype stage, they promise to form the basis of a new generation of healthcare systems for high acuity patients. Regulators such as the US Food and Drug Administration are promoting the development of tools and techniques for verification and validation of essential safety requirements for ICEs. To date, little research has focused on the certification and assurance of their user interfaces with respect to use errors. In this work, we demonstrate how the PVSio-web prototyping tool can be conveniently used in combination with the communication framework SAPERE to generate realistic ICE systems prototypes from formal models. This approach is particularly suitable for exploring requirements, design, and regulatory issues of usability and safety of the user interfaces of ICE systems. An example ICE system prototype is presented, along with an example analysis demonstrating how the prototype can be used to explore subtle user interface design issues that could lead to usability and safety hazards in clinical scenarios.
Os sistemas NoSQL escalam melhor que os tradicionais sistemas relacionais, motivando a migração de inúmeras aplicações para sistemas NoSQL mesmo quando não se tira partido da estrutura de dados dinâmica por eles fornecida. Porém, a consulta destes dados estruturados tem um custo adicional que deriva da flexibilidade dos sistemas NoSQL. Neste documento, analisa-se esse custo no Apache HBase e apresenta-se o Prepared Scan, uma operação adicional de consulta que visa tirar partido do conhecimento da estrutura de dados por parte da aplicação, diminuindo assim o custo associado à consulta de dados estruturados. Recorrendo à ferramenta de benchmarking YCSB, verifica-se que esta solução tem um aumento no débito de aproximadamente 29%.
Temporal logics targeting real-time systems are traditionally undecidable. Based on a restricted fragment of MTL-∫, we propose a new approach for the runtime verification of hard real-time systems. The novelty of our technique is that it is based on incremental evaluation, allowing us to effectively treat duration properties (which play a crucial role in real-time systems). We describe the two levels of operation of our approach: offline simplification by quantifier removal techniques; and online evaluation of a three-valued interpretation for formulas of our fragment. Our experiments show the applicability of this mechanism as well as the validity of the provided complexity results.
Use errors, where medical devices work to specification but lead to the clinicians making mistakes resulting in patient harm, is a critical problem. Manufacturers need tools to help them find such design flaws at an early stage and regulators need tools to help check devices are safe to approve for market. We have developed a prototyping tool, PVSio-web, to help check the safety of medical device interface and interaction design. It supports a model-based design process: that is, it is based on precise mathematical descriptions of the device's behaviour. This allows sophisticated proof and model checking technology to be used to verify that devices meet essential safety requirements. The architecture allows for the flexible addition of `plug-in' modules to extend its functionality giving different views of the design that allow different stakeholders to work together. Working with the US regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), our tool has helped identify problems in a series of commercial medical devices. Hospitals have used it as part of training programmes highlighting safety-related design issues. In ongoing work we are developing plug-ins that support the verification and validation of interoperable medical systems.
A hazard is a potential source of physical injury or damage to people or environment, and a hazard analysis is the process of identifying all known and foreseeable hazards and their causes in a system. In this paper, we illustrate our ongoing work in collaboration with the FDA on defining a hazard analysis technique for early identification of the causes in user interface software design of use-related hazards. The technique integrates human cognitive process models and general interaction design principles, and uses a model-based approach for systematic exploration of potential hazards. Preliminary experiments suggest that this hazard analysis technique can substantially improve the identification of use-related hazards at the early stages of software design as compared to standard hazard analysis techniques.
This paper introduces the metaphorism pattern of relational specification and addresses how specification following this pattern can be refined into recursive programs. Metaphorisms express input-output relationships which preserve relevant information while at the same time some intended optimization takes place. Text processing, sorting, representation changers, etc., are examples of metaphorisms. The kind of metaphorism refinement proposed in this paper is a strategy known as change of virtual data structure. It gives sufficient conditions for such implementations to be calculated using relation algebra and illustrates the strategy with the derivation of quicksort as example.
