++++++++++++++++++ FME2001: - Review reports for paper 15 +++++++++++++++++++++ - Dear author(s) : this file was extracted automatically from a very large - mailbox. In case you find any problem concerning mail encodings (or any - other kind of anomaly disturbing your understanding of the reviews) please - email any of the PC cochairs (pamela@research.att.com,jno@di.uminho.pt). ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ PAPER NUMBER: 15 CATEGORY: 1 TITLE: A Formal Model of Object-Oriented Design and GoF Design Patterns AUTHOR(S): Andres Flores Richard Moore Luis Reynoso -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Briefly SUMMARIZE the paper (2-3 lines): The paper provides a formalization of the object-oriented design patterns by Gamma et al in RSL. The formalization includes a way to map abstract design patterns to a concrete design, and illustrates this with a TCP network connection framework and the State pattern. 2. RELEVANCE: Please provide a rating of the paper's relevance to the FME Symposium, using the scale: 0 = Out of scope 1 = Marginal interest 2 = Minority interest 3 = Majority interest 4 = Outstanding interest Numeric Rating: 2 Please comment your rating: The better audience to judge and to profit from this paper would be the oo patterns community. Presenting this to the formal methods community is like praying to the converted. 3. OVERALL RECOMMENDATION: Please provide a rating of the paper's acceptability, using the scale: 1 = Strong reject 2 = Weak reject 3 = Could go either way 4 = Weak accept 5 = Strong accept Numeric Rating: 2 NB: There should be a correlation between the two rates above. 4. CONFIDENCE LEVEL: Please provide a rating oof your expertise in the area addressed by the paper, using the scale: 1 = Know virtually nothing about this area 2 = Not too knowledgeable, but I know a bit 3 = Know a moderate amount, about average I'd say 4 = Not my main area of work, but I know a lot about it 5 = My area of work, I know it extremely well Numeric Rating: 5 NB: PC members are responsible for ensuring that 1 is not used here. 5. ORIGINALITY. What is NEW and SIGNIFICANT in the work reported here? Comment: What is new is the way how to use RSL for capturing structural (syntactic) properties of design patterns. 6. How WORTHWILE is the goal of the authors? Comment: This is the crucial point: The formalization only goes to formalizing syntactic properties, and as such is rather simple (though using RSL it gets impressively intricate). I don't see how syntactic properties can lead to any interesting insight, either insight in the design patterns or insight a developer can get about the application of a pattern. As the paper is now, the goal of the authors is not convincing. 7. How well is this goal EXPLAINED and JUSTIFIED? Comment: It is very well explained but, as said above, not sufficiently justified. 8. TECHNICAL QUALITY. Are the technical parts (definitions, statements, specifications, proofs, algorithms, etc.) SOUND? Comment: Yes, it does look technically sound. 9. APPLICABILITY. If the work is primarily theoretical or conceptual, are the implications in terms of applicability adequately justified? If the paper is about a new formal technique, are satisfactory arguments presented in favor of the new technique? If a methodology is proposed, is it sound? If experimental results are presented, is their relevance justified? Comment: The paper falls in the area of not presenting any new theoretical work and not presenting a methodology that is sufficiently justified. 10. PRESENTATION: Describe the QUALITY of the writing, including suggestions for changes where appropriate. Comment: The quality of writing is excellent. Only Chapter 5 is a bit long and tedious to read. 11. Were there any formatting or mechanical problems with this paper?: Are the figures and length acceptable?: Are the references correct?: There are no formatting or "mechanical" programs. The figures and length is acceptable. The references are correct. 12. OTHER COMMENTS you believe would be useful to the author(s), including pointers to missing relevant work: The introduction mentions that design patterns have been formalized in other logics (e.g. LePUS), but the paper does not discuss what aspects of design pattern were formalized and how the goal of that work relates to the author's work. Also Lano et. al. did also some work on formalizing patterns, which is not mentioned here. The crucial point is that the paper does not answer what insight or methodological improvement the proposed formalization gives, e.g. - what can you learn about the design patterns themselves, does your work lead to some insight on how to improve them or improve their presentation? - how can software developers use this theory for applying patterns better or more efficiently? - did your formalziation of existing applications of design pattern reveal some errors? It appears all your formalization does is what any designed could do by a visual match of the application with a design pattern. A way to make a point would be if you had a tool and could analyze large programs automatically and find inconsistent applications in those. +++++++++++++++++++++ End of FME 2001 Paper Review Report ++++++++++++++++++++++ PAPER NUMBER: 15 CATEGORY: 1 TITLE: A Formal Model of Object-Oriented Design and GoF Design Patterns AUTHOR(S): Andres Flores Richard Moore Luis Reynoso -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Briefly SUMMARIZE the paper (2-3 lines): This paper describes a formal model for object oriented design and design patterns. It also shows how one can check designs for conformance to such a pattern. 2. RELEVANCE: Please provide a rating of the paper's relevance to the FME Symposium, using the scale: 0 = Out of scope 1 = Marginal interest 2 = Minority interest 3 = Majority interest 4 = Outstanding interest Numeric Rating: 3 Please comment your rating: This is a subject which so far have been underdeveloped in the FM community 3. OVERALL RECOMMENDATION: Please provide a rating of the paper's acceptability, using the scale: 1 = Strong reject 2 = Weak reject 3 = Could go either way 4 = Weak accept 5 = Strong accept Numeric Rating: 3.5 NB: There should be a correlation between the two rates above. 4. CONFIDENCE LEVEL: Please provide a rating oof your expertise in the area addressed by the paper, using the scale: 1 = Know virtually nothing about this area 2 = Not too knowledgeable, but I know a bit 3 = Know a moderate amount, about average I'd say 4 = Not my main area of work, but I know a lot about it 5 = My area of work, I know it extremely well Numeric Rating: 3 NB: PC members are responsible for ensuring that 1 is not used here. 5. ORIGINALITY. What is NEW and SIGNIFICANT in the work reported here? Comment: The part about conformance of designs to design patterns certainly appear to be new. 6. How WORTHWILE is the goal of the authors? Comment: Very worthwhile 7. How well is this goal EXPLAINED and JUSTIFIED? Comment: Good. 8. TECHNICAL QUALITY. Are the technical parts (definitions, statements, specifications, proofs, algorithms, etc.) SOUND? Comment: Yes. 9. APPLICABILITY. If the work is primarily theoretical or conceptual, are the implications in terms of applicability adequately justified? If the paper is about a new formal technique, are satisfactory arguments presented in favor of the new technique? If a methodology is proposed, is it sound? If experimental results are presented, is their relevance justified? Comment: It is sound, but it is unexpectedly complicated. The reader sits back with a feeling whether it would pay off doing the conformance validation for any real systems. It is also questionably how one should design tool support to assist such a usage industrially. This is not touched upon by the authors at all. 10. PRESENTATION: Describe the QUALITY of the writing, including suggestions for changes where appropriate. Comment: Very high quality. 11. Were there any formatting or mechanical problems with this paper?: No Are the figures and length acceptable?: Yes Are the references correct?: Yes 12. OTHER COMMENTS you believe would be useful to the author(s), including pointers to missing relevant work: Generally I find this article good but I cannot help to think that it looks quite complicated to show conformance. Would this ever be worthwhile industrially? What would be the value of doing this for real? What kind of tool support can be imagined? I would recommend the authors to consider these questions to put the work into more perspective. A few minor points: Since OMT is dead now it would be good to relate this work to UML as well. p14,middle: too long line. p15, inconsistency in terminology is_wf_class vs wf_relation +++++++++++++++++++++ End of FME 2001 Paper Review Report ++++++++++++++++++++++ PAPER NUMBER: 15 CATEGORY: 1 TITLE: A Formal Model of Object-Oriented Design and GoF Design Patterns AUTHOR(S): Andres Flores Richard Moore Luis Reynoso -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Briefly SUMMARIZE the paper (2-3 lines): This paper describes a formal model for object-oriented design, which is used to describe object-oriented patterns. It also shows how to match a design against a pattern. The model is based on the RAISE specification language and uses the extended OMT notation. 2. RELEVANCE: Please provide a rating of the paper's relevance to the FME Symposium, using the scale: 0 = Out of scope 1 = Marginal interest 2 = Minority interest 3 = Majority interest 4 = Outstanding interest Numeric Rating: 3 Please comment your rating: The use of patterns increases the software productivity making the design more readable and improving maintainability of software. The formal specification of patterns is therefore within the scope of this symposium. 3. OVERALL RECOMMENDATION: Please provide a rating of the paper's acceptability, using the scale: 1 = Strong reject 2 = Weak reject 3 = Could go either way 4 = Weak accept 5 = Strong accept Numeric Rating: 4 NB: There should be a correlation between the two rates above. 4. CONFIDENCE LEVEL: Please provide a rating of your expertise in the area addressed by the paper, using the scale: 1 = Know virtually nothing about this area 2 = Not too knowledgeable, but I know a bit 3 = Know a moderate amount, about average I'd say 4 = Not my main area of work, but I know a lot about it 5 = My area of work, I know it extremely well Numeric Rating: 3 NB: PC members are responsible for ensuring that 1 is not used here. 5. ORIGINALITY. What is NEW and SIGNIFICANT in the work reported here? Comment: The approach presents a formal method for an arbitrary object-oriented pattern. It is shown how the properties of an individual pattern are specified in this model using a complete example. 6. How WORTHWILE is the goal of the authors? Comment: The goal of the author is useful as patterns are widely used, but mostly only informally described. A formal specification of GoF pattern missing in other works, is included in this approach. 7. How well is this goal EXPLAINED and JUSTIFIED? Comment: Concepts are clearly presented; the paper is well structured and it includes a good example. 8. TECHNICAL QUALITY. Are the technical parts (definitions, statements, specifications, proofs, algorithms, etc.) SOUND? Comment: The authors stress that an arbitrary object-oriented design can be specified using the model presented, but only the specification of modeling elements used in class diagrams are shown. What about modeling elements required for other types of object-oriented diagrams, such as messages of sequence diagrams or states and states transitions of state diagrams? 9. APPLICABILITY. If the work is primarily theoretical or conceptual, are the implications in terms of applicability adequately justified? If the paper is about a new formal technique, are satisfactory arguments presented in favor of the new technique? If a methodology is proposed, is it sound? If experimental results are presented, is their relevance justified? Comment: There are sound arguments presented in favour of the new formal model, but there is no justification of the use of OMT or RAISE. UML has become a standard and is replacing the use of notations, such as OMT and Booch. It is advisable therefore, to use UML for the design of the GoF patterns and present examples in UML notation. 10. PRESENTATION: Describe the QUALITY of the writing, including suggestions for changes where appropriate. Comment: good 11. Were there any formatting or mechanical problems with this paper?: Are the figures and length acceptable?: Yes. Some inconsistencies in the usage of arrowheads in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2. Are the references correct?: Yes 12. OTHER COMMENTS you believe would be useful to the author(s), including pointers to missing relevant work: The use of UML notation is highly recommended. http://www.omg.org +++++++++++++++++++++ End of FME 2001 Paper Review Report ++++++++++++++++++++++