++++++++++++++++++ FME2001: - Review reports for paper 61 +++++++++++++++++++++ - 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: 61 CATEGORY: 2 TITLE: Translation of CORBA IDL to Z AUTHOR(S): Chris Taylor Eerke Boiten John Derrick -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Briefly SUMMARIZE the paper (2-3 lines): The authors present a prototype translation from CORBA IDL (Interface Definition Language) to the Z specification language, intended to support integration of the IDL into their viewpoint specification framework. 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: Relevance of CORBA to the FM community, combined with interest in earlier work by the authors on viewpoints and Z, suggests majority interest. 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: To my knowledge, the translation from CORBA to Z is new. The motivation, of incorporating CORBA into the ODP framework and so providing support for establishing consistency in the framework, appears to be novel. 6. How WORTHWILE is the goal of the authors? Comment: The goal of providing a translation from CORBA IDL to Z is worthwhile as it is intended to support consistency checking between different viewpoints of the ODP (Open Distributed Processing) framework. 7. How well is this goal EXPLAINED and JUSTIFIED? Comment: The goal is well explained, and justification for Z rather than alternative specification languages is provided. 8. TECHNICAL QUALITY. Are the technical parts (definitions, statements, specifications, proofs, algorithms, etc.) SOUND? Comment: As far as they go, yes. However, the reader is left feeling a little short-changed. The repeated reference to the motivation for the translation (consistency of multiple specifications established by showing a common refinement) led me to hope for a worked example of such a unification after the demonstration of the translation technicalities. 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: Some parts of 8 relevant here too. A sound methodology for the translation is presented, but a concrete (or even abstract) example of unification with an ODP Computational Viewpoint and Information Viewpoint is missing, though the Appendix did seem to be providing an initial step in that direction. 10. PRESENTATION: Describe the QUALITY of the writing, including suggestions for changes where appropriate. Comment: No problems with the quality. Only one small typo noticed: p.3 (Sec 1.1) reference [8] should be cited as "specification language Z [8]" 11. Were there any formatting or mechanical problems with this paper?: No Are the figures and length acceptable?: Yes Are the references correct?: Refs 10 and 11 in text seem to be related to refs 9 and 10 in bibliography. Suspect a further iteration of latex/bibtex necessary! 12. OTHER COMMENTS you believe would be useful to the author(s), including pointers to missing relevant work: Is this the first time CORBA and ODP have been considered together, or (since both are concerned with standardisation in distributed systems) is their relationship well understood? The question is prompted by the paragraph in Section 1.1 noting that CORBA IDL is well-suited to the Computational Viewpoint. A related question would be what notations are used for the other viewpoints (Enterprise, Engineering etc) and whether similar translations are proposed/developed for consistency between them. Also, it would be within the scope of the paper to briefly survey other approaches to viewpoint consistency. +++++++++++++++++++++ End of FME 2001 Paper Review Report ++++++++++++++++++++++ PAPER NUMBER: 61 CATEGORY: 2 TITLE: Translation of CORBA IDL to Z AUTHOR(S): Chris Taylor Eerke Boiten John Derrick -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Briefly SUMMARIZE the paper (2-3 lines): The paper describes a way to map informal CORBA IDL declarations to formal Z notation. Major part of the paper outlines how basic IDL constructs can be translated to Z. 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: 1 Please comment your rating: The mapping itself does not seem to be a strong research result. Moreover, in the paper it is specified for the most straitforward cases, where solution is quite obvious. As a consequence, a big part of consideration looks superfluous. Say, section 3.3 (Identifiers and Comments), could be easily compressed in a small paragraph. Meanwhile, they skip more interesting constructs, like IDL template types (i.e, IDL bounded sequences), where the mapping would be a bit more challenging. Motivation of the paper is not good enough. Checking mutual consistency of IDL specifications via their translation to Z and further unification has no practical value. Current IDL is restricted enough for compiler could do all the relevant consistency check of loose IDL specifications automatically. It would be more interesting to consider some IDL extensions which would make the unification of the computational and informational viewpoints more meaningful. 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: 4 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: As I mentioned above, I could not find a strong and new research contribution in this paper. Although, more specifically, their work on mapping of IDL to Z is new. 6. How WORTHWILE is the goal of the authors? Comment: The idea of having formally justifiable environments for development and maintenance of CORBA-compliant applications is not new, but very interesting. The mapping of informal IDL to formal Z can eventually contribute to it. 7. How well is this goal EXPLAINED and JUSTIFIED? Comment: The explanation of mapping is quite clear. Some very general justification is provided in an introductory part. However, as a motivation of the paper it is not sufficient (see comments on item 1, RELEVANCE). 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: The work is primarily conceptual. Justification in terms of its applicability is not obvious. 10. PRESENTATION: Describe the QUALITY of the writing, including suggestions for changes where appropriate. Comment: The writing is ok. I would suggest to "distribute" the example from appendix all over the paper. It would make the reading much easier, especially for someone who knows not much about IDL and Z. 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: It may be interesting for you to look at http://www.iist.unu.edu/newrh/III/1/page.html, Report 117 In particular, Appendix A of the report specifies a mapping from IDL to RAISE Specification Language. +++++++++++++++++++++ End of FME 2001 Paper Review Report ++++++++++++++++++++++ PAPER NUMBER: 61 CATEGORY: 2 TITLE: Translation of CORBA IDL to Z AUTHOR(S): Taylor, Boiten, & Derrick -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Briefly SUMMARIZE the paper (2-3 lines): As the title quite right suggests, the authors describe a translation between CORBA IDL and Z. The objective is to check the consistency of differing viewpoints. 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 paper will be of interest to those familiar with CORBA. 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 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: 4 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 authors report some of the details of the translation between CORBA and Z, but fail to give me a good reason why this is a step forward. Indeed, the conclusions are all about what might be done, not what has been done. I was left feeling a little underwhelmed, I'm afraid to say. 6. How WORTHWILE is the goal of the authors? Comment: See (5) 7. How well is this goal EXPLAINED and JUSTIFIED? Comment: See (5) 8. TECHNICAL QUALITY. Are the technical parts (definitions, statements, specifications, proofs, algorithms, etc.) SOUND? Comment: I believe that it is 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: There is inadequate justification of the relevance and benefits of the work: why do it? 10. PRESENTATION: Describe the QUALITY of the writing, including suggestions for changes where appropriate. Comment: It's nicely written. 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: +++++++++++++++++++++ End of FME 2001 Paper Review Report ++++++++++++++++++++++