++++++++++++++++++ FME2001: - Review reports for paper 62 +++++++++++++++++++++ - 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: 62 CATEGORY: 2 TITLE: Integration of Control and Datatypes using the View Formalism AUTHOR(S): Christine Choppy Pascal Poizat Jean-Claude Royer -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Briefly SUMMARIZE the paper (2-3 lines): The paper presents a specification formalism based on a notion of view that supports the integrated description of static and dynamic aspects of systems components. 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 adresses an important topic and presents some ideas that are interesting. However the presentation is poor, making the message of the paper very difficult to intrepret and assess by the majority of FME audience. 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: The notion of view that allows a unified representation of static and dynamic aspects of systems and their integration. 6. How WORTHWILE is the goal of the authors? Comment: Very. The need of combining different viewpoints of a system has been recognised as an important issue in system development. 7. How well is this goal EXPLAINED and JUSTIFIED? Comment: The explanation of the final goal is fair but the explanation of their contributions to achieve this goal is not. 8. TECHNICAL QUALITY. Are the technical parts (definitions, statements, specifications, proofs, algorithms, etc.) SOUND? Comment: It is very hard to follow the several definitions that are presented through the paper and, hence, to judge wheter they are sound or not. This is because the definitions are recurrently given in terms of concepts which are only introduced later and are lacking in rigour. 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: 10. PRESENTATION: Describe the QUALITY of the writing, including suggestions for changes where appropriate. Comment: As I mentioned before, the technical definitions are hard to follow and they direct the reader attention to irrelevant details. Futhermore, the informal explanations and examples do not help much. It would be preferable to introduce all these notions informally but carefully, illustrating them with good examples. 11. Were there any formatting or mechanical problems with this paper?: Are the figures and length acceptable?: Are the references correct?: There are formatting problems in page 6 and 18. 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 ++++++++++++++++++++++ PAPER NUMBER: 62 CATEGORY: 2 TITLE: Integration of Control and Datatypes using the View Formalism AUTHOR(S): Christine Choppy Pascal Poizat Jean-Claude Royer -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Briefly SUMMARIZE the paper (2-3 lines): This paper gives a detailed introduction to a specification formalism that permits separate and integrated views of static and dynamic aspect of a system with an object-based structure. The formalism utilises symbolic state-transition systems in conjunction with specification techniques inspired by LOTOS. The paper has a simple worked example and refers to several more substantial case studies. 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 issues of view integration and object-oriented specification in conjunction with UML are of wide 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 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 semantic detail of the integration approach, and the distinction between static and dynamic views are rather novel. The multi-formalism approach, with graphical symbolic state transition systems as well as algebraic specification is new enough to be of interest (at least to this reviewer!) 6. How WORTHWILE is the goal of the authors? Comment: The goal of developing integrated formalisms, while retaining accessibility of notations is certainly worthwhile. 7. How well is this goal EXPLAINED and JUSTIFIED? Comment: I am not sure that this overall aim is very well articulated in the paper, however. 8. TECHNICAL QUALITY. Are the technical parts (definitions, statements, specifications, proofs, algorithms, etc.) SOUND? Comment: The constructions appeared to be 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 work is intended to be applicable, and this is supported by references to a number of case studies. I would welcome an additional section reporting the main lessons learned from these studies, as this would add to the credibility of the approach. An environment (KORRIGAN) has been "defined" but the status of concrete tool support remains unclear. 10. PRESENTATION: Describe the QUALITY of the writing, including suggestions for changes where appropriate. Comment: The presentation is to a good standard. The paper was generally readable and should be suitable for the majority of FME participants. Some small suggestions: Page 2, 2 lines up from the bootm, not "clients communication" but "clients' communication". This is a fault throughout the paper - check that possessives have the correct apostrophe. Page 3, section 2.1 line 1 "10 digit" not "10 digits". Page 3 requirements for ordinary clients and subscribers. The persistent "(S)he" looks clumsy. I would suggest that you head the list "The ordinary client may" and then have numbered items which continue this sentence, e.g. The ordinary client may ask the server . be called by the server . refuse a communication . . and likewise for the subscriber. Page 4 and following - the word "structuration" does not exist. "Structural" will usually work instead. Page 5 The "!" and "?" may need explanation to some readers unfamiliar with CSP or LOTOS. Page 5 paragraph starting "Let us consider an unbounded buffer .". Not "instanciated" but "instantiated". Page 6 paragraph after Fig 2. Strange formatting. Page 7 "emptiness" not "emptyness". Page 8 "axioms formulas" - not sure what this means - could it be "axiomatic formulas" or "axiom formulas". Page 11 and following "modelized" is not a word. "modelled" would do ("modeled" is an alternative spelling). 11. Were there any formatting or mechanical problems with this paper?: Only minor points (see above) 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: The introductory sections 1-3 are generally quite clear, but I was definitely confused about the relationships between the parts of the view model class. Can you make Section 3.2 any clearer? I would suggest deleting Fig 3 because it reduced my understanding instead of helping it! In Section 3.3, I was unclear about what a component actually is - is this defined earlier? At definition 4, I was unclear as to whether you were defining something additional to the LOTOS syntax - notions of constructor and observer in this sense may be unfamiliar to many readers. At definition 4 I was also unsure about the role of dynamic signatures in the view structure. Perhaps you need some form of explanation in advance so that we see the motivation for dynamic signatures. At definition 6 and subsequently, I could not understand the intuition behind "limit conditions". Since most of the examples use the STS form, this did not matter so much for the rest of the paper. Page 10, Figs 4 & 5. The reader may wonder whether both forms of KORRIGAN syntax are really needed. You may need to explain why. Page 11 Fig 6. I was expecting to see a model of the behaviour of an object corresponding to a single subscriber. However, here we see a model of the full set of subscribers. Can you explain? Page 13 Fig 8. I would like to have read about the intuition behind inheritance on STS diagrams. Do we combine states present in the two dynamic views? For example, does D-FULL-USER have a transition COMM - comm!m to p -> COMM Inherited from D-BASIC-USER? Page 13 Fig 8. Are there two IDLE states or one? Does name coincidence mean states are the same? This issue on page 13 is interesting because a component sometimes behaves as a subscriber and sometimes as an ordinary client. Yet it would appear that the subscriber state machine is combined with that of the ordinary client, at least at a semantic level. +++++++++++++++++++++ End of FME 2001 Paper Review Report ++++++++++++++++++++++ PAPER NUMBER: 62 CATEGORY: 2 TITLE: Integration of control and datatypes using the view formalism AUTHOR(S): Choppy, poizat, Royer -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Briefly SUMMARIZE the paper (2-3 lines): A formal integration of datatype and control views, illustrated by a telephone example. 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: View composition is a very active area right now. 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: 1 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: 6. How WORTHWILE is the goal of the authors? Comment: 7. How well is this goal EXPLAINED and JUSTIFIED? Comment: 8. TECHNICAL QUALITY. Are the technical parts (definitions, statements, specifications, proofs, algorithms, etc.) SOUND? Comment: I have done a lot of work on, and read a lot of papers about, view composition. Useful view composition--composition of views that are different enough to be worth having--is very difficult. To understand and use view composition, you need a very simple formal foundation, and many rich guidelines about what it means and how to use it. An excellent example would be Daniel Jackson's TOSEM article about view composition in Z, which incidentally also uses a phone example. This paper is just the opposite. It has an extremely complex formalism, integrating views that actually seem rather similar in content. It seems clear to me that the benefits of all this formal machinery are far outweighed by its costs. 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: 10. PRESENTATION: Describe the QUALITY of the writing, including suggestions for changes where appropriate. Comment: The paper is difficult to read and sloppy. It has many small mistakes and omissions, and many formal terms introduced without explanation. For example, Definition 1 uses bv(n) without ever defining/introducing it. 11. Were there any formatting or mechanical problems with this paper?: Are the figures and length acceptable?: Are the references correct?: I find the references narrow and parochial, suggesting that the authors do not understand the related work very well. This paper is about view composition illustrated with a telephone example, yet I see no references to the many other papers on exactly that subject. In addition to Jackson's article mentioned above, there are several articles by Zave and others in TSE, TOPLAS, and IEEE Software. Ken Turner and Luigi Logrippo have published extensively on the use of LOTOS for this purpose. I can easily imagine that the authors are thinking, "Those papers propose different view compositions than we are proposing." Very true, but if yours does not grapple with the real problems equally well or better, what is the value of it? 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 ++++++++++++++++++++++