Agent-oriented techniques represent an exciting new means of analysing, designing and building complex software systems. They have the potential to significantly improve current practice in software engineering and to extend the range of applications that can feasibly be tackled. Yet, to date

We give an efficient procedure for verifying that a finite-state concurrent system meets a specification expressed in a (propositional, branching-time) temporal logic. Our algorithm has complexity linear in both the size of the specification and the size of the global state graph for the concurrent system. We also show how this approach can be adapted to handle fairness. We argue that our technique can provide a practical alternative to manual proof construction or use of a mechanical theorem prover for verifying many finite-state concurrent systems. Experimental results show that state machines with several hundred states can be checked in a matter of seconds.

We present a new tool, named DART, for automatically testing software that combines three main techniques: (1) automated extraction of the interface of a program with its external environment using static source-code parsing; (2) automatic generation of a test driver for this interface

The problems of designing large software systems were studied through interviewing personnel from 17 large projects. A layered behavioral model is used to analyze how three lgf these problems-the thin spread of application domain knowledge, fluctuating and conflicting requirements

Software architectures shift the focus of developers from lines-of-code to coarser-grained architectural elements and their overall interconnection structure. Architecture description languages (ADLs) have been proposed as modeling notations to support architecture-based development. There is

, and hence works on commodity software. To demonstrate this idea, we have implemented TaintCheck, a mechanism that can perform dynamic taint analysis by performing binary rewriting at run time. We show that TaintCheck reliably detects most types of exploits. We found that TaintCheck produced no false

Finite-state verification techniques, such as model checking, have shown promise as a cost-effective means for finding defects in hardware designs. To date, the application of these techniques to software has been hindered by several obstacles. Chief among these is the problem of constructing a

Model checking is emerging as a practical tool for automated debugging of complex reactive systems such as embedded controllers and network protocols (see [23] for a survey). Traditional techniques for model checking do not admit an explicit modeling of time, and are thus, unsuitable for analysis

Workflow management promises a new solution to an age-old problem: controlling, monitoring, optimizing and supporting business processes. What is new about workflow management is the explicit representation of the business process logic which allows for computerized support. This paper discusses

and verification of real-time systems, based on constraint--solving and on-the-fly techniques, developed jointly by Uppsala University and Aalborg University. It is appropriate for systems that can be modeled as a collection of nondeterministic processes with finite control structure and real-valued clocks