Project Title: Requirements-driven development of distributed applications

( the full text of the technical proposal is here - access limited to members of DSRG)

NSERC strategic grant: 2002 - 2005

Investigators:

• Gregor v. Bochmann, Information Technology and Engineering, School of, Ottawa (principal investigator)
• L. Logrippo, Informatique et d'ingénierie, Québec en Outaouais
• R.L. Probert, Information Technology and Engineering, School of, Ottawa
• D. Amyot, Information Technology and Engineering, School of, Ottawa
• P. Felty, Information Technology and Engineering, School of, Ottawa
• S.S. Somé, Information Technology and Engineering, School of, Ottawa

Supporting Organization(s):
Original partners:
Nortel Networks
Mitel Inc.   - withdrawn
Industry Canada
Klocwork
TogetherSoft Corp. - withdrawn
Telelogic
Motorola   - withdrawn
New partners :
Eion
Pinetel

Research objectives

The overall objectives for this strategic research projects were described in the original proposal as follows: "

1. To develop the available notations for specifying requirements, such as Use Case Maps (UCM), UML Activity Diagrams and other scenario notations, by comparing their usefulness, proposing formalizations and improvements, and contributing to related standardization activities in ITU and OMG.
2. To develop innovative methods and tools that can be used for the development of correct and secure system design models from a given specification of the requirements, considering in particular the possibilities for automating certain parts of this design process.
3. To develop innovative formal validation methods and tools appropriate for this process.
4. To evaluate the notations, methods and tools by applying them to realistic examples of distributed systems, especially in the area of service development for Internet telephony, e-commerce, and standard protocols developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

By balancing the usability and formality of requirements notations and by providing tool-supported validation and development methods, the results of this project will improve the quality of complex distributed software applications, while reducing time to market."