Erlang on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

This is what I did to install Erlang on my MacBook Pro:

1. Install the GCC compiler. This is done by installing Xcode, Apple's developer tool set, available for free after registration. It can be found at the Apple ADC.
2. Install the Apache FOP print formatter. This Java application is needed for building the documentation. This implies that you also need Java. The configuration routine checks for Java SDK 1.5. (or higher). I had Java SDK 1.6 installed.
3. Get the latest Erlang source, which in my case was a file named otp_src_R13B03.tar. Unarchive the file and follow the instructions:

   $ cd otp_src_R13B03
   $. /configure
   $ make
   $ sudo make install
   

   Now bring up a terminal and issue the command:

   $ erl
   Erlang R13B03 (erts-5.7.4) [source] [smp:2:2] [rq:2] [async-threads:0] [kernel-poll:false]
   
   Eshell V5.7.4  (abort with ^G)
   1> 1+2.
   3
   2>
   

   That's it! I am ready to have some Erlang fun.

ICFEM 2010, Nov 16-19, Shangai

Photo: Wolfgang Staudt

Another Shanghai conference I have been invited to serve on the Program Committee: ICFEM 2010, the 12th International Conference on Formal Engineering Methods. ICFEM 2010 will take place in Shanghai, right after UTP 2010. Submission deadline for abstracts is 28th of May 2010. The conference chair is my former colleague at UNU-IIST He Jifeng (East China Normal University, China), PC-cochairs are Jin Song Dong (National University of Singapore, Singapore) and Huibiao Zhu (East China Normal University, China).

ICFEM brings together those interested in the application of formal engineering methods to computer systems. Researchers and practitioners, from industry, academia, and government, are encouraged to attend, and to help advance the state of the art. We are interested in work that has been incorporated into real production systems, and in theoretical work that promises to bring practical, tangible benefit.

Submissions related to the following principal themes are encouraged, but any topics relevant to the field of formal methods and their support environments will also be considered:

• Formal model-based development and code generation
• Abstraction and refinement
• Formal specification and modelling
• Software verification
• Formal approaches to software testing
• Software model checking
• Formal methods for object and component systems
• Analysis and models for concurrency
• Formal methods for cloud computing
• Tool development and integration
• Software safety, security and reliability
• Experiments involving verified systems
• Applications of formal methods

UTP 2010, Nov 15-16, Shanghai

Photo: stevechasmar

I have been invited to serve on the Program Committee of UTP 2010, the 3rd International Symposium on Unifying Theories of Programming. UTP 2010 will take place in Shanghai. Submission deadline for abstracts is 4th of June 2010. The PC-chair is Shengchao Qin, University of Durham, UK.

Based on the pioneering work on Unifying Theories of Programming by Tony Hoare, He Jifeng, and others, the aims of the UTP Symposium series are to continue to reaffirm the significance of the ongoing UTP project, to encourage efforts to advance it by providing a focus for the sharing of results by those already actively contributing, and to raise awareness of the benefits of such unifying theoretical frameworks among the wider computer science and software engineering communities.

Of particular interest is how unification may be used to meet the goals and difficulties to be encountered in the Grand Challenges of Computing, with particular reference to the UK's "GC6: Dependable Systems Evolution", its international cousin the "Verified Software Initiative", and their plan to develop a Verified Software Repository. To this end the UTP2010 Symposium welcomes contributions on the above themes as well as others which can be related to them. Such additional themes include, but are not limited to, relational semantics, relational algebra, healthiness conditions, normal forms, linkage of theories, algebraic descriptions, incorporation of probabilistic programming, timed calculi and object-based descriptions, as well as alternative programming paradigms such as functional, logical, data-flow, and beyond. In all cases, the UTP approach should be compared and advantages/disadvantages discussed.

Student Projects 2010

Photo: PhillipC

These are my project proposals for student projects in 2010. Most of the topics can be scaled to small student projects, bachelor thesis projects, master thesis projects and in some cases up to dissertation subjects. The projects are not isolated but fit the current research agenda of my group. The students are supervised in weekly meetings.

• MOMUTSIP - Model-based Mutation Testing of the SIP Protocol: Model-based Mutation Testing is a black-box testing technique, where mutation testing is applied on the modeling level. We have developed an automated test case generator based on this technique. The aim of this project is to evaluate the tool and technique for the Session Initiation Protocol used in Voice-Over-IP applications. This project is related to our FP7 MOGENTES project.


• MOMUTCON - Model-based Mutation Testing of the Conference Protocol: Model-based Mutation Testing is a black-box testing technique, where mutation testing is applied on the modeling level. We have developed an automated test case generator based on this technique. The aim of this project is to evaluate the tool and technique for the Conference Protocol, a simple multicast chat box protocol. This project is related to our FP7 MOGENTES project.


• MOMUTSUR - Model-based Mutation Testing Survey: Model-based Mutation Testing is a black-box testing technique, where mutation testing is applied on the modeling level. We have developed an automated test case generator based on this technique. The aim of this project is to research related work and write a survey on the topic. This includes the study of related literature as well as the evaluation of other existing tools. This project is related to our FP7 MOGENTES project.


• SEMU - Semantic Mutations of UML State Chart Diagrams: Model-based Mutation Testing is a black-box testing technique, where mutation testing is applied on the modeling level. In model-based mutation testing a model is mutated by changing its syntax. The mutants represent bugs and test cases are generated to detect such bugs in an implementation. In this project we consider semantic mutations of models, i.e. what are the possible faulty interpretations of a given model. It is well-known that there are several possible interpretations of UML state charts. The student shall investigate the state of the art on this topic and describe the possible semantic variations. This semantic variations will be build into our UML-Action System translator for generating test cases. The idea is to generate test cases that will detect faulty behavior due to semantic misinterpretations. This project is related to our FP7 MOGENTES project.


• COCA - Concolic Execution of Action Systems: Concolic stands for concrete and symbolic execution and is a technique for systematically exploring the paths of a program. Prominent tools that use this technique are jCute and PEX. The aim of this project is to develop a concolic executor for Action Systems. Action systems are a modeling framework well suited for modeling reactive systems, e.g. control logics of embedded systems. The student will study the problem and develop a prototype for a subset of the language. We currently use Action Systems as input to our model-based testing tools in the FP7 project MOGENTES.


• SYMPRO - Symbolic Execution in Prolog: Symbolic execution is a technique we currently use for automated test case generation. In symbolic execution a program is executed with symbolic values. The result of such a symbolic execution is a formula describing all possible outputs dependent on the symbolic inputs. Prolog is well-suited to implement such a symbolic interpreter. The aim of this project is to use the professional prolog system Sicstus to develop a prototype symbolic interpreter for a small programming language. The idea is to exploit the Constraint Solvers of Sicstus Prolog in the style of constraint logic programming.


• MUTO - Mutation Operators for Object-Oriented Action Systems: (in progress) Model-based Mutation Testing is a black-box testing technique, where mutation testing is applied on the modeling level. In model-based mutation testing a model is mutated by changing its syntax. The mutants represent bugs and test cases are generated to detect such bugs in an implementation. The mutants are generated by so called mutation operators. A mutation operator is a rule how a certain syntactic term, e.g. a programming statement, should be changed. This changes or mutations represent faults. The aim of this project is to define a set of mutation operators for our Object-Oriented Action System modeling language. Based on this, a tool shall be developed that takes a model and the set of mutation operators and produces a number of mutated versions of this model (mutants). We use such mutants as input for our test case generator.


• MOMUTCAR - Model-based Mutation Testing of a Car Alarm System: (in progress) Model-based Mutation Testing is a black-box testing technique, where mutation testing is applied on the modeling level. We have developed an automated test case generator based on this technique. The aim of this project is to evaluate the tool and technique for an industrial case study of a car alarm system. This project is related to our FP7 MOGENTES project.