DataProVe: Fully Automated Conformance Verification Between Data Protection Policies and System Architectures

Privacy and data protection by design are relevant parts of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in which businesses and organisations are encouraged to implement measures at an early stage of the system design phase to fulfil data protection requirements. This paper addresses the policy and system architecture design and propose two variants of privacy policy language and architecture description language, respectively, for specifying and verifying data protection and privacy requirements. In addition, we develop a fully automated algorithm based on logic, for verifying three types of conformance relations (privacy, data protection, and functional conformance) between a policy and an architecture specified in our languages’ variants. Compared to related works, this approach supports a more systematic and fine-grained analysis of the privacy, data protection, and functional properties of a system. Our theoretical methods are then implemented as a software tool called DataProVe and its feasibility is demonstrated based on the centralised and decentralised approaches of COVID-19 contact tracing applications.

Architecture Description Languages Taxonomies Review

Self-adaptive distributed embedded systems can automatically adjust their behavior and/or structure at run time to respond to some predictable or unpredictable events. On the other hand, architecture description languages (ADLs) are qualified to be a convenient solution to model systems architecture as a set of components with well-defined interfaces and links. ADLs have been well-studied and applied in many engineering areas beyond the software and hardware engineering. This research work reviews the most relevant ADLs taxonomies and surveys from 2000 till now, selects the most suitable ADLs for self-adaptive embedded systems, and compares between standard and non-standard ADLs based on some key criteria. To do this, a search methodology was followed enabling a systematic review. Results showed that only a few standard ADL have been accepted by the embedded industry favoring domain-specific ADLs with a proved support of adaptivity, real time, energy consumption and security.

An Innovative Smart Grid Framework for Integration and Trading

Smart Grids (SGs) are at the forefront of the renewable resources transformative change for power generation. Due to its decentralised energy generation approach and potential reduction of the cost of power, its relevance for the energy sector is insurmountable. However, new business models and processes are necessary, and they come with integration, implementation, and operation-specific challenges. This work offers a broad analysis of SG’ main architectural aspects concerning security issues, integration bottlenecks and standardisation shortcomings in the development of an efficient platform for local energy (generation and storage) surplus trading. Through a multi-layered smart grid architecture description, this work develops an in-depth depiction of the interoperability between these layers (from top business layer passing through information and communications layers, and down to generation and storage layers). Therefore, this paper encompasses a comprehensive framework to address central smart grids design aspects and suggests a path to integrate the smart grid components into a cohesive and manageable trading platform. Finally, this work demonstrates how the proposed framework can be applied to real market study cases to highlight its solutions, provide a critical evaluation of potential implementation pitfalls, and identify opportunities for further stateof-the-art research.

Teaching Software Architecture Patterns Using ACME Language: تدريس أنماط معمارية البرمجيات باستخدام لغة أكمي

Software Architecture is one of the most important courses, in computer science discipline. It has many branches all of them aimed to prepare students to be architects on the industry. But actually, there is a gap between what the students find on the theoretical courses and what they find on the industry. On other words, the practical experience differs from academic theory. So the question is how to prepare students to join the industry? Abstract nature of the software engineering courses as general and software architecture in a special manner, led to difficulties in understanding, this raises the second question, how to make these courses understandable? All previous studies focusing on these problems either by changing course curricula or by using software tools. This paper extension for the previous study [1] as we survey Architecture Description Languages (ADLs) and conclude that ACME is a general-purpose language and it may be suitable for use as practical part for software architecture curricula. We aimed to design a framework use, ACME language, use it as a practical part of the software architecture course and supporting on teaching, focus on architecture patterns, thus we use most common architecture patterns layer and Pipes-Filters, starting with a simple example and increase the complexity.

Pragmatic reuse for DSML development

By bridging the semantic gap, domain-specific language (DSLs) serve an important role in the conquest to allow domain experts to model their systems themselves. In this publication we present a case study of the development of the Continuous REactive SysTems language (CREST), a DSL for hybrid systems modeling. The language focuses on the representation of continuous resource flows such as water, electricity, light or heat. Our methodology follows a very pragmatic approach, combining the syntactic and semantic principles of well-known modeling means such as hybrid automata, data-flow languages and architecture description languages into a coherent language. The borrowed aspects have been carefully combined and formalised in a well-defined operational semantics. The DSL provides two concrete syntaxes: CREST diagrams, a graphical language that is easily understandable and serves as a model basis, and , an internal DSL implementation that supports rapid prototyping—both are geared towards usability and clarity. We present the DSL’s semantics, which thoroughly connect the various language concerns into an executable formalism that enables sound simulation and formal verification in , and discuss the lessons learned throughout the project.