The Christian Doppler Laboratory for Monitoring and Evolution of Very-Large-Scale Software Systems was started on February 1, 2013. After 7 successful years, the lab reached the planned end of its operation by the end of January 2020. However, a phasing-out period was granted until the end of August 2020 for the completion of dissertations.

The lab was working on theoretical foundations as well as methods, tools, and infrastructures for managing and supporting the monitoring and evolution of very-large-scale software systems (VLSS). The laboratory has been hosted by Johannes Kepler University Linz and was co-funded by the Christian Doppler Research Association, Primetals Technologies GmbH, KEBA AG, and Dynatrace Austria.

Abstract: Version control systems are an integral part of today’s software engineering. They facilitate the collaborative management of revisions (sequential versions) and variants (concurrent versions) of software systems under development. Typical version control systems maintain revisions of files and variants of whole software systems. Variants are supported via branching or forking mechanisms that conceptually clone whole systems in a coarse-grained way. Unfortunately, such cloning leads to high maintenance efforts. To avoid these disadvantages and support fine-grained variation, developers need to employ custom configuration mechanisms, which leads to a misappropriation of tools and undesired context switches. Addressing this trade-off, a number of variation control systems has been conceived, providing a richer set of capabilities for handling variants. Variation control systems decompose a software system into finer-grained variable entities and offer high-level metaphors to automatically manage this variability. In this paper, we classify and compare variation control systems and illustrate their core concepts and characteristics. All investigated variation control systems offer an iterative (checkout–modify–commit) workflow, but there are essential differences affecting developers. We highlight challenges and discuss research perspectives for developing the next generation of version and variation control systems.

Visit Journal

Authors: Markus Weninger, Paul Grünbacher, Elias Gander, Andreas Schörgenhumer

Abstract: Memory analysis tools are essential for finding and fixing anomalies in the memory usage of software systems (e.g., memory leaks). Although numerous tools are available, hardly any empirical studies exist on their usefulness for developers in typical usage scenarios. Instead, most evaluations are limited to reporting performance metrics. We thus conducted a study to empirically assess the usefulness of the interactive memory analysis tool AntTracks Analyzer. Specifically, we first report findings from assessing the tool using a cognitive walkthrough, guided by the Cognitive Dimensions of Notations Framework. We then present the results of a qualitative user study involving 14 subjects who used AntTracks to detect and resolve memory anomalies. We report lessons learned from the study and implications for developers of interactive memory analysis tools. We hope that our results will help researchers and developers of memory analysis tools in defining, selecting, and improving tool capabilities.

Visit Journal

Special thanks goes to all members of the committee. Rick Rabiser (supervisor), Armin Biere (head of the committee), Josef Küng (committee member), and Klaus Schmid (external assessor, University of Hildesheim).

Harmonized Temporal Feature Modeling to Uniformly Perform, Track, Analyze and Replay Software Product Line Evolution (authors: Daniel Hinterreiter, Michael Nieke, Lukas Linsbauer, Christoph Seidl, Herbert Prähofer, Paul Grünbacher). This work was carried out in collaboration with TU Braunschweig.

Supporting Feature Model Evolution by Suggesting Constraints from Code-Level Dependency Analyses (authors: Kevin Feichtinger, Daniel Hinterreiter, Lukas Linsbauer, Herbert Prähofer, Paul Grünbacher). This work was carried out in collaboration with our industry partner Keba AG.

GPCE is co-located with SPLASH, the ACM SIGPLAN conference on Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications. The conference will take place in Athens, Greece from Sunday 20th to Friday 25th of October 2019.

Der Beitrag wurde auch beim Treffpunkt Wissenschaft des ORF OÖ anlässlich 50 Jahre Technisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät der JKU präsentiert.

Wir danken dem ORF OÖ für die freundliche Genehmigung.

Panel discussion with Johannes Jetschgo (ORF), Ingrid Graz (Institute of Experimental Physics), Paul Grünbacher (Institute Software Systems Engineering), Wolfgang Gruber (Institute for Electrical Drives and Power Electronics), Peter Juza (Primetals Technologies), and Nobert Müller (Dean of the TNF Faculty at JKU).

Further information

About the event

The Convergence of Safety and Security for Safety-critical Systems
Tuesday, July 10th, 2018, 15:00-16:00
Room: JKU, S3-218 (Science Park 3)

Abstract: For decades, safety was the dominating topic for cyber-physical systems. Safety of a system ensures that in the case of faults, the system is still highly unlikely to cause harm to users, capital infrastructure, or the environment. With the advent of connectivity, security is now becoming an equally important topic as connectivity creates scalable attacks. Unfortunately, the complexity of today’s systems prevents engineers from gaining a deep understanding of systems and consequently new approaches for safety and security approaches are necessary.
The talk presents ongoing development of a framework for machine-based safety and security monitoring. The framework is based on specification mining, runtime verification, and anomaly detection using known but also novel data sources. The utility of the framework includes, besides online safety and security monitoring, providing insights to engineers, delivering prognostics and diagnostics, and demonstrating compliance with safety specifications. The results are promising and are supported by demonstrations on autonomous vehicles and other case studies.

Sebastian Fischmeister performs systems research at the intersection of software technology, distributed systems, and formal methods. His preferred application area includes distributed real-time embedded systems in the domain of automotive systems, avionics, and medical devices. Key highlights of his research include a framework for scalable location-based pervasive computing systems and tree communication schedules for verifiable but flexible real-time communication. He received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in Computer Science at the Vienna University of Technology, Austria, in March 2000, and his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science at the University of Salzburg, Austria in December 2002. He continued working at the University of Salzburg as researcher and lecturer and was awarded the Austrian APART stipend in 2005. He subsequently worked at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, as Post Graduate Research Associate until 2008. Sebastian Fischmeister is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada.