Given the increasing emphasis on multi-perspective modelling, the University of Pretoria’s Industrial Engineering Department requires a tool that enables horizontal transformation between DEMO (Design and Engineering Methodology for Organisations) models and other models. This tool needs to be available free-of-charge, up-to-date, and vertically consistent, and should enable horizontal transformation between DEMO models and other models such as the BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) models. Using design science research, this dissertation develops a part of this tool by first identifying and evaluating currently available tools, then discovering how other authors have approached model consistency and transformation, and finally developing a tool in ADOxx that supports the modelling of DEMO’s construction model– more specifically, the organisation construction diagram (OCD) and transaction product table (TPT) and transformations from the OCD to BPMN collaboration diagrams. The new tool, called DMT (Demo Modelling Tool), is demonstrated by modelling two case studies within the tool, and then performing four transformations. It is evaluated by having postgraduate participants model the same case study and rate the tool using pre-established usability criteria. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Industrial and Systems Engineering / MEng / Unrestricted

Background: As the business world faces significant changes to adapt to the rapidly increasing sustainability demand, they also face significant changes to their business core. The European Commission established a circular action plan in 2015, pressuring businesses operating in the EU area to work to implement sustainability in their operations proactively.    Purpose: The aim is to understand how companies select, develop and incorporate sustainable factors in their business model. The gap in the existing literature was identified to be within the field of illustrating the process of sustainable business model innovation. The authors aim to discuss the existing literature and provide new insights on the chosen subject.   Method: A multiple case study was designed with a qualitative research approach to align the study with the purpose. The case study built on data collection through semi-structured interviews, letting the interviewees carry the most significant part of the conversation. This was beneficial since the authors adopted an interpretive research paradigm, highlighting the importance of individuals' perceptions of the process.    Conclusion: The results show that the decisions that drive the implementation of sustainable business model innovation are often profit-driven but can also be driven by morale and ethics, governmental regulations, and stakeholder pressure. Both internal and external resistance can be expected when transforming a company towards sustainability. Therefore, broad acceptance amongst shareholders and stakeholders will enable a transformation, which can partly be achieved through a robust organizational identity that ties sustainability to it.

The development of advanced embedded systems requires a systematic approach as well as advanced tool support in dealing with their increasing complexity. This complexity is due to the increasing functionality that is implemented in embedded systems and stringent (and conflicting) requirements placed upon such systems from various stakeholders. The corresponding system development involves several specialists employing different modeling languages and tools. Integrating their work and the results thereof then becomes a challenge. In order to facilitate system architecting and design integration of different models, an approach that provides dedicated workspaces/views supported by structured information management and information exchange between domain models and tools is required. This work is delimited to the context of embedded systems design and taking a model based approach. The goal of the work is to study possible technical solutions for integrating different models and tools, and to develop knowledge, support methods and a prototype tool platform. To this end, this thesis examines a number of approaches that focus on the integration of multiple models and tools. Selected approaches are compared and characterized, and the basic mechanisms for integration are identified. Several scenarios are identified and further investigated in case studies. Two case studies have been performed with model transformations as focus. In the first one, integration of Matlab/Simulink® and UML2 are discussed with respect to the motivations, technical possibilities, and challenges. A preliminary mapping strategy, connecting a subset of concepts and constructs of Matlab/Simulink® and UML2, is presented together with a prototype implementation in the Eclipse environment. The second case study aims to enable safety analysis based on system design models in a UML description. A safety analysis tool, HiP-HOPS (Hierarchically Performed Hazard Origin and Propagation Studies), is partially integrated with a UML tool where an EAST-ADL2 based architecture model is developed. The experience and lessons learned from the experiments are reported in this thesis. Multiple specific views are involved in the development of embedded systems. This thesis has studied the integration between system architecture design, function development and safety analysis through using UML tools, Matlab/Simulink, and HiP-HOPS. The results indicate that model transformations provide a feasible and promising solution for integrating multiple models and tools. The contributions are believed to be valid for a large class of advanced embedded systems. However, the developed transformations so far are not really scalable. A systematic approach for efficient development of model transformations is desired to standardize the design process and reuse developed transformations. To this end, future studies will be carried out to develop guidelines for model and tool integration and to provide support for structured information at both meta level and instance level. / QC 20101116

No description available.

Over the past decade the capabilities of autonomous systems have been steadily increasing. Unmanned systems are moving from systems that are predominantly remotely operated, to systems that include a basic decision making capability. This is a trend that is expected to continue with autonomous systems making decisions in increasingly complex environments, based on more abstract, higher-level missions and goals. These changes have significant implications for how these systems should be designed and engineered. Indeed, as the goals and tasks these systems are to achieve become more abstract, and the environments they operate in become more complex, are current approaches to verification and validation sufficient? Domain Specific Modelling is a key technology for the verification of autonomous systems. Verifying these systems will ultimately involve understanding a significant number of domains. This includes goals/tasks, environments, systems functions and their associated performance. Relational Model Transformations provide a means to utilise, combine and check models for consistency across these domains. In this thesis an approach that utilises relational model transformation technologies for systems verification, Systems MDD, is presented along with the results of a series of trials conducted with an existing relational model transformation language (QVT-Relations). These trials identified a number of problems with existing model transformation languages, including poorly or loosely defined semantics, differing interpretations of specifications across different tools and the lack of a guarantee that a model transformation would generate a model that was compliant with its associated meta-model. To address these problems, two related solvers were developed to assist with realising the Systems MDD approach. The first solver, MMCS, is concerned with partial model completion, where a partial model is defined as a model that does not fully conform with its associated meta-model. It identifies appropriate modifications to be made to a partial model in order to bring it into full compliance. The second solver, TMPT, is a relational model transformation engine that prioritises target models. It considers multiple interpretations of a relational transformation specification, chooses an interpretation that results in a compliant target model (if one exists) and, optionally, maximises some other attribute associated with the model. A series of experiments were conducted that applied this to common transformation problems in the published literature.

This thesis presents a two step automatic transformation of Field Artillery Mission Space Conceptual Models (ACMs) into High Level Architecture (HLA) Federation Architecture Models (FAMs) into executable distributed simulation code. The approach followed in the course of this thesis adheres to the Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) philosophy. Both ACMs and FAMs are formally defined conforming to their metamodels, ACMM and FAMM, respectively. ACMM is comprised of a behavioral component, based on Live Sequence Charts (LSCs), and a data component based on UML class diagrams. Using ACMM, the Adjustment Followed by Fire For Effect (AdjFFE) mission, which serves as the source model for the model transformation case study, is constructed. The ACM to FAM transformation, which is defined over metamodel-level graph patterns, is carried out with the Graph Rewriting and Transformation (GReAT) tool. Code generation from a FAM is accomplished by employing a model interpreter that produces Java/AspectJ code. The resulting code can then be executed on an HLA Run-Time Infrastructure (RTI). Bringing a fully fledged transformation approach to conceptual modeling is a distinguishing feature of this thesis. This thesis also aims to bring the chart notations to the attention of the mission space modeling community regarding the description of military tasks, particularly their communication aspect. With the experience gained, a set of guidelines for a domainindependent transformer from any metamodel-based conceptual model to FAM is offered.

MDE techniques are more and more used in praxis. However, there is currently a lack of detailed reports about how different MDE techniques are integrated into the development and combined with each other. To learn more about such MDE settings, we performed a descriptive and exploratory field study with SAP, which is a worldwide operating company with around 50.000 employees and builds enterprise software applications. This technical report describes insights we got during this study. For example, we identified that MDE settings are subject to evolution. Finally, this report outlines directions for future research to provide practical advises for the application of MDE settings. / Techniken der modellgetriebenen Entwicklung (MDE) werden mehr und mehr in der Praxis eingesetzt. Dabei gibt es wenige detaillierte Berichte darüber wie unterschiedliche MDE-Techniken kombiniert und in die Entwicklung integriert werden. Die vorliegende beschreibende Feldstudie dient dem Zweck, in SAP genutzte MDE-Ansätze detailliert zu beschreiben. SAP ist ein weltweit operierendes Unternehmen, hat ca. 50 000 Mitarbeiter und stellt Softwarelösungen für Firmen her. Der vorliegende technische Bericht beschreibt die Einblicke die wir in dieser Studie erhalten haben. Dazu gehört die Einsicht, dass MDE Ansätze einer Evolution unterliegen. Schließlich umreißt dieser Bericht mögliche Richtungen für zukünftige Forschung um praktische Ratschläge für die Gestaltung von MDE Ansätzen geben zu können.

Mūsų dienomis informacinės sistemos tampa vis sudėtingesnės ir verslo procesams aprašyti seniai nebeužtenka paprastų tekstų ar schemų. Kompiuterizuotų IS reikalavimams aprašyti ir modeliuoti geriausiai tinka specialiai tam skirti modeliai. Modeliavimas tapo būtinas kuriant dideles, sudėtingas ar su kitomis sistemomis sąveikaujančias informacines sistemas, nors daugelis programuotojų siekia minimizuoti modeliavimo pastangas. Modeliuojami ne tik vartotojo poreikiai, dalykinė sritis, programinė įranga, bet ir organizacijos veikla - pastaraisiais metais ši modeliavimo fazė tapo daugelio projektavimo procesų dalimi. Todėl specialūs kompiuterizuoti modeliavimo įrankiai tapo neatskiriama sudėtingų IS kūrimo ir projektavimo dalimi. Modernėjant technologijoms vis labiau orientuojamasi į reikalavimų specifikavimo fazę IS kūrimo projektuose – reikalavimai turi lemiamą reikšmę projektuojant modernias ir sudėtingas informacines sistemas. Todėl vis didėja projektavimo įrankių įtaka IS kūrimo procese, jų pagalba kartais generuojant ir kodą. Taigi, kad tinkamai būtų sukurta ir vystoma nauja sistema, būtina tinkamai apsibrėžti viziją, veiklos modelį ir tiksliai specifikuoti reikalavimus. Šis procesas, bei veiklos modelio transformavimas į vartotojo reikalavimų sistemai modelį aptariamas šiame darbe. / In nowadays information systems are becoming more and more sophisticated and for business process definition it is not enough to use simple schemas and text. For information systems requirements there are created special models. Systems modeling became a must for creating big, sophisticated, difficult systems. User’s requirements, subject matter and specialty domain, software architecture and even organizations activities are being modeled in modern software development companies during systems design process. Special modeling tools are used to create information systems. During last few years software and business developers are focusing more to requirements specification phase. In information systems development projects strict and simply understandable requirements have critical meaning creating big sophisticated information systems. So usage of design and modeling tools is more and more popular. Using such tools sometimes program code is generated to. To develop stable system is crucial to have a vision, make good activity model and specify requirements for future system. This work covers the method of the formation of transformation between activity and use-case models. This transformation is based developing business vision and requirements to future system. The algorithm of transformation described is this work, formally defines the described models elements relations between each other. Solution, based on described algorithm was made on MagicDraw UML tool platform... [to full text]

Over the years, number of design methodologies were developed. One of the state-of-the-art modeling approaches is Model Driven Architecture. This thesis is an attempt to utilize the MDA in a specific and complex domain – real-time systems development. In MDA framework there are three levels of abstraction: computation independent, platform independent and platform specific. The target environment of the method presented in the thesis is Ada 2005 programming language which extended the old version of the language with several new object-oriented features making it suitable for using with the MDA. Application of the MDA in real-time systems domain targeted towards Ada 2005 implementation constitutes a new design method which benefits from the MDA, UML and Ada 2005 advantages. The thesis starts with presentation of the complexity of the real-time systems domain. A few real-time domain aspects are chosen as a main area for elaborating the design method. The utilizes UML Profile for Schedulability, Performance and Time for defining platform independent model. Additionally it provides its extension – the Ada UML profile – which constitutes the platform specific model. This is followed by specification of transformations between platform independent and specific model. The specification is used as a base for implementation of the transformations. Guidelines for code generation form the Ada UML profile are also provided. Finally, the thesis describes how the transformations can be implemented in Telelogic TAU tool. / gruszka.robert@gmail.com

L’Ingénierie Dirigée par les Modèles (IDM) est une approche populaire pour le développement logiciel qui favorise l’utilisation de modèles au sein des processus de développement. Dans un processus de développement logiciel base sur l’IDM, le logiciel est développé en créant des modèles qui sont transformés successivement en d’autres modèles et éventuellement en code source. Quand l’IDM est utilisée pour le développement de logiciels complexes, la complexité des modèles et des transformations de modèles augmente, risquant d’affecter la fiabilité du processus de développement logiciel ainsi que le logiciel en résultant.Traditionnellement, la fiabilité des logiciels est assurée au moyen d’approches pour la vérification de logiciels, basées sur l’utilisation de techniques pour l’analyse formelle de systèmes et d’approches pour le test de logiciels. Pour assurer la fiabilité du processus IDM de développement logiciel, ces techniques ont en quelque sorte été adaptées pour essayer de s’assurer la correction des modèles et des transformations de modèles associées. L’objectif de cette thèse est de fournir de nouveaux mécanismes améliorant les approches existantes pour la vérification de modèles statiques, et d’analyser comment ces approches peuvent s’avérer utiles lors du test des transformations de modèles. / Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is a popular approach to the development of software which promotes the use of models as first-Class citizens in the software development process. In a MDE-Based software development process, software is developed by creating models to be successively transformed into another models and eventually into the software source code. When MDE is applied to the development of complex software systems, the complexity of models and model transformations increase, thus risking both, the reliability of the software development process and the soundness of the resulting software. Traditionally, ensuring software correctness and absence of errors has been addressed by means of software verification approaches, based on the utilization of formal analysis techniques, and software testing approaches. In order to ensure the reliability of MDE-Based software development processes, these techniques have some how been adapted to try to ensure correctness of models and model transformations. The objective of this thesis is to provide new mechanisms to improve the landscape of approaches devoted to the verification of static models, and analyze how these static model verification approaches can be of assistance at the time of testing model transformations.