Contracts and specifications have long been used in object-oriented design, programming and testing to enhance reliability before software deployment. However, the use of specifications in deployed software is commonly limited to runtime checking where assertions form a basis for detecting incorrect program states to terminate the erroneous executions. We present a contract-based approach for data structure repair, which repairs erroneous states in deployed software. The key novelty is the support for rich behavioral specifications, such as those that relate pre-states with post-states of a method to accurately specify expected behavior and precise repair. The approach is based on the view of a specification as a non-deterministic implementation. The key insight is to use any correct state mutations by an otherwise erroneous execution to prune non-determinism in the specification, thereby transmuting the specification to an implementation that does not incur a prohibitively high performance penalty. While invariants, pre-conditions and post-conditions could be provided in different modeling languages, we leverage the Alloy tool-set, specifically the Alloy language and the Alloy Analyzer for systematically repairing erroneous states. Four different algorithms are presented and implemented in our data structure repair framework. These algorithms can repair a medium sized erroneous data structure in a few seconds. We introduce repair guide annotations defined by the user to improve the accuracy and performance of the repair mechanism. Experiments using complex specifications show the approach holds much promise in increasing software reliability. / text

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The theme of this thesis is to describe the business environment of Italy and to give readers a comprehensive overview of this country and the conditions of entry to this market for potentially interested enterperneurs. The thesis is divided into four chapters.In the first part the reader can get familiarized with the general characteristics of the target country both in terms of geography, as well as demographic and political information. The second chapter focuses on a closer economic characteristics of the country. The third chapter is devoted to the cultural specificities of Italy and specifications of doing business in this country. The fourth chapter is devoted to the business environment from a practical standpoint, the most common forms of business, labor market, tax, investment climate in the country and more.

Esta tese relata e discute informações obtidas em ações para tentar mostrar que o uso de conceitos sobre auditoria de qualidade e análise de correlação canônica pode contribuir para identificar itens que facilitem classificar tópicos para verificação de conformidade de especificações para construção ou controle de componentes de rodovias. O nível para qualidade de viagens pode ser analisado através da busca de uma expressão de necessidades e expectativas de motoristas e passageiros. Estudos sobre especificações de componentes de rodovias deveriam conter recomendações que contribuam para a qualidade de viagem, por entrosar conseqüências de uso de determinações técnicas com ações para atender às expectativas e necessidades dos que julgam a viagem. O uso da técnica e dos conceitos sobre auditoria, em conjunto com a análise de correlação canônica pode contribuir para classificar medidas ou contagens sobre variáveis que descrevem características físicas de rodovias do ponto de vista de melhoria de conforto e segurança a motoristas e passageiros. / This thesis reports and discusses information obtained from actions trying to show that the use of concepts on quality auditing and canonical correlation analysis can contribute to identify items to facilitate the classification of topics for verification on specifications conformity for the construction or the control of highways components. The level for ride quality can be analyzed through the search of an expression of needs and expectations of drivers and passengers. Studies about highway components specifications should contain recommendations to contribute for improving the ride quality, for gearing consequences of using technical determinations with actions to assist the expectations and needs of the ride judgers. The use of the auditing technique and concepts, together with the canonical correlation analysis can contribute to classify measures on variables that describe physical characteristics of highways on the point of view of comfort and safety improvement to drivers and passengers.

Margrave is a specification language and analysis tool for access control policies with semantics based in order-sorted logic. The clear logical roots of Margrave's semantics makes policies specified in the Margrave language both machine analyzable and relatively easy for users to reason about. However, the decision conflict resolution declaration and policy set features of Margrave do not have semantics that are as cleanly rooted in order-sorted logic as Margrave policies and queries are. Additionally, the current semantics of decision conflict resolution declarations and of policy sets do not permit users to take full advantage of the multi-decision capabilities of Margrave policies. The purposes of this thesis are (i) to provide a unified extension to the semantics for policies and policy combination, (ii) to cleanly support decision conflict resolution mechanisms in a general way within those semantics and (iii) to provide insight into the properties of policy combination and decision conflict resolution for multi-decision policies in general. These goals are achieved via the realization that policy combinators may be treated as policies operating within environments extended with the results of the policies to be combined, allowing policy combinators to be defined as if they were policies. The ability to treat policy combinators as policies means that users' current understanding of policies can be easily extended to policy combinators. Additionally, the tools that Margrave has for supporting policies can be leveraged as the Margrave language and analysis tool grow to provide fuller support for policy combination and rule conflict resolution declarations.

Esta tese relata e discute informações obtidas em ações para tentar mostrar que o uso de conceitos sobre auditoria de qualidade e análise de correlação canônica pode contribuir para identificar itens que facilitem classificar tópicos para verificação de conformidade de especificações para construção ou controle de componentes de rodovias. O nível para qualidade de viagens pode ser analisado através da busca de uma expressão de necessidades e expectativas de motoristas e passageiros. Estudos sobre especificações de componentes de rodovias deveriam conter recomendações que contribuam para a qualidade de viagem, por entrosar conseqüências de uso de determinações técnicas com ações para atender às expectativas e necessidades dos que julgam a viagem. O uso da técnica e dos conceitos sobre auditoria, em conjunto com a análise de correlação canônica pode contribuir para classificar medidas ou contagens sobre variáveis que descrevem características físicas de rodovias do ponto de vista de melhoria de conforto e segurança a motoristas e passageiros. / This thesis reports and discusses information obtained from actions trying to show that the use of concepts on quality auditing and canonical correlation analysis can contribute to identify items to facilitate the classification of topics for verification on specifications conformity for the construction or the control of highways components. The level for ride quality can be analyzed through the search of an expression of needs and expectations of drivers and passengers. Studies about highway components specifications should contain recommendations to contribute for improving the ride quality, for gearing consequences of using technical determinations with actions to assist the expectations and needs of the ride judgers. The use of the auditing technique and concepts, together with the canonical correlation analysis can contribute to classify measures on variables that describe physical characteristics of highways on the point of view of comfort and safety improvement to drivers and passengers.

The engineering design process and the advancement of future computer-aided-design systems need new design aids to be used during the conceptual design phase. This design phase is where information gathering and understanding of the problem are developed, analyzed and broken into small more manageable elements. These elements consist of customer requirements and engineering specifications, many of which are converted into functional expressions that need to be satisfied. Of these elements, it is at the most basic level of the functional expression that the beginning form of a product is developed. Upon that initial form, consisting of the basic envelope (area domain) of the product and defined by form features, components and assemblies are added to fulfill the functional requirements of the product. This dissertation develops the architecture of a Function Driven Mechanical Design Solution Library for the most primitive design structure - the feature. Each feature has functional expressions associated with it, which represent the fundamental information about the structure. The implementation uses the functionality a feature inherently possesses to obtain solutions. By using a feature's functionality for the search criteria during the design of mechanical components, the design engineer has access to a wider variety of design solutions than traditional libraries are capable of finding, and a more in depth understanding of the design. / Graduation date: 1995

Precise specification of the architecture and design of software is a good practice. Such specifications contain a lot of information about the software that can potentially be exploited by tools, to reduce redundancy in software writing by automating routine tasks, as well as giving valuable feedback on the software. We first broadly classify such tools based on their application, and look at some of the issues involved in writing them. Most of these tools are built using conventional programming languages that do not provide primitives that are routinely required by such tools. We identify some patterns that are seen while writing such tools and abstract them out into a language specially designed for the purpose. Our effort is a language called LEADS, where we attempt to make writing such tools a lot easier, modular, organized and portable. LEADS is based on the Pattern-Action approach, where one specifies the pattern of information of interest and the actions to be taken when it is found. The patterns are specified using a custom declarative language that is enriched with special primitives for routinely occurring constructs. LEADS also decouples itself from the specification environments and formats thereby ensuring wide applicability. This enables LEADS scripts to be ported across design environments with minimal effort.

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