An approach to software design that introduces a fully automated analysis giving designers immediate feedback, now featuring the latest version of the Alloy language. In Software Abstractions Daniel Jackson introduces an approach to software design that draws on traditional formal methods but exploits automated tools to find flaws as early as possible. This approach—which Jackson calls “lightweight formal methods” or “agile modeling”—takes from formal specification the idea of a precise and expressive notation based on a tiny core of simple and robust concepts but replaces conventional analysis based on theorem proving with a fully automated analysis that gives designers immediate feedback. Jackson has developed Alloy, a language that captures the essence of software abstractions simply and succinctly, using a minimal toolkit of mathematical notions. This revised edition updates the text, examples, and appendixes to be fully compatible with Alloy 4.

Export author Barker covers information key for proficiency with an OO programming language like Java, and shows how to really create reusable code and extensible applications.

People make use of software applications in their activities, applying them as tools in carrying out tasks. That this use should be good for people--easy, effective, efficient, and enjoyable--is a principal goal of design. In this book, we present the notion of Conceptual Models, and argue that Conceptual Models are core to achieving good design. From years of helping companies create software applications, we have come to believe that building applications without Conceptual Models is just asking for designs that will be confusing and difficult to learn, remember, and use. We show how Conceptual Models are the central link between the elements involved in application use: people's tasks (task domains), the use of tools to perform the tasks, the conceptual structure of those tools, the presentation of the conceptual model (i.e., the user interface), the language used to describe it, its implementation, and the learning that people must do to use the application. We further show that putting a Conceptual Model at the center of the design and development process can pay rich dividends: designs that are simpler and mesh better with users' tasks, avoidance of unnecessary features, easier documentation, faster development, improved customer uptake, and decreased need for training and customer support. Table of Contents: Using Tools / Start with the Conceptual Model / Definition / Structure / Example / Essential Modeling / Optional Modeling / Process / Value / Epilogue

A comprehensive reference for an executable UML and the advantages of modeling This book presents the most up-to-date technology for rapidly developing information systems using the object-oriented paradigm and models, and establishes an executable profile of UML for such model-driven development. As a software developer, architect, or analyst, you'll benefit from learning how information systems can be developed more efficiently using the object-oriented paradigm and model-driven approach. Written by an expert who is uniquely qualified in the topic, this Wrox reference offers a profile of UML that is formal and executable, instead of the relational paradigm or its incomplete coupling with object orientation. It provides a comprehensive tutorial on model-driven development and UML. Provides an in-depth tutorial on using model-driven development and UML for building information systems, with extensive examples Includes tutorials and critics of traditional IS modeling paradigms, such as the relational paradigm, entity-relationship modeling, and the widely used incomplete coupling of object orientation with relational databases Covers basic object-oriented concepts with UML semantics, like classes and data types, attributes, associations, generalizations, operations and methods Proposes new powerful concepts for rapid development of information systems including contemporary user interfaces, such as programming by demonstration and others Model-Driven Development with Executable UML offers a thorough education in this complex topic.

Although efforts have been under way for the past two centuries to treat language scientifically, linguists and others who work with language, speech, or communication have not found an adequate scientific foundation in current linguistic theory. Many of the difficulties are caused by longstanding confusions between the logical domain of science and grammar and the physical domain of sound waves and the people who speak and understand. In this book, therefore, the last impediments of tradition, the ancient semiotic-grammatical foundations of linguistics, are set aside. We move into the physical domain, where theories and hypotheses can be tested against observations of the physical reality. Here new foundations are laid that are fully consonant with modern science as practiced in physics, chemistry, and biology. On these foundations is built a structure of testable specific dynamic causal laws of communicative behavior that provides support for treating previously recalcitrant context-dependent semantic, pragmatic, interactive, rhetorical, and literary phenomena. The central role of context in the foundations of the theory provides the insights of scientific lawfulness while still honoring the particularity of situations celebrated in the humanities.

This book contains the extended and revised versions of eight of the ten full papers (out of 58 submissions) presented at the First International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design (BMSD 2011), held in Sofia, Bulgaria. The theme of BMSD 2011 was "Business Models and Advanced Software Systems," and the related scientific areas of interest were: business models and requirements, business models and services, business models and software, and information systems architecture.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 4th IFIP WG 8.1 Working Conference on the Practice of Enterprise Modeling, held in Oslo, Norway, during November 2-3, 2011. The conference series is a dedicated forum where the use of enterprise modeling (EM) in practice is addressed by bringing together researchers, users, and practitioners in order to develop a better understanding of the practice of EM, to contribute to improved industrial EM applications, and to share knowledge and experiences. The 18 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. Authored by both researchers and practitioners, they reflect the fact that EM encompasses human, organizational issues as well as technical aspects related to the development of information systems. The papers are organized in five thematic sessions on process modeling, business modeling, enterprise architecture, EM, and model-driven development. In addition, two keynotes on EM in an agile world and on intra- and inter-organizational process mining complete the volume.