A theory of change for prioritised resilient and evolvable software systems.

The process of completing, correcting and prioritising specifications is an essential but very complex task for the maintenance and improvement of software systems. The preservation of functionalities and the ability to accommodate changes are main objectives of the software development cycle to gua...

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Published in:Synthese Vol. 198; no. 23; pp. 5719 - 5745
Main Authors: Primiero, Giuseppe, Raimondi, Franco, Chen, Taolue
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Oct2021 Supplement 23
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        10.1007/s11229-019-02305-7
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        atl: A theory of change for prioritised resilient and evolvable software systems.
      aug:
        au:
          Primiero, Giuseppe
          Raimondi, Franco
          Chen, Taolue
        affil:
          Department of Philosophy, University of Milan, Via Festa del Perdono 7, 20122, Milan, Italy
          Department of Computer Science, Middlesex University London, The Borroughs, NW4 4BT, London, UK
          Dipartimento di Matematica e Fisica, Universitá degli Studi della Campania, Salerno, Italy
          Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, WC1E 7HX, London, UK
      su:
        Systems software
        Theory of change
        Software maintenance
        Reliability in engineering
        Computer software development
      sug:
        subj:
          Systems software
          Theory of change
          Software maintenance
          Reliability in engineering
          Computer software development
      keyword:
        Software evolution
        Software evolvability
        Software reliability
        Software resilience
      ab: The process of completing, correcting and prioritising specifications is an essential but very complex task for the maintenance and improvement of software systems. The preservation of functionalities and the ability to accommodate changes are main objectives of the software development cycle to guarantee system reliability. Logical theories able to fully model such processes are still insufficient. In this paper we propose a full formalisation of such operations on software systems inspired by the Alchourrón–Gärdenfors–Makinson (AGM) paradigm for belief revision of human epistemic states. We represent specifications as finite sets of formulas equipped with a priority relation that models functional entrenchment of properties. We propose to handle specification incompleteness through ordered expansion, inconsistency through ordered safe contraction and prioritisation through revision with reordering, and model all three in an algorithmic fashion. We show how the system satisfies basic properties of the AGM paradigm, including Levi's and Harper's identities. We offer a concrete example and complexity results for the inference and model checking problems on revision. We conclude by describing resilience and evolvability of software systems based on such revision operators.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
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    language: English
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          year: 2021
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