Jozef Hooman

Research area

The goal of the research is to improve the development of software that is embedded in high-tech systems. The general approach is to use models of the software and its environment to allow early analysis of requirements and design decisions. Detecting errors early in the development process reduces the effort to obtain high-quality software.

Additional benefits can be obtained by generating code from high-level models, including an improvement of software maintenance. Recent techniques to create a Domain Specific Language (DSL) have proven to effective in the development of embedded software.

A DSL provides a single source from which a large number of artefacts can be generated, such as analysis models, code, tests, and documentation. This research is strongly related to ESI’s mission to create innovations that support the competitive strength of the high-tech industry.

Recent results

The DSL technology has been used to create the ComMA approach for the rich specification of interfaces, including a protocol state machine and time constraints. Powerful tooling has been developed to analyze specifications and to allow monitoring of interfaces. ComMA is currently used by a few high-tech companies. In 2021, the ComMA tooling has been made publicly available in the open-source project CommaSuite of the Eclipse Foundation. Additional features have been added, such as simulation and test generation.

Top publications

• I. Kurtev, J. Hooman, M. Schuts, and D. van der Munnik. Model based component
  development and analysis with ComMA. Science of Computer Programming, special issue on Success Stories in Model-Driven Engineering, 233:103067, 2024.

• J. Hooman, K. Kanter, A. Vasenev, and J. Verriet. MBSE-based design space exploration for productivity improvement using workflow models. In Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on System Engineering Research (CSER 2023), pages 35–46. Springer, 2024.

• M. Schuts and J. Hooman. Towards an industrial stateful software rejuvenation
  toolchain using model learning. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software, Onward! 2023, page 15–31. Association for Computing Machinery, 2023.