State-Constraint Transition: A Language for the Formal Specification of Dynamic Cyber-System Requirements

Existing formal languages for the specification of self-adaptive cyber-physical systems focus on re-configuring the system-to-be depending on its current context, to satisfy the user’s requirements, that is by dynamically composing the software’s structure and behavior. While these approaches specify context-sensitive requirements, they rarely consider their run-time dynamic and scalable nature. The State-Constraint Transition (SCT) modeling language, introduced in this paper, provides an answer to the problems linked to the specification of dynamic requirements by introducing the concept of configuration states, in which requirements are translated into constraints. The expressiveness of existing approaches is thus extended, combining the ease of use of well-established notations, notably those based on characteristics, and those based on Finite-state Machines (FSM), with the computational power and expressiveness of the constraint programming approach. The paper briefly presents the results of the preliminary evaluation, which assesses the expressiveness, scalability, and domain independence of the SCT language.