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A Component-Based Debugging Approach for Detecting Structural Inconsistencies in Declarative Equation Based Models

  • Artificial Intelligence
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Abstract

Object-oriented modeling with declarative equation based languages often unconsciously leads to structural inconsistencies. Component-based debugging is a new structural analysis approach that addresses this problem by analyzing the structure of each component in a model to separately locate faulty components. The analysis procedure is performed recursively based on the depth-first rule. It first generates fictitious equations for a component to establish a debugging environment, and then detects structural defects by using graph theoretical approaches to analyzing the structure of the system of equations resulting from the component. The proposed method can automatically locate components that cause the structural inconsistencies, and show the user detailed error messages. This information can be a great help in finding and localizing structural inconsistencies, and in some cases pinpoints them immediately.

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Correspondence to Jian-Wan Ding.

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Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 60574053), the National High-Tech Development 863 Program of China (Grant No. 2003AA001031), and the National Basic Research 973 Program of China (Grant No. 2003CB716207).

Jian-Wan Ding received his B.E. and M.S. degrees in mechanical science and engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in 1998 and 2001 respectively. Now he is a Ph.D. candidate in the National CAD Support Software Engineering Research Center, HUST. His research interests include multi-domain modeling, simulation and solving.

Li-Ping Chen received his Ph.D. degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 1995. He is currently a professor and Ph.D. supervisor in the National CAD Support Software Engineering Research Center, HUST. His research interests include geometric constraint solving, kinematics and dynamics, feature-based and dimension-driven solid modeling and CAD/CAM integration.

Fan-Li Zhou received his M.S. degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2001. Now he is a Ph.D. candidate in the National CAD Support Software Engineering Research Center, HUST. His research interests include kinematics and dynamics, multi-domain modeling, simulation and solving.

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Ding, JW., Chen, LP. & Zhou, FL. A Component-Based Debugging Approach for Detecting Structural Inconsistencies in Declarative Equation Based Models. J Comput Sci Technol 21, 450–458 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-006-0450-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-006-0450-9

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