Section: Software

SOFAT : a scenario toolbox

Participants : Loïc Hélouët, Deepak Bhatia, Gunjan Aggarwal.

The SOFAT toolbox is a scenario manipulation toolbox. Its aim is to implement all known formal manipulations on scenarios. The toolbox implements several formal models such as partial orders, graph grammars, graphs, and algorithm dedicated to these models (Tarjan, cycle detection for graphs, Caucal's normalization for graph grammars, etc. ). The SOFAT toolbox is permanently updated to integrate new algorithms. It is freely available from Distribcom's website : http://www.irisa.fr/distribcom/Prototypes/SOFAT/index.html .

SOFAT is a demonstrator and a support for all our proposals in standardization committees at ITU. This involvement in standardization is also the occasion for numerous contacts with MSC users (France Telecom, Nokia, Motorola), but also with CASE tool designers at IBM.

Last year, the V3 of SOFAT had been released. Ever since, SOFAT has been extended with new functionnalities such as scenario based diagnosis, and model checking of globally cooperative HMSCs. Version 4 of SOFAT will be published as soon as these new functionalities are documented.

Time analysis of scenarios was developped this summer by G. Aggarwal, and is currently under integration in the tool. The principle of the analysis consists in unfolding an annotated HMSC, transform it into a colored stochastic Petri Net, and then run a simulation to obtain performance indicators.