Multicomponent Compatibility and its Verification

Software architecture has been introduced with promise of better re-use of software, greater flexibility, scalability and higher quality of software services. Software architecture uses components as the basic building blocks of software systems. Components represent high-level software models; they must be generic enough to work in a variety of contexts and in cooperation with other components, but they also must be specific enough to provide easy reuse. To be composable with other (third-party) components, a component needs to be sufficiently self-contained. Also, it needs a clear specification of what it requires and what it provides. In other words, a component needs to encapsulate its implementation and interact with its environment by means of well-defined interfaces

Checking compatibility and substitutability of software components

In component-based systems, two components are compatible if all possible sequences of services requested by one component can be provided by the other component. It has been recently shown that for verification of compatibility, the behavior of interacting components, at their interfaces, can be modeled by labeled Petri nets with labels representing the requested and provided services. Such component models are then composed and the composition operation is designed in such a way that component incompatibilities are manifested as deadlocks in the composed model. Compatibility verification is thus performed through deadlock analysis of the composed models. Component compatibility is also used for the verification of component substitutability; if the new component is compatible with all components that interact with the old component, it can safely replace the old one

Performance Analysis of Component-Based Systems

Dependability assessment of component-based systems must include verification of temporal and performance requirements as they can be of primary importance for many real-time and embedded systems. This paper uses labeled timed Petri nets as models of the behavior of components at their interfaces. These component models are systematically composed into an integrated model of the system which is used for verification of temporal characteristics and performance analysis

Siphon-Based Verification of Component Compatibility

In component-based systems, two interacting components are compatible if any sequence of services requested by one component can be provided by the other. This concept of compatibility can easily be extended to a set of interacting components. Checking the compatibility of interacting components is essential for any dependable software system. Recently, an approach to verification of component compatibility has been proposed in which the behavior of individual components (at component interfaces) was modeled by labeled Petri nets. Moreover, the composition of interacting components was designed in such a way that all component incompatibilities were manifested by deadlocks in the composed model. Consequently, the verification of component compatibility is performed by deadlock analysis of the composed model. One of techniques for deadlock analysis is based on net structures called siphons. Siphon-based verification of component compatibility is the subject of this paper

Compatibility of Software Components — Modeling and Verification

Component-based software engineering (CBSE) has been emerging as a promising approach to the development of large-scale software architectures in which software components with welldefined interfaces can be quickly assembled into complex software systems. However, assembled components must be compatible in the sense that any sequence of operations requested by one of the interacting components must be provided by the other component(s). Component incompatibility may result in subtle software failures which are difficult to detect and correct. A formal model of component interaction is proposed by representing component behaviors by labeled Petri nets. These net models are designed in such a way that component incompatibility is manifested by deadlocks in the net model of interacting components. Reachability-based as well as structural methods of deadlock detection are discussed. A simple example illustrating the proposed approach is provided. 1