A new formalism for mathematical description and verification of component-based systems

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a formal approach for composing software components into a distributed system. We describe the system as a hierarchical composition of some components, which can be distributed on a wide variety of hardware platforms and executed in parallel. We represent each component by a mathematical model and specify the abstract communication protocols of the components using Interface Automata (IAs). To model hierarchical systems, besides the basic components' model, we will present other components, called nodes. A node consists of a set of subnodes interacting under the supervision of a controller. Each subnode, in turn, is a node or discrete event component. By considering a subnode as a node we can make hierarchical nodes/components. The entire system, therefore, forms the root of the hierarchy. A controller, in turn, is a set of subcontrollers/interface automata that specifies interaction protocol of the components inside a node. We have also presented an example demonstrating the model by illustrating nodes, subnodes, controllers, and subcontrollers. To address the state space explosion problem in system verification, we utilize the controller as a contract for independent analysis of the components and their interactions. Therefore, a node will not be analyzed directly; instead, we will analyze the controller.

Handling State Space Explosion in Component-Based Software Verification: A Review

“…IA has been used to describe interaction protocols of components and preserve the local properties of them to verify them independently. Another work on verifying component-based systems via interface rule is presented by A. Isazadeh et al [134]. They have proposed a formal model to specify the interface rule for communication protocols of components and then verify components according to this interface rule.…”

Handling state space explosion in verification of component-based systems: A review

“…Another work on verifying component-based system via interface rule presented by Isazadeh. A et al [62]. They have proposed a formal model to specify interface rule for communication protocols of components and then verify components according to this interface rule.…”

Formal framework for specifying dynamic reconfiguration of adaptive systems

“…We present a framework for satisfying items 1-4 of our problem and some properties for adaptive systems. To achieve this framework, we apply the work of Jin et al [12] and the work of Isazadeh and Karimpour [13] to extend Cansado et al work [14] about a formal framework for structural reconfiguration of components under behavioural adaptation.…”

“…They described how to provide services of a component and how to consider environment assumptions of a component by means of the component protocols. Isazadeh and Karimpour [13] extended [12] to describe the system as a hierarchical composition of some components and proposed a compositional verification method to verify component‐based systems.…”

“…In this section, we are going to extend Cansado et al .’s work [14] using Jin's work in his PhD [12], and a method proposed by Isazadeh and Karimpour [13] to present our framework. For this purpose, at first the association of components, as the infrastructure of the framework, will be described by contracts.…”