Formal Rules for Reliable Component-Based Architecture Evolution

Abstract

Software architectures are the blueprint of software systems construction and evolution. During the overall software lifecycle, several changes of its architecture may be considered (e.g. including new software requirements, correcting bugs, enhancing software performance). To ensure a valid and reliable evolution, software architecture changes must be captured, verified and validated at an early stage of the software evolution process. In this paper, we address this issue by proposing a set of evolution rules for software architectures in a manner that preserves consistency and coherence between abstraction levels. The rules are specified in the B formal language and applied to a three-level Adl that covers the three steps of software development: specification, implementation and deployment. To validate our rules, the approach is tested on a running example of Home Automation Software.