Validating Behavioral Component Interfaces in Rewriting Logic

Abstract

Many distributed applications can be understood in terms of components interacting in an open environment such as the Internet. Open environments are subject to change in unpredictable ways, as other applications may arrive, evolve, or disappear. In order to validate components in such environments, it can be useful to build a simulation environment which reflects this highly unpredictable behavior. In this paper, the validation of components with respect to behavioral interfaces is considered. Behavioral interfaces specify semantic requirements on the observable behavior of components, expressed in an assume-guarantee style. In our approach, a rewriting logic model is transparently extended with the history of all observable communication, and metalevel strategies are used to guide the simulation of environment behavior. Over-specification of the environment is avoided by allowing arbitrary environment behavior within the bounds of the assumption on observable behavior, while the component is validated with respect to the guarantee of the behavioral interface.

Executable Interface Specifications for Testing Asynchronous Creol Components

“…For scheduling the intended order, an external clock is used, which is introduced for the purpose of testing, only. Even if not specifically targeting Creol, [18] pursues similar goals as this paper, validating component interfaces specified in rewriting logic. In contrast to here, the interface behavior is specified by first-order logic over traces, where from a given predicate an assumption part and a guarantee part can be derived.…”

“…Future work We intend to use the formalization presented here as specification of an implementation in rewriting logic, using Maude as execution platform and the already implemented framework of [18] as starting point. There are two different approaches to provide an interpreter for our theory.…”

A Coordination Model for Interactive Components

“…This is particularly relevant in a context were one is interested in exploring the impact of different design decisions at the architectural level. Recent related work on the use of (some type of) logic to specify component behaviour include [7] and [15], the latter with an emphasis on property verification.…”