Author:
Yoshiyuki Shinkawa
Affiliation:
Ryukoku University, Japan
Keyword(s):
Component reuse, software engineering, colored Petri nets, formal methods.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Information Systems Analysis and Specification
;
Modeling Formalisms, Languages and Notations
Abstract:
One of the major activities in component based software development is to identify the adaptable components to the given requirements. We usually compare requirement specifications with the component specifications, in order to evaluate the equality between them. However, there could be several differences between those specifications, e.g. granularity, expression forms, viewpoints, or the level of detail, which make the component evaluation difficult. In addition, recent object oriented approaches require many kinds of models to express software functionality, which make the comparison of the specification complicated. For rigorous component evaluation, it is desirable to use concise and simple expression forms of specifications, which can be used commonly between requirements and components. This paper presents a formal evaluation technique for component adaptation. In order to relieve the granularity difference, the concept of a virtual component is introduced, which is the reusab
le unit of this approach. A virtual component is a set of components that can acts as single component. In order to express requirements and components commonly and rigorously, algebraic specification and Colored Petri Nets (CPNs) are used. Algebraic specification provides the theoretical foundation of this technique, while CPNs help us to use it intuitively.
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