TBP: Code-Oriented Component Behavior Specification

Assuring components compatibility plays a crucial part in developing a reliable component system. Especially, when the components come from different vendors worldwide. In order to do so, an appropriate formalism for behavior specification of components is necessary. We propose a formalism of Threaded Behavior Protocols, which - unlike most other formalisms - allows for both analysis on the formal level (correctness and substitutability checking) and reasoning about conformance of a specification and the actual implementation. Moreover, the formalism is designed to be simple enough and to directly support constructs known from implementation languages (e.g., method calls, threads, synchronized blocks), so that it is easy to use by a nonprofessional.

1. Introduction

Over the past years, Component-based Software Engineering (CBSE) has become a well-established paradigm of software development. Via separation of software into reusable building blocks with well-defined interfaces, it facilitates development, deployment, and maintenance of software. Although the idea of constructing new applications solely from the third party off-the-shelf components is still a song of the future, much research and industry effort goes that way.