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A Generalised Theory of Interface Automata, Component Compatibility and Error

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Integrated Formal Methods (IFM 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9681))

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Abstract

Interface theories allow systems designers to reason about the composability and compatibility of concurrent system components. Such theories often extend both de Alfaro and Henzinger’s Interface Automata and Larsen’s Modal Transition Systems, which leads, however, to several issues that are undesirable in practice: an unintuitive treatment of specified unwanted behaviour, a binary compatibility concept that does not scale to multi-component assemblies, and compatibility guarantees that are insufficient for software product lines.

In this paper we show that communication mismatches are central to all these problems and, thus, the ability to represent such errors semantically is an important feature of an interface theory. Accordingly, we present the error-aware interface theory EMIA, where the above shortcomings are remedied by introducing explicit fatal error states. In addition, we prove via a Galois insertion that EMIA is a conservative generalisation of the established MIA (Modal Interface Automata) theory.

Supported by the DFG (German Research Foundation) under grant LU-1748/3-1.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Ferenc Bujtor, Walter Vogler and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Software Technologies Research Group, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany

    Sascha Fendrich & Gerald Lüttgen

Authors
  1. Sascha Fendrich
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  2. Gerald Lüttgen
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Correspondence to Sascha Fendrich .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Erika Ábrahám

  2. University of Twente, Enschede, Overijssel, The Netherlands

    Marieke Huisman

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Fendrich, S., Lüttgen, G. (2016). A Generalised Theory of Interface Automata, Component Compatibility and Error. In: Ábrahám, E., Huisman, M. (eds) Integrated Formal Methods. IFM 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9681. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33693-0_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33693-0_11

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-33693-0

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