School of Computing

Analysing Failure Behaviours in Component Interaction

R de Lemos

Technical Report 2-01, University of Kent, Computing Laboratory, University of Kent at Canterbury, March 2001.

Abstract

The safety analysis of an evolving software system has to consider the impact that changes might have on the software components, and to provide confidence that the risk is acceptable. If the impact of a change is not thoroughly analysed, accidents can occur as a result of faulty interactions between components, for example. This paper presents an approach that enhances the process of safety analysis by providing appropriate abstractions for modelling and analysing interactions between the components. Instead of considering components as the locus of change, the proposed approach assumes that components remain unchanged while their interactions (captured by connectors) adapt to the different changes. The behavioural description of connectors is provided in terms of extended time automata, and the safety analysis is performed using model checking, which verifies whether safe behaviour is maintained when interactions between components change. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated in terms of a case study that deals with the safety procedures associated with the launching of a sounding rocket.

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Bibtex Record

@techreport{1196,
author = {R de Lemos},
title = {{Analysing Failure Behaviours in Component Interaction}},
month = {March},
year = {2001},
pages = {182-196},
keywords = {determinacy analysis, Craig interpolants},
note = {},
doi = {},
url = {http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/pubs/2001/1196},
    publication_type = {techreport},
    submission_id = {12847_988275700},
    number = {2-01},
    address = {University of Kent at Canterbury},
    institution = {University of Kent, Computing Laboratory},
}

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