Methods and models for consistency verification of advanced component-based applications

Project overview

• Name: Methods and models for consistency verification of advanced component-based applications
• Funded by: Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (GAČR)
• Number: 201/08/0266
• Duration: 2008 - 2010
• Partners:
  • Charles University, Department of Dependable and Distributed Systems (leader)
  • University of West Bohemia, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, ReliSA (formerly DSS) research group
• Total grant support: CZK 2.7 million (EUR ~0.1 million)

Project synopsis

The increasing complexity of component applications would benefit from more comprehensive component models, service composition approaches need to ensure application consistency through run-time changes in component environment and bindings.

The goal of this bilateral project is to create advanced component models and methods that would enable building complex component applications and ensuring their consistency, and to validate their suitability for practical use (using distributed simulation methods and the OSGi platform for reference).

Specific aims include the development of hierarchical component models on top of flat component platforms, verification methods based on non-functional and communication specifications with flexibility in correctness evaluation, and enhancements of simulation methods by the use of advanced component models.

Open issues addressed

We can point out several issues which have not been sufficiently targeted by the research or have been explicitly mentioned as open issues to tackle.

• Lack of comprehensive support for modern and advanced approaches to application development (software architecture alignment, hierarchical software components, semantics and non-functional properties) in component models.
• Missing abstractions, methods or frameworks for formal verification of complex component based systems (service matching and substitution with margin of correctness, behavior verification, composition correctness).
• Distributed simulation lacking adequate support by component technology, particularly in the form of robust hierarchical component models and advanced run-time component substitution for multiresolution simulation methods.

Goals

The overall goal of this project is to contribute to the advancement of component models and methods for ensuring consistency of component applications. This can be specified in further detail in a set of sub-goals:

• New abstractions and architectural blueprints for creating hierarchical component applications on flat component model platforms, with the aim of solving the complexity problem of large applications.
• Advanced formal verification methods based on non-functional and communication specifications used for ensuring component application consistency with flexible margins of correctness, especially during run-time updates, to better suit the challenging applications working in the dynamic availability environment.
• Identification of specific advanced features of component models needed to facilitate the distributed simulation, and subsequent enhancements of the simulation methodologies by exploitation of the generic properties of the component approach.
• Validation of the general research results on proven platforms with subsequent transfer of research achievements into practically useable results (SOFA 2.0 and OSGi are the primary target platforms).

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