A formalism for conformance analysis and its applications

Abstract

Software development is a dynamic process where engineers constantly refine their systems. As a consequence, all software artifacts and their logical relationships evolve. At times, the evolutionary changes may reduce the consistency of the software project and break semantic connections among documents. We use the term conformance to denote the state where the network formed by software documents and their relationships is in semantic harmony. Conformance analysis is the process of determining whether software documents and their logical relationships are in agreement. In our previous research, we have developed a formalism that can be used to verify strategies to conformance analysis. In this paper we describe modifications to that formalism, and its applications to build conformance analysis tools in an integrated development environment that is extensible to incorporate new conformance analysis strategies and to combine multiple strategies together.