Formal approach for handling software evolution in component-based software developments

Abstract

Analyses software evolution in component-based software developments. We adopt two aspects (functional and non-functional aspects) to characterize software evolution. These two aspects construct a 2D evolution space which can be nicely handled by component-based algebraic specification (CBAS). CBAS is based on the algebraic specification technique (a kind of formal specification) combined with the idea of behavioural specification. We discuss several typical examples to show how each evolution step can be explained by using formal specification techniques.