A formal method to software integration in reuse

Software reuse covers the whole process of identification, representation, retrieval, adaptation and integration of reusable software components. The utilization of current library techniques is important in such a software process. However, these approaches tend to be retrieval based and offer no formal assistance to software integration in reuse. We propose a semantic interface Predicate/Transition nets based formal method for reuse. In this method, software components are selected from a reuse library and automatically translated and integrated into the net model. Thus, software integration and adaptation problems are converted into problems in the corresponding net model. With this formal method, software reuse problems such as the detection of inconsistencies in component integration can be automatically revealed.