A formal approach for component retrieval and integration analysis

Software reuse has the potential to improve software quality and productivity. Software reuse covers the whole process of identification, representation, retrieval, adaptation and integration of reusable software components. Although object-oriented software has potentially high reusability, retrieving reusable object-oriented software may be difficult when the reuse library is large and inaccessibly represented. Furthermore, it is hard to check the consistency of component integration due to the lack of formal descriptions of required components. In this paper, we propose a formal approach for component retrieval and integration analysis during the reuse process. During the reuse process, software components are specified with logical predicates. A two-layer specification method is proposed. The class-layer specification is used for component retrieval and the member function-layer specification is used for consistency analysis during component integration. A formal model, predicate transition nets, is used for dynamic integration analysis. We show how to derive predicate transition nets from individual components and integrated components, and how to detect potential inconsistencies by checking the reachability tree of the predicate transition net representing an integrated program. Based on the approach proposed in this paper, a comprehensive tool can be implemented. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.