Interaction Interfaces - Towards a Scientific Foundation of a Methodological Usage of Message Sequence Charts

We introduce the formal notion of an interaction interface. Its purpose is to specify formally the interaction between two or more components that co-operate as subsystems of a distributed system. We suggest the use of interaction interfaces for the description not of the behaviour of a single component in isolation but of the interface, the co-operation, between two or more components that are interacting within a distributed system. Typical examples are the interaction between an embedded system and its environment or the interaction between a sender and a receiver in a communication protocol. An interaction interface can be formally described by predicates characterising sets of interaction histories. We understand the specification of interaction histories as a typical step in system development that prepares the decomposition of a system into interacting subcomponents. After fixing the distribution structure of the system, an interaction interface is worked out that describes how...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: ICFEM
• Authors: Manfred Broy, Ingolf Krüger
• Keywords: Distributed System, ICFEM 1998, Interaction Histories, Interaction Interface, Software Engineering