Formal specification of non-functional properties of component-based software systems

Component-based software engineering (CBSE) is viewed as an opportunity to deal with the increasing complexity of modern-day software. Along with CBSE comes the notion of component markets, where more or less generic pieces of software are traded, to be combined into applications by third-party application developers. For such a component market to work successfully, all relevant properties of components must be precisely and formally described. This is especially true for non-functional properties, such as performance, memory foot print, or security. While the specification of functional properties is well understood, nonfunctional properties are only beginning to become a research focus. This paper discusses semantic concepts for the specification of non-functional properties, taking into account the specific needs of a component market. Based on these semantic concepts, we present a new specification language QML/CS that can be used to model non-functional product properties of comp...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: SOSYM
• Authors: Steffen Zschaler
• Keywords: Component Market, Component-based Software, Non-functional Properties, SOSYM 2010