Stochastic Contracts for Runtime Checking of Component-based Real-time Systems

This paper introduces a new technique for dynamic verification of component-based real-time systems based on statistical inference. Verifying such systems requires checking two types of properties: functional and real-time. For functional properties, a standard approach for ensuring correctness is Design by Contract: annotating programs with executable pre- and postconditions. We extend contracts for specifying real-time properties. In the industry, components are often bought from vendors and meant to be used off-the-shelf which makes it very difficult to determine their execution times and express related properties. We present a solution to this problem by using statistical inference for estimating the properties. The contract framework allows application developers to express contracts like“the execution time of component X lies within γ standard deviations from the mean execution time”. Experiments based on industrial case studies show that this framework can be smoothly i...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2015
• Where: CBSE
• Authors: Chandrakana Nandi, Aurelien Monot, Manuel Oriol
• Keywords: CBSE 2015, Software Engineering