Specification matching for software reuse: a foundation

ABSTRACT

Using formal specifications to represent software components facilitates the determination of reusability because they more precisely characterize the functionality of the software, and the well-defined syntax makes processing amenable to automation. We present specification matching as a method for classification, retrieval, and modification of reusable components. A software component is specified in terms of order-sorted predicate logic. For both components and methods, we consider not only exact match, but also relaxed match and logical match for peforming specification matching over a library of reusable software components.

REFERENCES

• 1: Ted J. Biggerstaff , Alan J. Perlis, Software reusability: vol. 1, concepts and models, ACM Press, New York, NY, 1989
• 2: Charles W. Krueger, Software reuse, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.24 n.2, p.131-183, June 1992 [doi>10.1145/130844.130856]
• 3: Yoëlle S. Maarek , Daniel M. Berry , Gail E. Kaiser, An Information Retrieval Approach for Automatically Constructing Software Libraries, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.17 n.8, p.800-813, August 1991 [doi>10.1109/32.83915]
• 4: Richard Helm , Yoëlle S. Maarek, Integrating information retrieval and domain specific approaches for browsing and retrieval in object-oriented class libraries, Conference proceedings on Object-oriented programming systems, languages, and applications, p.47-61, October 06-11, 1991, Phoenix, Arizona, United States
• 5: Bruce W. Weide , William F. Ogden , Stuart H. Zweben, Reusable software components, Advances in computers, Academic Press Professional, Inc., San Diego, CA, 1991
• 6: Jeannette M. Wing, A Specifier's Introduction to Formal Methods, Computer, v.23 n.9, p.8-23, September 1990 [doi>10.1109/2.58215]
• 7: R. L. London , K. R. Milsted, Specifying reusable components using Z: realistic sets and dictionaries, ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, v.14 n.3, p.120-127, May 1989
• 8: Gianluigi Caldiera , Victor R. Basili, Identifying and Qualifying Reusable Software Components, Computer, v.24 n.2, p.61-70, February 1991 [doi>10.1109/2.67210]
• 9: Fujio Nishida , Shinobu Takamatsu , Yoneharu Fujita , Tadaaki Tani, Semi-Automatic Program Construction from Specifications Using Library Modules, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.17 n.9, p.853-871, September 1991 [doi>10.1109/32.92909]
• 10: Jun-Ja.ng Jeng. Applying Formal Methods to Software Reuse. PhD thesis, Michigan State University, May 1994.
• 11: Jun-Jang Jeng , Betty H. C. Cheng, Using Formal Methods to Construct a Software Component Library, Proceedings of the 4th European Software Engineering Conference on Software Engineering, p.397-417, September 13-17, 1993
• 12: Jun-Jang Jeng and Betty H. C. Chong. Using Analogy to Determine Program Modification Based on Specification Changes. In Proceedings of 5th International Conference on Tool, with Artificial Intelligence, 1993, pages 113-116.
• 13: Jun-Jang Jeng and Betty H.C. Cheng. Using Automated Reasoning to Determine Software Reuse. International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, 2(4):523-546, 1992.
• 14: Betty H.C. Cheng and Jun-Jang Jeng. Formal methods applied to reuse. In Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop in Software Reuse, 1992.
• 15: Joseph A. Goguen , José Meseguer, Order-sorted algebra I: equational deduction for multiple inheritance, overloading, exceptions and partial operations, Theoretical Computer Science, v.105 n.2, p.217-273, Nov. 1992 [doi>10.1016/0304-3975(92)90302-V]
• 16: Uwe Waldmann, Semantics of order-sorted specifications, Theoretical Computer Science, v.94 n.1, p.1-35, March 1992 [doi>10.1016/0304-3975(92)90322-7]
• 17: C. Bierle , U. Hedtstück , U. Pletat , P. H. Schmitt , J. Siekmann, An order-sorted logic for knowledge representation systems, Artificial Intelligence, v.55 n.2-3, p.149-191, June 1992 [doi>10.1016/0004-3702(92)90055-3]
• 18: H.P. Haughton and K. Lane. Object revisited. In Proceedings of IEEE Conference of Software Maintenance, pages 152-161, Italy, October 1991.
• 19: James H. Cross II, Elliot J. Chikofsky, and Jr Charles H. May. Reverse engineering. Advances in Computers, 35:200-255, 1992.
• 20: Betty H.C. Cheng and Gerald C. Gannod. Constructing formal specifications from program code. In Prec. of Third International Conference on Tools in Artificial Intelligence, pages 125-128, November 1991.
• 21: Amy Moormann Zaremski , Jeannette M. Wing, Signature matching: a key to reuse, Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGSOFT symposium on Foundations of software engineering, p.182-190, December 08-10, 1993, Los Angeles, California, United States
• 22: Chin-Liang Chang , Richard C. Lee , Richard Char-Tung Lee, Symbolic Logic and Mechanical Theorem Proving, Academic Press, Inc., Orlando, FL, 1997
• 23: Christoph Walther, Many-sorted unification, Journal of the ACM (JACM), v.35 n.1, p.1-17, Jan. 1988 [doi>10.1145/42267.45071]
• 24: J. A. Robinson, A Machine-Oriented Logic Based on the Resolution Principle, Journal of the ACM (JACM), v.12 n.1, p.23-41, Jan. 1965 [doi>10.1145/321250.321253]
• 25: Karl H. Blasius , Hans-Jurgen Burchert, Deduction Systems in Artificial Intelligence, Prentice Hall Professional Technical Reference, 1989
• 26: jun-Jang Jeng and Betty H.C. Cheng. A Formal Approach to Reusing More General Components. In Proceedings of The Ninth Knowledge-Based Software E~zgineering Conference, pages 90-97, Monterey, California, September 20-23, 1994.
• 27: Dewayne E. Perry and Steven S. Popovich. Inquire: Predicate-Based Use and Reuse. In Proceedings of The Eighth Knowledge-Based Software Engineering Conference, pages 144-151, September, 1993.
• 28: Rubén Prieto-Díaz, Implementing faceted classification for software reuse, Communications of the ACM, v.34 n.5, p.88-97, May 1991 [doi>10.1145/103167.103176]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.m Miscellaneous
          Subjects: Reusable software**

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.1 Requirements/Specifications

  F. Theory of Computation
  F.3 LOGICS AND MEANINGS OF PROGRAMS
      F.3.1 Specifying and Verifying and Reasoning about Programs

General Terms:
Theory