Prof. Dr. Ralf Reussner

"Software Components - A Step towards an engineering Approach to Software"

This talk discusses the role of software components for an engineering approach to software construction. In particular, this talk concentrates on predicting functional and extra-functional properties of layered component-based software architectures. The approach presented is based on parametric contracts, a generalisation of design-by-contract.

Firstly, the talk discusses the role of component-based software engineering plays for software engineering in general. Secondly, we address the meaning of the ``contractual use of components'', a term sometimes used loosely -- or even inconsistently -- in current literature. Thirdly, we introduce the abstract concept of parametric contracts. It is shown how parameterised contracts are used to compute the properties of a component in dependence from its environment. We sketch algorithms for computing a component's IDL-style interfaces, protocols and its services' reliabilities and discuss their empirical validation.