A Technique to Support Incremental Construction and Verification in Component-Based Software Development

Abstract

Technological advancements in recent decades have significantly increased the scale and complexity of software systems, which poses challenges to their development and reliability. Component-based software development (CBSD) offers a promising solution by enabling modular and efficient software construction. However, CBSD alone cannot fully address challenges such as ensuring reliability and avoiding errors like deadlocks. Verification techniques, such as model-checking, are necessary to ensure the correctness of CBSD systems. Despite its effectiveness in verifying system properties, model-checking faces a critical issue known as state-space explosion (SSE), which hinders scalability. This study introduces an incremental verification technique for CBSD to address SSE and ensure deadlock freedom. The proposed technique incrementally constructs and verifies component-based systems, eliminating verified portions of components to minimize state-space size during subsequent verification steps. It utilizes a component model that supports encapsulation of computation and control, making incremental verification feasible. Evaluation of the technique using coloured petri nets with non-trivial case studies demonstrates its ability to detect deadlocks early and manage SSE effectively, thereby improving the efficiency of the verification process.