A tool that supports highly reliable component-based software development

The development of software using component software is starting to spread because of the expectation that software manufacturing can be improved. In this paper, component software represents software created by selecting the appropriate components from a component library and then combining them together. In order to improve manufacturing, a software architecture must be selected. In this paper, the authors propose a tree architecture appropriate for describing the behavior of components, and then use this architecture as their software architecture. In a tree architecture, the behavior of a component and the component combinations are described using one type of algebraic specification called projection behavior specifications. By taking advantage of the projection behavior specifications, (1) detailed verification which demonstrates that the combined components satisfy the required specifications (component software behavior) can be performed and (2) the connectors can be automatically generated from the description of the combinations. This provides support for the development of highly reliable component software. The authors look into methods (1) and (2), and then use them to create a software development tool. This paper discusses the software development tool. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 2, 87(7): 70–79, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecjb.20103