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International Conference on Coordination Languages and Models

COORDINATION 2007: Coordination Models and Languages pp 211–230Cite as

Combining Formal Methods and Aspects for Specifying and Enforcing Architectural Invariants

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 4467))

Abstract

Several types of invariants should be maintained when the architecture of a software application evolves. To specify these invariants in a reliable way, formal methods are used. However, current approaches suffer from two limitations. First, they support only certain types of invariants. Second, checking and enforcing the invariants is generally done by adding appropriate logic to the application implementation in a manual way, which is error-prone and may lead to architectural erosion.

In this paper, we combine the Z notation and Petri nets to specify formally architectural invariants in distributed object-oriented software applications. Moreover, we use a generative aspect-based approach to checking and enforcing these invariants. Thus, we bridge the gap between the formal specification and the implementation. Our approach brings several other benefits as the code that checks and enforces invariants is generated automatically and well-modularized in aspects.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Software Technology Group, Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany

    Slim Kallel, Anis Charfi & Mira Mezini

  2. ReDCAD Laboratory, National Engineering School of Sfax, Tunisia

    Slim Kallel & Mohamed Jmaiel

Authors
  1. Slim Kallel
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  2. Anis Charfi
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  3. Mira Mezini
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  4. Mohamed Jmaiel
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Amy L. Murphy Jan Vitek

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Kallel, S., Charfi, A., Mezini, M., Jmaiel, M. (2007). Combining Formal Methods and Aspects for Specifying and Enforcing Architectural Invariants. In: Murphy, A.L., Vitek, J. (eds) Coordination Models and Languages. COORDINATION 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4467. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72794-1_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72794-1_12

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-72793-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-72794-1

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