Affiliations: Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, P.O.
Box 1139 Blindern, N-0316 Oslo, Norway. E-mail:
{einarj,olaf,aribraat}@ifi.uio.no
Abstract: Many distributed applications can be understood in terms of
components interacting in an open environment such as the Internet. Open
environments are subject to change in unpredictable ways, as applications may
arrive, evolve, or disappear. In order to validate components in such
environments, it can be useful to build simulation environments which reflect
this highly unpredictable behavior. This paper considers the validation of
components with respect to behavioral interfaces. Behavioral interfaces specify
semantic requirements on the observable behavior of components, expressed in an
assume-guarantee style. In our approach, a rewriting logic model is
transparently extended with the history of all observable communications, and
metalevel strategies are used to guide the simulation of environment behavior.
Over-specification of the environment is avoided by allowing arbitrary
environment behavior within the bounds of the assumption on observable
behavior, while the component is validated with respect to the guarantee of the
behavioral interface.
