Formal Reasoning about Software Object Translations

Abstract

In this work we examine the problem of verifying translations from outputs of one system to the inputs of another system, which we refer to as the output-to-input translation problem. We present a formalization of this problem along with a verificationmechanismbased on constraint logic programming. Composition of systems is an important issue in the software reuse domain, and has applicability in other areas of software engineering such as transformation of information fromone phase of the development process to another. Some challenges are to verify the translation mechanisms that may be needed to connect independently designed components and assess towhat degree is the consumer component functionality enabled after the composition takes place. To this end we use constraint logic programming modeling techniques. Our model allows formalization of the translation problem in the formof constraints and relations between the outputs and the inputs of involved components. Since CLP tools are computationally expensive, we identify characteristics of translation problems for which our technique is practical. We conclude with an application of our translation framework within the Documentation Driven Software Development methodology.