Compatibility Test and Adapter Generation for Interfaces of Software Components

Compositional reuse of software components requires standardized specification techniques if applications are created by combining third party components. Adequate techniques need to be used in order to specify not only technical but also business related aspects of software components. The different specification aspects of software components are summarized in a multi-layer specification framework with formal specification techniques defined for each level of abstraction. The use of formal specification techniques is a prerequisite for compatibility tests on component specifications. Compatibility tests are necessary for the identification of required components, which are traded on component markets. The focus of this paper is to present an algorithm for compatibility test on interface level, where Interface Definition Language (IDL) has been used as formal specification language. In order to test characteristics where e.g. the order of parameter values or the order of consisting data types within a complex data type are not identical with the specification, adapters are generated for mapping the component interfaces.