Rewriting Logic Model of Compositional Abstraction of Aspect-Oriented Software

Abstraction is an operation of software specifications widely used in formal development and verification. One of the desirable features of the operation is compositionality. It would make abstraction easier to deal with if a system can be abstracted by composing the individual abstractions of the components of the original system. It is considered that compositional abstractions of aspect-oriented software would be useful because the base system and the aspects can be individually abstracted. However, there are only a few research results dealing with these operations consistently because the relation between abstraction and aspect weaving is logically too complicated. This paper proposes a formal model to solve the difficulty of compositional abstraction of aspect-oriented software. Our model is based on an enhanced version of the equational abstraction approach in rewriting logic that is an algebraic specification framework. We first validate our model by applying it to an example of state machine and next describe our approach to compositional abstraction.ion is an operation of software specifications widely used in formal development and verification. One of the desirable features of the operation is compositionality. It would make abstraction easier to deal with if a system can be abstracted by composing the individual abstractions of the components of the original system. It is considered that compositional abstractions of aspect-oriented software would be useful because the base system and the aspects can be individually abstracted. However, there are only a few research results dealing with these operations consistently because the relation between abstraction and aspect weaving is logically too complicated. This paper proposes a formal model to solve the difficulty of compositional abstraction of aspect-oriented software. Our model is based on an enhanced version of the equational abstraction approach in rewriting logic that is an algebraic specification framework. We first validate our model by applying it to an example of state machine and next describe our approach to compositional abstraction.