A Component-Based Software Engineering Approach for Developing Trustworthy Systems

Developing trustworthy software systems that are complex, and used by a large heterogenous population of users is a challenging task. Component-based software engineering (CBSE) has many attractive features that can provide an effective solution to these challenging issues. However, the essential requirements of CBSE have not been met in the current approaches. Therefore, we present a CBSE approach that involves three contributions. The first contribution is a component model that defines the trustworthiness quality attributes as first class structural elements. This enables us to formally verify trustworthiness properties and demonstrate that a high level of trustworthiness has been achieved. In our approach, formalism is integrated into the various stages of the development process. So, our second contribution is a process model that plays this role. The third and final contribution is a development framework of comprehensive tool support. We describe the tools and justify their role in assuring trustworthiness during the different stages of software development.