Integrating Interface Assertion Checkers into Component Models

Run-time enforcement of behavioral contracts has been studied extensively in procedural and object-oriented languages. This research has led to a better understanding of specific techniques, including pre-processing compilers or wrappers. However, component-based software engineering (CBSE) imposes additional restrictions and it is appropriate to consider how to extend these techniques when the software is decomposed into independently-developed third-party components. In this paper we identify some requirements for integrating run-time enforcement of behavioral contracts into the component model and illustrate a solution using a scaled-down component model and example. The primary result is that a standardized service should be added to component model implementations to enable application assemblers to enforce local properties as specified by the components in the application as well as global properties as specified by the application.