Reusable Engineering Software Components: Interface Issues

本研究的目标是通过开发相关的方法、符号和工具来促进工程软件组件和系统的集成和重用。随着对多学科分析和模拟、为建筑和制造而设计以及分析、设计和决策支持工具的集成需求的增长，这些能力是在工程和建筑市场中保持竞争力所必需的。为了支持集成和重用，软件组件必须通过它们的功能属性来描述，也就是说，它们提供的服务的描述。否则，只能检查程序文本本身，尝试描述其行为，并尝试将各个部分组合在一起。即使是面向对象的语言也不足以促进集成，因为它们不能用来说明组件做什么，只能说明它是如何实现的。功能属性的声明性描述提供了表征复杂软件组件和系统交互的潜力，从而支持软件集成和重用。本研究将开发用于指定工程软件组件的正式符号，并通过开发可重用规范手册来应用它们。通过使用形式化方法，生成的规范独立于特定的编程语言，并且可以使用普通数学进行操作和组合。

The objective of this research is to promote the integration and reuse of engineering software components and systems by developing pertinent approaches, notations, and tools. Such capabilities are needed to remain competitive in the engineering and construction marketplace with the growing need for multi-disciplinary analyses and simulations, design-for- construction and -manufacturing, and the integration of analysis, design, and decision-support tools. To enable integration and reuse, software components must be characterized by their functional properties, i.e., a description of the services they provide. Otherwise, one can only examine the program text itself, attempt to characterize its behavior, and try putting the pieces together. Even object-oriented languages are inadequate for promoting integration since they cannot be used to state what a component does, only how it is implemented. Declarative descriptions of functional properties offer the potential to characterize the interaction of complex software components and systems, thus enabling software integration and reuse. This study will develop formal notations for specifying engineering software components, and apply them by developing a handbook of reusable specifications. By using formal methods, the resulting specifications are independent of a particular programming language and may be manipulated and combined using ordinary mathematics.