Integrating protocol contracts with program code – A leightweight approach for applied behaviour models that respect their execution context

Abstract

In the domain of information systems, behaviour is typically described without a formal foundation. These systems could benefit from the use of formal behaviour modeling. However, the perceived costs for integrating a formal behaviour modeling approach seems to be higher than the expected benefits. A framework for formal behaviour modeling and execution could help bringing the benefits of formal modeling to this domain when it imposes a low barrier for integrating the approach. To achieve this, we present our approach for designing and executing behaviour models which are encoded with well-defined source code structures. In our approach the model is statically represented in the program code. Therefore the model does not exist as a first class citizen, but is extracted from the code at design time and run time. These models can be integrated within a context of arbitrary other program code, that does not follow the semantics of the model type. They therefore impose only a small barrier for their use.