An Analysis Method for Error Propagation Reachability of Component-Based Software

Abstract

Component-based software (CBS) is widely used in various industries and fields. One important characteristic of CBS is that when some error occurs in a component, the error will be transmitted to other components as the inter-component state propagates, the error propagation will form and the error propagation may cause the software system to malfunction or fail. From the perspective of software architecture (SA), an analysis process for error propagation accessibility of CBS and a generation algorithm for error propagation reachability graph event/state-based of CBS were established. In this algorithm, firstly, the elementary events are sorted by identifying the internal timing sequence of the components in the directed graph of SA, and the state groups that cannot be reached at the same time between the components are obtained; secondly, the Cartesian product of the reachable states between the components is established and all the reachable state groups of CBS are obtained; at last, the error propagation reachability graph of CBS is obtained according to the event connection table. The algorithm has laid a technical foundation for the analysis on CBS errors and reliability.