An Evolutionary Method for the Formal Specification Construction of Service-Based Software

Abstract

Service-based software (SBS) modeling is considered as a promising way to develop high-quality service-based systems. One major challenge of this methodology is how to effectively utilize existing software services in the process of system modeling to ensure the reliability of the system while reducing the development cost. In this paper, we propose an evolutionary method for the formal specification construction of SBS to tackle this problem. Initial requirements are gradually transformed into a formal design specification through three steps during which existing services are discovered, filtered, selected and adopted. Candidate services are discovered through a keyword-based searching. Then the services are analyzed from both the structural and behavioral perspectives for filtering. A specification-based testing technique is exploited to rigorously determine which candidate services are finally selected. The selected services are incorporated into the formal design model of the system. We present a case study that was conducted for evaluating the usability of the method. We have also developed a prototype tool for supporting the method to be applied in practice.