On an Interactive Fault-Sensitive Stack — From Communication Histories to State Transition Tables

The black-box view of an interactive component describes the input/output behaviour based on communication histories. The glass-box view discloses the component’s internal state where the inputs effect an update of the state. We formally derive different glass-box views of an interactive fault-sensitive stack from a common black-box view. The transformation uses higher-order functions where the state parameter is introduced as a history compactification. The different glass-box views reflect particular design decisions wrt. the control state and the data state of the component. The transformation uses history compactifications which retain from the input history some information that influences the component’s future behaviour. The case study exemplifies a general method how to formally refine the black-box view of an interactive component into a glass-box view using history compactifications.