Common Runtime Support for Assertions

Behavioural specifications in interface contracts are important measures for improving quality of software components. Common support for assertions as first class constructs in binary components and at runtime provides many benefits for better contracts specification and monitoring. Behavioural specifications in the spirit of Design by Contract can accompany binary components and be available at runtime to enable flexible and correct treatment, in a source language neutral manner. Load time verification and runtime monitoring would both be possible. Runtime monitoring is correct with regards to sub-typing and dynamic binding, and with sensible exception handling. Such a common support mechanism would also provide opportunities for richer specification techniques to help deal with difficult issues such as object re-entrance.