Component adaptation is widely recognised to be one of the crucial problems in Component-Based Software Engineering. We present a formal methodology for adapting components with mismatching interaction behaviours. The three main ingredients of the methodology are: (1) The inclusion of behaviour specifications in component interfaces, (2) a simple, high-level notation for expressing adaptor spec...

Very recently, the concept of Traceable Identity-based Encryption (IBE) scheme (or Accountable Authority Identity based Encryption scheme) was introduced in Crypto 2007. This concept enables some mechanisms to reduce the trust of a private key generator (PKG) in an IBE system. The aim of this paper is threefold. First, we discuss some subtleties in the first traceable IBE scheme in the Crypto 2...

We use the formal method B for specifying interfaces of software components. Each component interface is equipped with a suitable data model defining all types occurring in the signature of interface operations. Moreover, preand postconditions have to be given for all interface operations. The interoperability between two components is proved by using a refinement relation between an adaptation...

There is a continuing need for software engineers to better quality systems more quickly. Component based technologies promise to make this possible, but modern systems are too complex for a full analysis of their behaviour to be practical. We propose that a reasonable alternative is analyse abstract models of the essential features of a system. Since these models are abstract, they need contai...

Components, connectors and architectures have now made a breakthrough in software industry, leading to Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE). In this paper, we argue for the pragmatic use of formal methods to design and reason on CBSE systems at an abstract level and to solve CBSE issues. We give some possible benefits of such an approach and list some of its open issues.

This commentary on John Symons’ and Jack Horner’s paper, besides sharing its main argument, challenges the authors’ statement that there is no effective method to evaluate software intensive systems as a distinguishing feature of software intensive science. It is underlined here how analogous methodological limitations characterise the evaluations of empirical systems in non-software intensive ...

We present a formal method for component-based system specification and verification which is based on the new algebraic specification language CafeOBJ, which is a modern successor of OBJ incorporating several new developments in algebraic specification theory and practice. We first give an overview of the origins and of the main features of CafeOBJ, including its logical foundations, and then ...

In this paper, we introduce a new cryptographic primitive, called adaptable ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE). Adaptable CP-ABE extends the traditional CP-ABE by allowing a semitrusted proxy to modify a ciphertext under one access policy into ciphertexts of the same plaintext under any other access policies; the proxy, however, learns nothing about the underlying plaintext. ...

Model-based testing (MBT) is an approach that takes software specification as the base for the formal model creation and, from it, enables the test case extraction. Depending on the type of model, an MBT tool can support functional and statistical tests. However, there are few tools that support both testing techniques. Moreover, the ones that support them offer a limited number of coverage cri...

Motivated by our earlier work on the IWIM model and the Manifold language, in this paper, we attend to some of the basic issues in component-based software. We present a formal model for such systems, a formal-logic-based component interface description language that conveys the observable semantics of components, a formal system for deriving the semantics of a composite system out of the seman...