From Relational Interfaces to Assume-Guarantee Contracts
Pierluigi Nuzzo, Antonio Iannopollo, Stavros Tripakis, Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli

Citation
Pierluigi Nuzzo, Antonio Iannopollo, Stavros Tripakis, Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli. "From Relational Interfaces to Assume-Guarantee Contracts". Technical report, U.C. Berkeley, 2014.

Abstract
Contract-based design is emerging as a unifying compositional paradigm for the specification, design and verification of large-scale complex systems. Yet, different contract frameworks are currently available, without a clear understanding of the relations between them. In this paper, we investigate the relation between interface theories (specifically, relational interfaces) and assume-guarantee (A/G) contracts, revealing some of the subtleties involved. We show that the natural transformation of interfaces to A/G contracts represented by linear temporal logic (LTL) formulas preserves refinement, but does not generally preserve serial composition, and we present an assumption-projection operator to remedy the latter issue. We also discuss the properties of our transformation with respect to conjunction. Finally, we provide illustrative examples that shed light on the effectiveness of both frameworks for requirement formalization, early detection of integration errors, and principled use of abstraction-refinement.

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  • HTML
    Pierluigi Nuzzo, Antonio Iannopollo, Stavros Tripakis,
    Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli. <a
    href="http://www.icyphy.org/pubs/42.html"
    ><i>From Relational Interfaces to Assume-Guarantee
    Contracts</i></a>, Technical report,  U.C.
    Berkeley, 2014.
  • Plain text
    Pierluigi Nuzzo, Antonio Iannopollo, Stavros Tripakis,
    Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli. "From Relational
    Interfaces to Assume-Guarantee Contracts". Technical
    report,  U.C. Berkeley, 2014.
  • BibTeX
    @techreport{NuzzoIannopolloTripakisSangiovanniVincentelli14_FromRelationalInterfacesToAssumeGuaranteeContracts,
        author = {Pierluigi Nuzzo and Antonio Iannopollo and Stavros
                  Tripakis and Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli},
        title = {From Relational Interfaces to Assume-Guarantee
                  Contracts},
        institution = {U.C. Berkeley},
        year = {2014},
        abstract = {Contract-based design is emerging as a unifying
                  compositional paradigm for the specification,
                  design and verification of large-scale complex
                  systems. Yet, different contract frameworks are
                  currently available, without a clear understanding
                  of the relations between them. In this paper, we
                  investigate the relation between interface
                  theories (specifically, relational interfaces) and
                  assume-guarantee (A/G) contracts, revealing some
                  of the subtleties involved. We show that the
                  natural transformation of interfaces to A/G
                  contracts represented by linear temporal logic
                  (LTL) formulas preserves refinement, but does not
                  generally preserve serial composition, and we
                  present an assumption-projection operator to
                  remedy the latter issue. We also discuss the
                  properties of our transformation with respect to
                  conjunction. Finally, we provide illustrative
                  examples that shed light on the effectiveness of
                  both frameworks for requirement formalization,
                  early detection of integration errors, and
                  principled use of abstraction-refinement.},
        URL = {http://icyphy.org/pubs/42.html}
    }
    

Posted by Pierluigi Nuzzo on 27 Mar 2014.
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