A Reasoning Framework for Deployment Contracts Analysis

Kung-Kiu Lau and Vladyslav Ukis
School of Computer Science, The University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom
kung-kiu,vukis@cs.man.ac.uk

Abstract:
Most current component models regard component's interface to be 
component's deployment contract. If components are designed
independently and composed in deployment phase, viz. in binary form, 
the interfaces of components are checked for compatibility to
establish component composition. However, a component developer may
choose arbitrary threading model for and make use of any resources in 
execution environment of a component. In order to analyse whether 
threading models of components and their environmental dependencies in 
a component assembly deployed in an execution environment are mutually 
compatible, means for expressing component's threading models and 
environmental dependencies are necessary. We have proposed a set of 
parameterisable metadata, as deployment contracts for components, for
that purpose. In this report we present a reasoning framework for
analysing the deployment contracts. Using the framework, it is possible
on component deployment to spot conflicts in component assemblies
deployed into an execution environment due to incompatible threading
models of components as well as their yenvironmental dependencies.