Feature-oriented programming is a way of designing a program around the features it performs, rather than the objects or files it manipulates. This should lead to an extensible and flexible ""product-line"" architecture that allows custom systems to be assembled with particular features included or excluded as needed. Composing these features together modularly, while leading to flexibility in the feature-set of the finished product, can also lead to unexpected interactions that occur between features. Robert Hall presented a manual methodology for locating these interactions and has used it to search for feature interactions in email. Li et al. performed automatic verification of Hall's system using model-checking verifications tools. Model-checking verification is state-based, and is not well-suited for verifying recursive data structures, an area where theorem-proving verification tools excel. In this thesis, we propose a methodology for using formal theorem-proving tools for modularly verifying feature-oriented systems. The methodology presented captures the essential steps for using modular techniques for modeling and verifying a system. This enables verification of individual modules, without examining the source code of the other modules in the system. We have used Hall's email system as a test case for validating the methodology.

Creator

• Roberts, Brian Glenn

Contributors

• Fisler, Kathryn

Degree

• MS

Unit

• Computer Science

Publisher

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Language

• English

Identifier

• etd-0821103-122029

Keyword

• theorem proving
• software verification
• feature-oriented programming
• feature interaction
• modular verification

Advisor

• Fisler, Kathryn

Defense date

• 2003-08-11

Year

• 2003

Date created

• 2003-08-21

Resource type

• Thesis

Rights statement

• In Copyright

Last modified

• 2020-11-23