Newcastle University

Interface Specification for System-of-Systems Architectures (2012)

Author(s): Payne R, Bryans J, Fitzgerald J, Riddle S

Abstract: Establishing that a system-of-systems (SoS) architecture respects global SoS-level properties is complex. Recording explicit technical interfaces at the boundaries of constituent systems would facilitate this, but support for the description of such interfaces is limited in current widely-used architectural notations. This paper identifies research challenges that arise from using the combination of SysML and the formal notation VDM to describe the interface specifications recorded at the boundaries of the constituent systems. The approach is illustrated with a case study based on an emergency services SoS.

• Date: May 2012
• Series Title: School of Computing Science Technical Report Series
• Pages: 26
• Institution: School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
• Publication type: Report
• Bibliographic status: Published

Keywords: Interfaces, contracts, systems-of-systems, VDM, architecture, SysML

Staff

Dr Jeremy Bryans Senior Research Associate	Email: jeremy.bryans@ncl.ac.uk Telephone: +44 191 222 7822
Professor John Fitzgerald Director of Research in Computing Science, Director of the Centre for Software Reliability	Email: john.fitzgerald@ncl.ac.uk Telephone: +44 191 222 7999
Dr Richard Payne Research Associate	Email: richard.payne@ncl.ac.uk Telephone: +44 191 222 3589
Dr Stephen Riddle Lecturer	Email: steve.riddle@ncl.ac.uk Telephone: +44 191 222 5156