Paper Info
Title
Characterizing Observability and Controllability of Software Components
Abstract
Abstract Two important objectives when designing a specification for a reusable software component,are understandability and utility. For a typical component,defining a new abstract data type, a significant common factor affecting both of these objectives is the choice of a mathematical model of the (state space of the) ADT, which is used to explain the behavior of the ADT’s operations to potential clients. There are subtle connections between the expressiveness of this mathematical model and the functions computable using the operations provided with the ADT, giving rise to interesting issues involving the two complementary,system-theoreticprinciples of “observability” and “controllability”. Previously we recommended,a practical way to test compliance of a proposed design with these informally-defined principles: it should be possible to construct layered implementations,of operations to test equality of and to copy variables of an ADT. This paper discusses problems associated with formalizing intuitively-stated observability and controllability principles in accordance with these tests. Although the example we use for illustration is simple, the analysis has implications for the design of reusable software components,of every scale and conceptual complexity. Keywords
Year
DOI
Venue
1996
10.1109/ICSR.1996.496114
ICSR
Keywords
Field
DocType
interesting issue,important objective,reusable software component,conceptual complexity,controllability principle,mathematical model,software components,intuitively-stated observability,characterizing observability,typical component,new abstract data type,complementary system-theoretic principle,software design,abstraction,reuse,data structures,observability,specification,formal specification,state space,abstract data type,state observer,controllability,abstract data types,testing,software component,information science
Abstract data type,Data structure,Observability,Software design,Controllability,Computer science,Formal specification,Theoretical computer science,Component-based software engineering,State space
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
0-8186-7301-X
8
1.11
References 
Authors
8
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Bruce W. Weide1575182.57
Stephen H. Edwards290682.41
Wayne D. Heym311111.70
Timothy J. Long437147.83
William F. Ogden533876.21