%T Formal Contracts: Enabling Component Composition
%A  Marcel Boosten
%E  Jan F. Broenink,  Gerald H. Hilderink
%B Communicating Process Architectures 2003
%X Traditional component interaction is based on interface
   calls and callbacks. Such interaction can introduce
   integration faults, i.e., side effects at the moment of
   component integration. Solutions to such problems can be
   hard to apply, and may require drastic changes in the design
   of the involved components. This paper introduces Formal
   Contracts, a software construct that allows side\-effect
   free component interaction, and thereby avoids the
   introduction of integration faults. Furthermore, via a state
   machine representing the inter\-component contract, Formal
   Contracts, in addition to the static aspects, formally
   specify the dynamic aspects of component interaction. Formal
   Contracts are a pragmatic software mechanism that supports
   the full development cycle: from the specification and
   decomposition until the debugging, composition, and test of
   a system.