Synthesis of correct and distributed adaptors for component-based systems: an automatic approach

Building a distributed system from third-party components introduces a set of problems, mainly related to compatibility and communication. Our approach to solve these problems is to build an adaptor which forces the system to exhibit only a set of safe or desired behaviors. By exploiting an abstract and partial specification of the global behavior that must be enforced, we automatically build a centralized adaptor. It mediates the interaction among components by both performing the specified behavior and, simultaneously, avoiding possible deadlocks. However in a distributed environment it is not always possible or convenient to insert a centralized adaptor. In contrast, building a distributed adaptor might increase the applicability of the approach in a real-scale context. In this paper we show how it is possible to automatically generate a distributed adaptor by exploiting an approach to the definition of distributed IDS (Intrusion Detection Systems) filters developed by us to increase security measures in component based systems. Firstly, by taking into account a high level specification of the global behavior that must be enforced, we synthesize a behavioral model of a centralized adaptor that allows the composed system to only exhibit the specified behavior and, simultaneously, avoid possible unspecified deadlocks. This model represents a lower level specification of the global behavior that is enforced by the adaptor. Secondly, by taking into account the synthesized adaptor model, we generate a set of component filters that validate the centralized adaptor behavior by simply looking at local information. In this way we address the problem of mechanically generating correct and distributed adaptors for real-scale component-based systems.