Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Specifying reusable components using contracts

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
ECOOP ’92 European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 1992)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 615))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

Contracts were introduced by Helm et al. as a high level construct for explicitly specifying interactions among groups of objects. This paper describes further developments and application of the Contract construct. We show how Contracts can be used to represent classic algorithms as large grained reusable object oriented abstractions, how these algorithms can be customized through Contract refinement and how they are reused through Contract conformance. The example algorithm used throughout is the classic graph depth first traversal algorithm. This algorithm is represented as a Contract which is then refined to specify algorithms which number connected regions of graphs and which check graphs for cycles. Changes to the Contract language are introduced and we discuss some new problems resulting from the simultaneous reuse of related contracts.

Work supported in part by IBM T.J. Watson Research Center and in part by the National Science Foundation under grants CCR-9102578 (Software Engineering) and CDA-9015692 (Research Instrumentation).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Constantin Arapis. Specifying Object Life-Cycles. In Dennis Tsichritzis, editor, Object Management, pages 133–195. Centre Universitaire D'Informatique, Genève, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham. A laboratory for teaching object oriented thinking. In Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications Conference, in Special Issue of SIGPLAN Notices, pages 1–6, New Orleans, LA, 1989. ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Lucy Berlin. When objects collide: Experiences with reusing multiple class heirarchies. In Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications Conference/European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, in Special Issue of SIGPLAN Notices, pages 181–211, Ottatwa, Canada, 1990. ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Ted Biggerstaff and Charles Richter. Reusability framework, assesment and directions. IEEE Software, pages 41–49, July 1987.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Judy Bishop. The Effect of Data Abstraction on Loop Programming Techniques. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 16(4):389–402, April 1990.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Grady Booch. Object-Oriented Design With Applications. Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company, Inc., 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Peter Deutsch. Reusability in the Smalltalk-80 Programming System. In ITT Proc. Workshop on Reusability in Programming, pages 72–82, Newport, RI, 1983.

    Google Scholar 

  8. B. Hailpern and H. Ossher. Extending Objects to Support Multiple Interfaces and Access Control. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 16(11), November 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  9. A. Richard Helm, Ian M. Holland, and Dipayan Gangopadhyay. Contracts: Specifying Behavioral Compositions in Object-Oriented Systems. In Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications Conference, in Special Issue of SIGPLAN Notices, pages 169–180, Ottowa, 1990. ACM Press. joint conference ECOOP/OOPSLA.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Ralph E. Johnson and Brian Foote. Designing reusable classes. Journal of Object-Oriented Programming, 1(2):22–35, June/July 1988.

    Google Scholar 

  11. W. L. Johnson and E. Soloway. PROUST: Knowledge-based program understanding. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 11:267–275, 1985. reprinted in: C. Rich and R.C. Waters, eds., Readings in Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering (Morgan Kaufmann, Los Altos, CA. 1986).

    Google Scholar 

  12. T. Capers Jones. Reusability in Programming: A Survey of the State of the Art. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 10(5):488–494, September 1984.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Gail E. Kaiser and David Garlan. MELDing Data Flow and Object-Oriented Programming. In Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications Conference, in Special Issue of SIGPLAN Notices, volume 22, pages 254–267, Orlando, Florida, 1987. ACM SIGPLAN Notices.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Shmuel Katz, Charles A. Richter, and Khe-Sing The. PARIS: A System for Reusing Partially Interpreted Schemas. In International Conference on Software Engineering, pages 377–385, 1987.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Charles Krueger. Models of reuse in software engineering. Technical Report CMS-CS-89-188, Department of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, December 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Karl Lieberherr. Object-oriented programming with class dictionaries. Journal on Lisp and Symbolic Computation, 1(2):185–212, 1988.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Mark A. Linton, John M. Vlissides, and Paul R. Calder. Composing User Interfaces using Interviews. IEEE Computer Magazine, pages 8–22, February 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Bertrand Meyer. Tools for the new culture: Lessons from the design of the Eiffel libraries. Communications of the ACM, 33(9):68–88, September 1990.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Jens Palsberg and Michael I. Schwartzbach. Type substitution for objectoriented programming. In Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications Conference/European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, in Special Issue of SIGPLAN Notices, pages 151–159, Ottatwa, Canada, 1989. ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Barbara Pernici. Class Design and Meta-Design. In Dennis Tsichritzis, editor, Object Management, pages 133–195. Centre Universitaire D'Informatique, Genève, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Ruben Prieto-Diaz and James M. Neighbors. Module interconnection languages. Journal of Systems and Software, 6(4):307–334, November 1986.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Ramana Rao. Implementation Reflection in Silica. In European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming. Springer Verlag, 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  23. T. Reenskaug and E. Nordhagen. The Description of Complex Object-Oriented Systems: Version 1. Technical report, Senter for Industriforskning, Oslo, Norway., 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  24. C. Rich and H. E. Shrobe. Initial report on a Lisp programmer's apprentice. In D. R. Barstow, H. E. Shrobe, and E. Sandewall, editors, Interactive Programming Environments, pages 443–463. McGraw-Hill, 1984.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Charles Rich and Richard C. Waters. The Programmers Apprentice. Frontier Series. ACM Press, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Rebecca Wirfs-Brock and Brian Wilkerson. Object-oriented design: A responsibility-driven approach. In Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications Conference, in Special Issue of SIGPLAN Notices, pages 71–76, New Orleans, LA, 1989. ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Rebecca J. Wirfs-Brock and Ralph E. Johnson. A survey of current research in object-oriented design. Communications of the ACM, 33(9): 104–124, September 1990.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computer Science, Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Ave., 02115, Boston, MA

    Ian M. Holland

Authors
  1. Ian M. Holland
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Ole Lehrmann Madsen

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1992 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Holland, I.M. (1992). Specifying reusable components using contracts. In: Madsen, O.L. (eds) ECOOP ’92 European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming. ECOOP 1992. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 615. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0053043

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0053043

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-55668-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47268-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation