Towards a Generic Modeling Language for Contract-Based Design

Component-based and model-driven engineering are key paradigms for handling the ever-increasing complexity of technical systems. Surprisingly few component models consider extra-functional properties as first class entities. Contract-based design is a promising paradigm, which has the potential to fill this shortage of methods for dealing with extra-functional properties. By defining the concept of using assumptions in order to determine the environment, and by using the concept of guarantees to state what a component provides to the environment, it enables the analyzability of components and compositions in advance and during system execution. With this work, we aim to create the base for a pragmatic model-driven method that provides reusable modeling concepts for contracts targeting arbitrary extra-functional properties. Furthermore, we expand the current state-of-the-art of contractbased design by introducing the concept of a finite state machine, where single states consist of several valid contracts. It is also assumed that these modeling language features will ease the use of contract-based design. Additionally, we demonstrate the applicability of the presented modeling concepts on an exemplary use case from the automotive domain.