Abstract: Towards a Formal Treatment of Implicit Invocation using Rely/Guarantee Reasoning

Implicit invocation has become an important architectural style for large-scale system design and evolution. This paper addresses the lack of specification and verification formalisms for such systems. A formal computational model for implicit invocation is presented. We develop a verification framework for implicit invocation that is based on Jones' rely/guarantee reasoning for concurrent systems~\cite{Jon83,Sto91}. The application of the framework is illustrated with several examples. The merits and limitations of the rely/guarantee paradigm in the context of implicit invocation systems are also discussed.
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