The Homepage for Context-Based Constraints (CoCons)

Challenge

We often fail to keep track of requirements in complex software systems because we cannot cope with all the details. In particular, it is expensive to check a system for compliance with crosscutting requirements where one requirement affects several parts of the system.

This may be Hardcore

In order to detect requirement violations, each system element involved in a requirement must be identified and checked for whether it meets the requirement. But, it is difficult to identify which system element is involved in which requirement in complex or frequently changing software systems

Solution

On CoCons.org we discuss a new software engineering or requirements engineering technique:

Context-based constraints (CoCons) facilitate checking large-scale or frequently changing software systems for compliance with crosscutting requirements during (re-)design, during (re-)configuration, and at runtime. CoCons help to prevent the unwanted violation of important requirements - even across different artefact types or platforms.

Now where's the Magic?

Writing down a requirement directly for each individual element involved in each system artefact is expensive in complex systems. Instead, a CoCon automatically (magically?) constrains those elements which reside in a certain context.

Focus

Up to now, CoCons research concentrates on applying CoCons to component-based systems.

The News sections reveals that two CoCons applications have been examined up to now:

• Monitoring UML models for compliance with CoCons during design
• Monitoring EJB components for compliance with CoCons at runtime

http:/www.cocons.org/index.html
last change: march 10th 2007