Raclet, Jean-Baptiste; Badouel, Eric; Benveniste, Albert; Caillaud, Benoît; Legay, Axel; Passerone, Roberto A modal interface theory for component-based design. (English) Zbl 1242.68147 Fundam. Inform. 108, No. 1-2, 119-149 (2011). Summary: This paper presents the modal interface theory, a unification of interface automata and modal specifications, two radically dissimilar models for interface theories. Interface automata is a game-based model which allows the designer to express assumptions on the environment and which uses an optimistic view of composition: two components can be composed if there is an environment where they can work together. Modal specifications are a language-theoretic account of a fragment of the modal mu-calculus with a rich composition algebra, which meets certain methodological requirements but which does not allow the environment and the component to be distinguished. The present paper contributes a more thorough unification of the two theories by correcting a first attempt in this direction by Larsen et al., drawing a complete picture of the modal interface algebra, and pushing the comparison between interface automata, modal automata and modal interfaces even further. Cited in 23 Documents MSC: 68Q45 Formal languages and automata 03B45 Modal logic (including the logic of norms) 68Q60 Specification and verification (program logics, model checking, etc.) Keywords:component-based system; compositional reasoning; interface theory; interface automata; modal specifications; modal mu-calculus Software:Ptolemy PDFBibTeX XMLCite \textit{J.-B. Raclet} et al., Fundam. Inform. 108, No. 1--2, 119--149 (2011; Zbl 1242.68147) Full Text: DOI