Interfaces and Binding in Component Based Development of Formal Models

Component based modeling is of great importance for building and analyzing models of real systems. It is based on a well known paradigm which makes use of abstraction and composition. In this paper we focus on abstraction, by describing a practical approach to the definition of very simple interface models allowing the substitution of components within composed multiformalism models. The work extends the OsMoSys methodology and relies on meta-modeling. This paper does not discuss formal aspects about interface theory and components interaction, but focuses on the problem of building component models in practice with the ultimate goal of solving them by using (the existing) analysis tools. The paper formally extends the OsMoSys conceptual model in order to introduce model interfaces and to provide some rules for interface compatibility. The paper also describes some steps towards the full definition of mechanisms for interface binding and their implementation.