Generalising feature interactions in email

Calder, M. and Miller, A. (2003) Generalising feature interactions in email. In: International Workshop on Feature Interactions in Telecommunications and Software Systems VII, Ottawa, Canada, 11-13 June 2003, pp. 187-205. ISBN 1586033484

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Abstract

We report on a property-based approach to feature interaction analysis for a client-server email system. The model is based upon Hall's email model presented at FIW'00, but the implementation is at a lower level of abstraction, employing non-determinism and asynchronous communication; it is a challenge to avoid deadlock and race conditions. The analysis is more extensive in two ways: interaction analysis is fully automated, based on model-checking the entire state-space, and results are scalable, that is they generalise to email systems consisting of any number of email clients. Abstraction techniques are used to prove general results. The key idea is to model-check a system consisting of a constant number (m) of client processes, in parallel with a mailer process and an ``abstract'' process which represents the product of any number of other (unfeatured, isomorphic) client processes. We give a lower bound for the value of m. All of the models -- for any specified set of client processes and selected features -- are generated automatically using Perl scripts.

Item Type:Conference Proceedings
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Calder, Professor Muffy and Miller, Professor Alice
Authors: Calder, M., and Miller, A.
Subjects:Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
College/School:College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
Publisher:IOS Press
ISBN:1586033484
Copyright Holders:Copyright © 2005 IOS Press
First Published:First published in Feature Interactions in Telecommunications and Software Systems VII:187-205
Publisher Policy:Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher

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