An introduction to pervasive interface automata

Pervasive systems are often context-dependent, component based systems in which components expose interfaces and offer one or more services. These systems may evolve in unpredictable ways, often through component replacement. We present pervasive interface automata as a formalism for modelling components and their composition. Pervasive interface automata are based on the interface automata of Henzinger et al [3], with several significant differences. We expand their notion of input and output actions to combinations of input, output actions, and callable methods and method calls. Whereas interface automata have a refinement relation, we argue the crucial relation in pervasive systems is component replacement , which must include consideration of the services offered by a component and assumptions about the environment. We illustrate pervasive interface automata and component replacement with a small case study of a pervasive application for sports predictions.