Section: New Software and Platforms

Mica : A Modal Interface Compositional Analysis Toolbox

Participant : Benoît Caillaud.

http://www.irisa.fr/s4/tools/mica/

Mica is an Ocaml library developed by Benoît Caillaud implementing the Modal Interface algebra published in [5] , [4] . The purpose of Modal Interfaces is to provide a formal support to contract based design methods in the field of system engineering. Modal Interfaces enable compositional reasoning methods on I/O reactive systems.

In Mica, systems and interfaces are represented by extension. However, a careful design of the state and event heap enables the definition, composition and analysis of reasonably large systems and interfaces. The heap stores states and events in a hash table and ensures structural equality (there is no duplication). Therefore complex data-structures for states and events induce a very low overhead, as checking equality is done in constant time.

Thanks to the Inter module and the mica interactive environment, users can define complex systems and interfaces using Ocaml syntax. It is even possible to define parameterized components as Ocaml functions.

Mica is available as an open-source distribution, under the CeCILL-C Free Software License Agreement (http://www.cecill.info/licences/Licence_CeCILL-C_V1-en.html ).