Component+ methodology. Built-in contract testing: Technological foundations

This report represents one of the two parts of the technological foundations of Built-in Testing (BIT) technology that has been developed within the European Union IST 5th Framework Programme in the project Component+ (EC-IST-1999- 20162). The aim of this work is to devise the technological foundations of the built-in contract testing method for checking the pair-wise interactions of components in component-based software construction at integration and deployment time. Such pair-wise interactions are also referred to as contracts. Built-in contract testing is based on building test functionality into components, in particular tester components on the client side and testing interfaces on the server side of a pairwise contract. This report introduces the principles of built-in contract testing, and outlines how it may be integrated into a model driven software development process. It builts the foundation for the second report on Component+ Methodology - Built-In Contract Testing: Method and Process that concentrates more on the process of how to derive built-in contract testing artifacts from an overall model-driven development method.