Formal specification of software architecture design tactics for the Security Quality Attribute
Andrew Michael Wyeth · John Spoor Broome Library Institutional Repository (California State University) · 2010
Designing the software architecture of a system is an important step in creating a system that will meet both the functional and non-functional requirements.Bass, Clements and Kazrnan in "Software Architecture in Practice" propose a method to use design tactics to create the Software Architecture of a system.For each quality attribute a set of design tactics were developed.Security is one such quality attribute.The security requirements of a system must be taken into account from the start.Adding security adversely affects.the other quality attributes so it is difficult to add security to a product after it has been designed.When defining the security tactics of a system, there is currently no way to formally prove the implementation of the tactics.There is a semantic gap between the software architecture, high level design and implementation of a system.One way to bridge this gap is to use formal specifications.The formal specifications can be used as a template when designing new systems and to analyze the architecture more rigorously.This project provides a Z specification for the Software Architectural Tactics for the Security Quality Attribute.A model of a system is created and each tactic is defined with respect to the model.Each tactic is independent however, the system encompasses all the required functionality for all the tactics.