An Intuitive Approach for Specifying Interface Constraint

Interface is important for software modules, e.g., classes, components and services. Most current description approaches focus only on each method signatures of the target interface, while constraint on interface, e.g. temporal sequence of the invocation is less considered so far. This paper proposes an intuitive approach for specifying interface constraint, especially the temporal constraints on different methods of the interface. As a directed graph, the proposed approach is intuitive and powerful. Notations of relationships are introduced, followed by some examples. One algorithm that can translate the high level intuitive graph to low level FSA is presented.