Design by Contract: A Simple Technique for Improving the Quality of Software

Abstract

At its heart, Design by Contract (DbC) is a technique for expressing the relationship between a software routine (the supplier) and the callers of that routine (the clients). DbC is inspired by commercial relationships and business contracts that formally express the rights and obligations binding a client and a supplier. DbC provides a clean, easy-to-implement technique that specifies the roles and constraints applying to a routine, and ultimately, will improve the quality of any software with minimal additional cost. In this paper we will define what DbC is, how it can benefit any software, and show several examples of software developed at ARL MSRC that use DbC.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2004
Accession Number
ADP023865

Entities

People

  • Mark Bolstad

Organizations

  • United States Army Research Laboratory

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Fields of Study

  • Computer science

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  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Database Systems and Applications
  • Software Engineering.