Protocol Specification and Automatic Implementation using XML and CBSE

I.S. Abdullah and D.A. Menascé (USA)

Keywords

: communications protocol, automatic protocolimplementation, XML, CBSE.

Abstract

A communication protocol is an agreement among two or more parties on the sequence of operations and the format of messages to be exchanged. Standardization organizations define protocols in the form of recommendations (e.g., RFC) written in technical English, which requires a manual translation of the specification into the protocol implementation. This human translation is error-prone due in part to the ambiguities of natural language and in part due to the complexity of some protocols. We propose an XML-based language for protocol specification along with a process, based in XSLT stylesheets, for automatic code generation. The code generated uses components from a library of special purpose components that perform frequently executed functions (e.g., encryption). Our approach was validated on three different protocols: Needham-Schroeder's authentication protocol, TCP's three-way handshake, and SSL's handshake. We developed a Java XSLT stylesheet along with an XML Schema for validation of the XML specifications.

Important Links:



Go Back