Detecting feature interaction in CPL

This article addresses the problem of detecting feature interactions in the area of telephony systems design. The proposed approach consists of two phases: filtering and testing. The filtering phase detects possible interactions by identifying incoherencies in a logic specification of the main elements of the features, consisting of preconditions, triggers, results and constraints. If incoherencies are identified, then an interaction is suspected, test cases corresponding to the suspected interaction are generated and testing is applied to see if the interaction actually exists. Two case studies, carried out on established benchmarks, show that this approach gives good results in practice. Nicolas Gorse received a Master of Computer Science from the University of Ottawa, School of Information Technology and Engineering in 2001.He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Département d'Informatique et Recherche Opérationnelle of the Université de Montréal. His research interests relate to formal methods and their application in the design and verification of complex electronic systems at high levels of abstraction. Luigi Logrippo received a degree in law from the University of Rome (Italy) in 1961, and in the same year he started a career in computing. He worked for several computer companies and in 1969 he obtained a Master of Computer Science from the University of Manitoba, followed by a Ph.D. of Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in 1974.He was with the University of Ottawa for 29 years, where he was Chair of the Computer Science Department for 7 years. In 2002 he moved to the Université du Québec en Outaouais, Département d'Informatique et Ingénierie, while remaining associated with the University of Ottawa as an Adjunct Professor.His interest area is formal and logic-based methods and their applications in the design of communications systems. For a number of years he worked on the development of tools and methods for the language LOTOS. Current research deals with the formal analysis of advanced communications services made possible by internet telephony, of the policies that govern them, and of their interactions, in application areas such as presence features and e-commerce contracts. Jacques Sincennes is a research programmer/systems analyst at the University of Ottawa, School of Information Technology and Engineering. He has held this position for the past 17 years. He is coauthor of a number of papers and a patent application.An erratum to this article is available at .