Verification of backward compatibility of software components

A computer system for determining backward compatibility of a software component, the computer system comprising:

• one or more computer processors;
• one or more computer readable storage media;
• program instructions stored on the computer readable storage media for execution by at least one of the one or more processors, the program instructions comprising:
• program instructions to identify one or more programming interfaces that are exposed by a first version of a software component;
• program instructions to convert attributes of exposed programming interfaces into corresponding operations, wherein attributes of the exposed programming interfaces are converted into corresponding operations such that a flag is added to a converted attribute indicating whether the attribute is an optional or a mandatory attribute;
• program instructions to generate respective tree structures for both a first version of a software component and a second version of a software component based, at least in part, on one or both of (i) a programming language of the version of the software component being represented by that tree structure and (ii) a parameter of an operation that can be used internally by that operation to return an output value being included in the tree structure as a return node of that operation;
• program instructions to add respective identified returns and faults to respective tree structures of the first version of a software component and the second version of the software component;
• program instructions to perform a backward compatibility check by comparing the operations of the first version of the software component to one or more operations of the second version of the software component;
• and
• program instructions to determine a backward compatibility of the first version of the software component, based, at least in part, on a result of the backward compatibility check.