On automatic and interactive design of communicating systems

Abstract

This paper presents a transformational approach to the design of distributed systems where environment and concurrently running components communicate via synchronous message passing along directed channels. System specifications that combine trace-based with state-based reasoning are gradually modified by application of transformation rules until occam-like programs are achieved finally. We consider interactive and automatic aspects of such a design process and illustrate our approach by sketching the development of a shared register implementation.

A strategic approach to transformational design

“…For theorem provers strategies can either be formalized on a meta-level or using the underlying logic, as has been studied in [5]. In the context of automatic tool synthesis there is interesting work by Steffen and Margaria [22] using a modal (dynamic) logic to specify similar constraints.…”

“…Incorporating such information at a very early stage might allow to simplify intermediate specifications or systems to a large extent. This approach has been taken in the ProCoS project to design synchronously operating parallel CSP style systems [ l 8,5]. The architectural approach goes through the following four phases:…”

“…As St. allows to specify both aspects, reactive behavior and state transitions, it is very well suited to handle the different aspects of the different strategies. Besides that, the transformational theory for SL and MIX is well developed [5,20,19].…”