Some Pathological Message Sequence Charts, and How to Detect Them

Hélouët, Loı̈c

doi:10.1007/3-540-48213-x_22

Cited by 14 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The partial order described in a bMSC is also called visual order which has been introduced in [9] and this approach was used in most of the research on MSC pathologies [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,17,18,19,20,29]. In this paper, we adopt the visual order approach.…”

Section: Bmscsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The most popular ones used in discussing pathologies are High-level MSCs (HMSCs) [8,16,19,20,21,23,29] and MSC Graph (MSG) [11,17,20,32,31]. Generally speaking, MSGs are a simpler version of HMSCs.…”

Section: Msc Specificationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research has been conducted to investigate the different pathologies in MSCs, such as race Email addresses: haitao.dan@brunel.ac.uk (Haitao Dan), rob.hierons@brunel.ac.uk (Robert M. Hierons), steve.counsell@brunel.ac.uk (Steve Counsell) [9,10,11,12,13,14], non-local choice [15,16,17], implied scenarios [18,19], implicit synchronisation [8], confluence [8], process divergence [16], boundedness [20], false-underspecification [7] and time inconsistency [9,21]. Pathologies introduced in the requirement and design stages can cause problems at runtime such as deadlocks, synchronisation problems and communication buffer overflow.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

A framework for pathologies of message sequence charts

Dan

Hierons

Counsell

2012

Information and Software Technology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Context: It is known that a Message Sequence Chart (MSC) specification can contain different types of pathology. However, definitions of different types of pathology and the problems caused by pathologies are unclear, let alone the relationships between them. In this circumstance, it can be problematic for software engineers to accurately predict the possible problems that may exist in implementations of MSC specifications and to trace back to the design problems in MSC specifications from the observed problems of an implementation. Objective: We focus on generating a clearer view on MSC pathologies and building formal relationships between pathologies and the problems that they may cause. Method: By concentrating on the problems caused by pathologies, a categorisation of problems that a distributed system may suffer is first introduced. We investigate the different types of problems and map them to a categories of pathologies. Thus, existing concepts related to pathology are refined and necessary concepts in the pathology framework are identified. Finally, we formally prove the relationships between the concepts in the framework. Results: A pathology framework is established as desired based on a restriction that considers problematic scenarios with a single undesirable event. In this framework, we define disjoint categories of both pathologies and the problems caused; the identified types of pathology are successfully mapped to the problems that they may cause. Conclusion: The framework achieved in this paper introduces taxonomies into and clarifies relationships between concepts in research on MSC pathologies. The taxonomies and relationships in the framework can help software engineers to predict problems and verify MSC specifications. The single undesirable event restriction not only enables a categorisation of pathological scenarios, but also has the potential practical benefit that a software engineer can concentrate on key problematic scenarios. This may make it easier to either remove pathologies from an MSC specification M or test an implementation developed from M for potential problems resulting from such pathologies.

show abstract

Section: Bmscsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Msc Specificationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A framework for pathologies of message sequence charts

Dan

Hierons

Counsell

2012

Information and Software Technology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The main remaining problem is non-local choice [7,9,6] nodes, where the first action of the bMSCs that can be chosen is initiated by different processes. If the processes do not reach agreement on the choice, usual implementations can reach a deadlock state.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dealing with Non-local Choice in IEEE 1073.2’s Standard for Remote Control

Mooij

Goga

2005

System Analysis and Modeling

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Currently, communication protocols for medical devices are being developed for the IEEE 1073.2 standard. The protocol description in its draft remote control package consists of a collection of intended behaviors in terms of MSCs. We have contributed to actually constructing the protocol, ranging from determining an hMSC for these MSCs, via synthesizing process implementations, to integrating it with the basic underlying IEEE 1073.2 protocol. In this paper we report on the non-local choice problems we encountered. We present a practical solution (i.e. an implementation) which on the one hand is close to the behavior specified in the hMSC, and on the other hand meets correctness properties such as deadlock freedom. These properties have been checked using the Spin model checker. We also give some directions for generalizing and extending this work.

show abstract

“…First, the obtained implementations can be compared with their specifications to find inconsistencies [20]. A second option is to identify and detect properties of MSCs that may cause problematic implementations, and then label such MSCs as being pathological [7]. Finally, alternative semantics of the MSC constructions are studied such that these constructions become implementable [5,15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-local Choice and Beyond: Intricacies of MSC Choice Nodes

Mooij

Goga

Romijn

2005

Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. MSC is a visual formalism for specifying the behavior of systems. To obtain implementations for individual processes, the MSC choice construction poses fundamental problems. The best-studied cause is non-local choice, which e.g. is unavoidable in systems with autonomous processes. In this paper we characterize two additional problematic classes of choice nodes. Based on these three classes we point out some errors in related work. Extending our work on pragmatic implementations of nonlocal choice, we motivate a different choice semantics which allows a little more behavior. Finally, inspired by practical case studies, we present the first implementation approach for non-local choice nodes that can handle arbitrary numbers of processes.

show abstract

Some Pathological Message Sequence Charts, and How to Detect Them

Cited by 14 publications

References 6 publications

A framework for pathologies of message sequence charts

A framework for pathologies of message sequence charts

Dealing with Non-local Choice in IEEE 1073.2’s Standard for Remote Control

Non-local Choice and Beyond: Intricacies of MSC Choice Nodes

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About