Abstract
This paper first presents a groupware service and an associated protocol that manage the dynamic membership of agents inside cooperative groups and second gives the design methodology that has been used for defining the service and the protocol. The model used to represent cooperative groups is based on graphs that give the knowledge relationships between agents and define the dynamics of the group. The protocol providing the membership service is specified using the VAL formal specification environment based on a Petri net formalism. The VAL specification is verified using observational and safety projections derived from the reachability graph. Then the VAL specification is translated and adapted to an Estelle specification. The Estelle specification has been used for a final implementation of the protocol on top of a distributed platform.
Résumé
Cet article présente en premier lieu un service de collecticiel et un protocole associé qui gérent ľappartenance dynamique ďagents à des groupes coopératifs, puis détaille la méthodologie de conception suivie pour definir ce service et ce protocole. Le modéle utilisé pour représenter des groupes coopératifs est basé sur des graphes qui donnent les relations de connaissance entre les agents et qui définissent la dynamique du groupe. Le protocole qui fournit le service ďappartenance est spécifié en utilisant ľenvironnement de spécification formel VAL, basé sur des réseaux de Pétri. La spécification VAL est vérifiée au moyen de projections observationnelles et de sûreté provenant du graphe ďaccessibilite. Par la suite, la spécification VAL est transcrite puis adaptée en une spécification Estelle. La spécification Estelle a été utilisée pour une implantation finale du protocole au-dessus ď une plate-forme distribuée.
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This study has been conducted inside the CNET-CNRS Cesame project on the design of high speed multimedia cooperative distributed systems, under grant 92 IB 178 from CNET France Télécom.
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Villemur, T., Diaz, M. & Vernadat, F. Validated design of dynamic membership services and protocols for cooperative groups. Ann. Télécommun. 50, 859–873 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03005243
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03005243
Key words
- Cooperation
- Groupware
- Transmission protocol
- Modeling
- Graph method
- Dynamic model
- Specification language
- Petri net
- Description language