Abstract
We present an approach to the specification of required external non-determinism: the willingness of a component to respond to a number of external action requests, using a language, COMMUNITY, which provides both permission and willingness guards on actions.
This enables a program-like declaration of required non-determinism, in contrast to the use of a branching-time temporal logic. We give a definition of parallel composition for this language, and show that refinement is compositional with respect to parallel composition. We use the concepts developed for COMMUNITY to identify extensions to the B and VDM++ model-based specification languages to incorporate specification of required non-determinism. In particular, we show that preconditions may be considered as a form of willingness guard, separating concerns of acceptance and termination, once module contracts are re-interpreted in a way suitable for a concurrent environment.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
J-R Abrial. The B Book: Assigning Programs to Meanings. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
J-R Abrial. Extending B Without Changing it (for Developing Distributed Systems), B Conference, IRIN, Nantes, November 1996.
M Butler. Stepwise Refinement of Communicating Systems, Southampton University, 1997.
K M Chandy and J Misra. Parallel Program Design-A Foundation. AddisonWesley, 1988.
S Cook and J Daniels. Designing Object Systems: Object-Oriented Modelling with Syntropy. Prentice Hall, Sept 1994.
J Fiadeiro and T Maibaum. Temporal Theories as Modularisation Units for Concurrent System Specification, Formal Aspects of Computing 4(3), pp. 239–272, 1992.
J Fiadeiro and T Maibaum. Categorical Semantics of Parallel Program Design, Science of Computer Programming, 28 (1997), pp. 111–138, 1997.
C B Jones. Accommodating Interference in the formal design of concurrent objectbased programs. Formal Methods in System Design, 8(2): 105–122, March 1996.
R Kuiper. Enforcing Nondeterminism via Linear Time Temporal Logic Specification using Hiding, in B Banieqbal, H Barringer and A Pnueli (eds) Temporal Logic in Specification, LNCS 398, Springer-Verlag 1989, 295–303.
K Lano, S Goldsack, J Bicarregui and S Kent. Integrating VDM ++ and Real-Time System Design, Z User Meeting, 1997.
A Lopes. COMMUNITY and Required Non-determinism, Department of Informatics, University of Lisbon, 1996.
C McHale. Synchronisation in Concurrent, Object-oriented Languages: Expressive Power, Genericity and Inheritance. PhD Thesis, University of Dublin, 1995.
C Stirling. Comparing linear and branching time temporal logics. In B Baniegbal, H Barringer and A Pnueli (eds) Temporal Logic in Specification, LNCS 398, Springer-Verlag 1989.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Lano, K., Bicarregui, J., Fiadeiro, J., Lopes, A. (1997). Specification of required non-determinism. In: Fitzgerald, J., Jones, C.B., Lucas, P. (eds) FME '97: Industrial Applications and Strengthened Foundations of Formal Methods. FME 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1313. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63533-5_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63533-5_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-63533-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69593-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive