Abstract
We show the advantages of formal specifications for distributed systems. We avoid contrived toy examples. Instead we focus on object replication in Lotus Notes, a popular groupware product, for which an informal specification already exists.
We base our formal specification on higher-order multiset rewriting. Using this formalism, we detect an error in the original specification, eliminate redundant and overly restrictive data structures, and expose the natural parallelism of the replication algorithm.
As a result we end up with a specification of the replication algorithm which is “more correct”, leaner, and more widely usable. Indeed, the scope of the algorithm now includes parallel implementations, which may conceivably serve as the basis for highly available object servers on the Internet.
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© 1997 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
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Bourgois, M. (1997). Advantages of Formal Specifications: A Case Study of Replication in Lotus Notes. In: Najm, E., Stefani, JB. (eds) Formal Methods for Open Object-based Distributed Systems. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35082-0_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35082-0_17
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-5041-2875-9
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-35082-0
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