A Specification-Verification Framework for Distributed Applications Software

Abstract

A method for designing and proving systems of distributed deterministic processes is presented. The type of communication considered is synchronous direct communication. Much of the notation and many of the ideas are derived from CSP[Hoarel] and CCS[Milner]. Part of the method requires, for a system of processes, the design of a behaviour expression which is akin to the ‘traces’ of a system as described in [Hoare2] . Hoare’s traces are derived from the traces of each process of a system. However, in the proposed method, the behaviour expression of the whole system is designed first and from this is derived the behaviour expresion of each constituent process.

The proposed method is constructed with the view that considerations of deadlock freedom are of crucial importance in a well-structured design method for distributed systems. Use of the proposed method ensures that the combined specifications of the constituent processes guarantee the deadlock freedom of the whole system.