Abstract
Nondeterminism in specifications may be used for at least two different purposes. One is to express underspecification, which means that the specifier for the same environment behavior allows several alternative behaviors of the specified component and leaves the choice between these to those responsible for implementing the specification. In this case a valid implementation will need to implement at least one, but not necessarily all, alternatives. The other purpose is to express inherent nondeterminism, which means that a valid implementation needs to reflect all alternatives. STAIRS is an approach to the compositional and incremental development of sequence diagrams supporting underspecification as well as inherent nondeterminism. Probabilistic STAIRS builds on STAIRS and allows probabilities to be included in the specifications. Underspecification with respect to probabilities is also allowed. This paper investigates the use of underspecification, inherent nondeterminism and probability in sequence diagrams, the relationships between these concepts, and how these are expressed in STAIRS and probabilistic STAIRS.
The original version of this chapter was revised: The copyright line was incorrect. This has been corrected. The Erratum to this chapter is available at DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-34895-5_20
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Keywords
- Composition Operator
- Semantic Representation
- Sequence Diagram
- Probabilistic Choice
- Nondeterministic Choice
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Refsdal, A., Runde, R.K., Stølen, K. (2006). Underspecification, Inherent Nondeterminism and Probability in Sequence Diagrams. In: Gorrieri, R., Wehrheim, H. (eds) Formal Methods for Open Object-Based Distributed Systems. FMOODS 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4037. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11768869_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11768869_12
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