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FScaFi : A Core Calculus for Collective Adaptive Systems Programming

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Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation: Engineering Principles (ISoLA 2020)

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Abstract

A recently proposed approach to the rigorous engineering of collective adaptive systems is the aggregate computing paradigm, which operationalises the idea of expressing collective adaptive behaviour by a global perspective as a functional composition of dynamic computational fields (i.e., structures mapping a collection of individual devices of a collective to computational values over time). In this paper, we present FScaFi, a core language that captures the essence of exploiting field computations in mainstream functional languages, and which is based on a semantic model for field computations leveraging the novel notion of “computation against a neighbour”. Such a construct models expressions whose evaluation depends on the same evaluation that occurred on a neighbour, thus abstracting communication actions and, crucially, enabling deep and straightforward integration in the Scala programming language, by the ScaFi incarnation. We cover syntax and informal semantics of FScaFi, provide examples of collective adaptive behaviour development in ScaFi, and delineate future work.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://scafi.github.io.

  2. 2.

    https://kafka.apache.org.

  3. 3.

    https://akka.io.

  4. 4.

    This is where FScaFi differs from classical field calculus, where instead neighbouring fields are explicitly manipulated.

  5. 5.

    The “Plus” suffix is to mimic the mathematical syntax \(R^+\) of the transitive closure of a (neighbouring) relation R.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alma Mater Studiorum–Università di Bologna, Cesena, Italy

    Roberto Casadei & Mirko Viroli

  2. Università di Torino, Turin, Italy

    Giorgio Audrito & Ferruccio Damiani

Authors
  1. Roberto Casadei
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  2. Mirko Viroli
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  3. Giorgio Audrito
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  4. Ferruccio Damiani
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Correspondence to Mirko Viroli .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Limerick and Lero, Limerick, Ireland

    Tiziana Margaria

  2. TU Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

    Bernhard Steffen

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Casadei, R., Viroli, M., Audrito, G., Damiani, F. (2020). FScaFi : A Core Calculus for Collective Adaptive Systems Programming. In: Margaria, T., Steffen, B. (eds) Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation: Engineering Principles. ISoLA 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12477. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61470-6_21

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