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A formal approach to reactive systems software: A telecommunications application in Esterel

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Abstract

Esterel is a formally-defined language designed for programming reactive systems; namely, those that maintain a permanent interaction with their environment. The AT&T 5ESS® telephone switching system is an example of a reactive system. We describe an implementation in Esterel of one feature of a 5ESS switch; this implementation has been tested in the 5ESS switch simulator. Furthermore, it has been formally verified that this implementation satisfies some safety properties stated by 5ESS software development. Our experience indicates that Esterel is suitable for programming industrial-strength reactive systems, and affords significant advantages in software development over more traditional programming languages used in industrial settings.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Software Production Research Department, AT & T Bell Laboratories, 60566-7013, Naperville, IL, USA

    Lalita Jategaonkar Jagadeesan

  2. Department of Computer Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, 78712-1188, Austin, TX, USA

    Carlos Puchol

  3. Global Maintenance Operations, Platform Department, AT & T Bell Laboratories, 60566-7045, Naperville, IL, USA

    James E. Von Olnhausen

Authors
  1. Lalita Jategaonkar Jagadeesan
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  2. Carlos Puchol
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  3. James E. Von Olnhausen
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Additional information

An earlier version of this paper appeared in the Proceedings of the Workshop on Industrial-Strength Formal Specification Techniques, Boca Raton, Florida, 1995.

The author is currently supported by a Fulbright fellowship from Spain's Ministry of Science and Education. The work described here was performed while the author was visiting AT&T Bell Laboratories.

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Jagadeesan, L.J., Puchol, C. & Von Olnhausen, J.E. A formal approach to reactive systems software: A telecommunications application in Esterel . Form Method Syst Des 8, 123–151 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00122418

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