Action system approach to the specification and design of distributed systems

Abstract

in temporal logic [24, 25] or in the logic developed for Unity [10]. External interactions are also modeled as joint actions, without committing to specific communication events between the system and its environment. This means that a joint action system is a closed system containing also a model of its environment. This has an effect on modularity, as will be seen below. For the design process joint action systems provide a framework for stepwise derivation. The initial action system with which this process starts should be simple. Fortunately, the natural ways of structuring action systems support a layered introduction of properties. Bias towards machine architecture or communication primitives does not belong to the initial system, even if the eventual answers to such questions were known from the beginning. No harm is caused at this level by wasteful computations allowed by nondeterminism. Furthermore, the granularity of atomic actions can be coarser than would be feasible in a distributed implementation. Together with independence of communication mechanisms this helps in the avoidance of subtle timing errors. The initial action system is the first baseline for the design process. Being amenable to both formal analysis and experimentation (by simulation and animation), it can be subjected to extensive verification and validation. From this stage the design proceeds by transformations that • refine the atomicity of actions,