Constrained expressions: Adding analysis capabilities to design methods for concurrent software systems

Journal Article · Sat Feb 01 04:00:00 EST 1986 · IEEE Trans. Software Eng.; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.1986.6312944· OSTI ID:5850837

Avrunin, G S; Dillon, L K; Wileden, J C; Riddle, W E

The authors describe an approach to the design of concurrent software systems based on the constrained expression formalism. This formalism provides a rigorous conceptual model for the semantics of concurrent computations, thereby supporting analysis of important system properties as part of the design process. At the same time, the approach allows designers to use standard specification and design languages, rather than forcing them to deal with the formal model explicitly or directly. As a result, the approach attains the benefits of formal rigor without the associated pain of unnatural concepts or notations for its users. The conceptual model of concurrency underlying the constrained expression formalism treats the collection of possible behaviors of a concurrent system as a set of sequences of events. The constrained expression formalism provides a useful closed-form description of these sequences. The authors have developed algorithms for translating designs expressed in a wide variety of notations into these constrained expression descriptions. They have also developed a number of powerful analysis techniques that can be applied to these descriptions. In this paper, they describe the constrained expression formalism and these analysis techniques. They then describe the way this approach would be used in design, giving an example illustrating its use in conjunction with an Ada-like design language, and discuss present and future prospects for its automation and use.

• Research Organization: Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics, Univ. of Massachusetts
• OSTI ID: 5850837
• Journal Information: IEEE Trans. Software Eng.; (United States), Journal Name: IEEE Trans. Software Eng.; (United States) Vol. SE-12:2; ISSN IESED
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990200* -- Mathematics & Computers
ADA
ALGORITHMS
DATA PROCESSING
DISTRIBUTED DATA PROCESSING
MATHEMATICAL LOGIC
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
PROCESSING
PROGRAMMING
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES