A Method for the Specification, Composition, and Testing of Distributed Object Systems

Abstract

The formation of a distributed system from a collection of individual components requires the ability for components to exchange syntactically well-formed messages. Several technologies exist that provide this fundamental functionality as well as the ability to locate components dynamically based on syntactic requirements. The formation of a correct distributed system requires, in addition, that these interactions between components be semantically well-formed. The method presented in this thesis is intended to assist in the development of correct distributed systems. We present a specification methodology based on three fundamental operators from temporal logic initially, next, and transient. From these operators we derive a collection of higher-level operators that are used for component specification. The novel aspect of our specification methodology is that we require that these operators be used in the following restricted manner. A specification statement can refer only to properties that are local to a single component. A single component must be able to guarantee unilaterally the validity of the specification statement for any distributed system of which it is a part.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1998
Accession Number
ADA451180

Entities

People

  • Paolo A. Sivilotti

Organizations

  • California Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • C4I

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Availability
  • Classification
  • Contracts
  • Guarantees
  • Information Operations
  • Instructions
  • Monitoring
  • Security
  • Skeleton
  • Specifications
  • Standards

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computational Linguistics
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.
  • Software Engineering