Stepwise Refinement Of Distributed Systems

The stepwise refinement method postulates a system construction route that starts with a high-level specification, goes through a number of provably correct development steps, and ends with an executable program. The contributions to this volume survey the state of the art in this extremely active research area. The world's leading specialists in concurrent program specification, verification, and the theory of their refinement present latest research results and surveys of the fields. State-based, algebraic, temporal logic oriented and category theory oriented approaches are presented. Special attention is paid to the relationship between compositionality and refinement for distributed programs. Surveys are given of results on refinement in partial-order based approaches to concurrency. A unified treatment is given of the assumption/commitment paradigm in compositional concurrent program specification and verification, and the extension of these to liveness properties. Latest results are presented on specifying and proving concurrent data bases correct, and deriving network protocols from their specifications.

Formal methods traditionally address the question of transforming software engineering into a mature engineering discipline. This essentially refers to trusting that the software-intensive systems that form our society’s infrastructures are behaving according to their specifications. More recently, formal methods are also used to understand properties and evolution laws of existing complex and adaptive systems—man-made such as smart electrical grids or natural ones such as biological networks. A tribute to Professor Kaisa Sere’s contributions to the field of computer science, From Action Systems to Distributed Systems: The Refinement Approach is the first book to address the impact of refinement through a multitude of formal methods ranging from Action Systems to numerous related approaches in computer science research. It presents a state-of-the-art review on the themes of distributed systems and refinement. A fundamental part of Kaisa Sere’s research consisted of developing Action Systems, a formalism for modeling, analysing, and constructing distributed systems. Within the design of distributed systems, Kaisa Sere’s main research focus was on refinement-based approaches to the construction of systems ranging from pure software to hardware and digital circuits. Presenting scientific contributions from renowned researchers around the world, this edited book consists of five sections: Modeling, Analysis, Proof, Refinement, and Applications. Each chapter has been thoroughly reviewed by experts in the field. The book covers both traditional aspects in formal methods research, as well as current and innovative research directions. It describes the transition from the strong theory of refinement to a methodology that can be applied in practice, with tool support. Examining industrial applications of the methods discussed, this book is a suitable resource for graduate students, researchers, and practitioners interested in using formal methods to develop distributed systems of quality.

The stepwise refinement method postulates a system construction route that starts with a high-level specification, goes through a number of provably correct development steps, and ends with an executable program. The contributions to this volume survey the state of the art in this extremely active research area. The world's leading specialists in concurrent program specification, verification, and the theory of their refinement present latest research results and surveys of the fields. State-based, algebraic, temporal logic oriented and category theory oriented approaches are presented. Special attention is paid to the relationship between compositionality and refinement for distributed programs. Surveys are given of results on refinement in partial-order based approaches to concurrency. A unified treatment is given of the assumption/commitment paradigm in compositional concurrent program specification and verification, and the extension of these to liveness properties. Latest results are presented on specifying and proving concurrent data bases correct, and deriving network protocols from their specifications.

The purpose of this book is to make the reader famliar with software engineering for distributed systems. Software engineering is a valuable discipline in the develop ment of software. The reader has surely heard of software systems completed months or years later than scheduled with huge cost overruns, systems which on completion did not provide the performance promised, and systems so catastrophic that they had to be abandoned without ever doing any useful work. Software engi neering is the discipline of creating and maintaining software; when used in con junction with more general methods for effective management its use does reduce the incidence of horrors mentioned above. The book gives a good impression of software engineering particularly for dis tributed systems. It emphasises the relationship between software life cycles, meth ods, tools and project management, and how these constitute the framework of an open software engineering environment, especially in the development of distrib uted software systems. There is no closed software engineering environment which can encompass the full range of software missions, just as no single flight plan, airplane or pilot can perform all aviation missions. There are some common activities in software engi neering which must be addressed independent of the applied life cycle or methodol ogy. Different life cycles, methods, related tools and project management ap proaches should fit in such a software engineering framework.

This book contains a selection of research papers describing recent advancesin the theory of concurrent systems and their applications. The papers were all presented at the CONCUR '92 conference, which has emerged as the premiere conference on formal aspects of concurrency. The authors include such prominent researchers as R. Milner, A. Pnueli, N. Lynch, and V.R. Pratt. The results represent advances in the mathematical understanding of the behavior of concurrent systems: topics covered include process algebras, models of true concurrency, compositional verification techniques, temporal logic, verification case studies, models of probabilistic and real-time systems, models of systems with dynamic structure, and algorithms and decidability results for system analysis. A key feature of CONCUR is its breadth: in one volume it presents a snapshot of the state of the art in concurrency theory. Assuch, it is indispensible to researchers - and would-be researchers - in theformal analysis of concurrent systems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference of B and Z Users, ZB 2000, held in York, UK in August/September 2000. The 25 revised full papers presented together with four invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The book documents the recent advances for the Z formal specification notion and for the B method; the full scope, ranging from foundational and theoretical issues to advanced applications, tools, and case studies, is covered.