ON ARCHITECTURAL SUPPORT FOR BEHAVIOUR REFINEMENT IN DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS DESIGN

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Quartel, Dick | Pires, Luís Ferreira | van Sinderen, Marten

Affiliations: Centre for Telematics and Information Technology, University of Twente, 7500 AE Enschede, the Netherlands

Abstract: During the top-down design of distributed systems, abstract designs have to be replaced by more concrete designs, which add details that define how these systems can be implemented using available building blocks. Behaviour refinement is a design operation in which abstract behaviours are replaced by more concrete behaviours. Methods that guide and enforce the correctness of these replacements are necessary. This paper presents a set of methods to perform behaviour refinement, based on a careful consideration of the architectural concepts of action and causality relation. Correctness is enforced by validation of the conformance relation between an abstract and a concrete behaviour. Rules are provided to determine whether a concrete behaviour conforms to an abstract behaviour.

Journal: Journal of Integrated Design & Process Science, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 1-30, 2002