Specification and top-down design of distributed systems

摘要

Stream-processing functions and recursively defined streams provide an excellent semantic model for the abstract representation of systems (“networks”) of nondeterministic concurrent communicating agents. Based on this model an “algebraic” (equation-oriented) formalism for the specification of such networks as stream-processing functions is suggested. This way a fully modular (“compositional”) methodology for the specification and the design of distributed systems and their components is obtained. Concepts of correctness are defined and rules of inference are discussed that help to transform such specifications into a network of communicating agents. A combinatorial (“functional”) notation for the sequential and parallel composition as well as for a feedback operator for those agents is introduced.