José Proença

Dreams: a framework for distributed synchronous coordination

Synchronous coordination systems, such as Reo, exchange data via indivisible actions, while distributed systems are typically asynchronous and assume that messages can be delayed or get lost. To combine these seemingly contradictory notions, we introduce the Dreams framework. Coordination patterns in Dreams are described using a synchronous model based on the Reo language, whereas global system behaviour is given by the runtime composition of autonomous actors communicating asynchronously. Dreams also exploits the use of actors in the composition of synchronous coordination patterns to allow communication whenever possible, increasing the scalability of the implementation.

The ABS tool suite: modelling, executing and analysing distributed adaptable object-oriented systems

Modern software systems must support a high degree of variability to accommodate a wide range of requirements and operating conditions. This paper introduces the Abstract Behavioural Specification (ABS) language and tool suite, a comprehensive platform for developing and analysing highly adaptable distributed concurrent software systems. The ABS language has a hybrid functional and object- oriented core, and comes with extensions that support the development of systems that are adaptable to diversified requirements, yet capable to maintain a high level of trustworthiness. Using ABS, system variability is consistently traceable from the level of requirements engineering down to object behaviour. This facilitates temporal evolution, as changes to the required set of features of a system are automatically reflected by functional adaptation of the system’s behaviour. The analysis capabilities of ABS stretch from debugging, observing and simulating to resource analysis of ABS models and help ensure that a system will remain dependable throughout its evolutionary lifetime. We report on the experience of using the ABS language and the ABS tool suite in an industrial case study.

Channel-based coordination via constraint satisfaction

Coordination in Reo emerges from the composition of the behavioural constraints of primitives, such as channels, in a component connector. Understanding and implementing Reo, however, has been challenging due to the interaction of the channel metaphor, which is an inherently local notion, and the non-local nature of the constraints imposed by composition. In this paper, the channel metaphor takes a back seat. We focus on the behavioural constraints imposed by the composition of primitives and phrase the semantics of Reo as a constraint satisfaction problem. Not only does this provide a clear description of the behaviour of Reo connectors in terms of synchronisation and data flow constraints, it also paves the way for new implementation techniques based on constraint satisfaction. We also demonstrate that this approach is more efficient than the existing techniques based on connector colouring.

Modular modelling of software product lines with feature nets

Formal modelling and verification are critical for managing the inherent complexity of systems with a high degree of variability, such as those designed following the software product line (SPL) paradigm. SPL models tend to be large--the number of products in an SPL can be exponential in the number of features. Modelling these systems poses two main challenges. Firstly, a modular modelling formalism that scales well is required. Secondly, the ability to analyse and verify complex models efficiently is key in order to ensure that all products behave correctly. The choice of a system modelling formalism that is both expressive and well-established is therefore crucial. In this paper we show how SPLs can be modelled in an incremental, modular fashion using a formal method based on Petri nets. We continue our work on Feature Petri Nets, a lightweight extension to Petri nets, by presenting a framework for modularly constructing Feature Petri Nets to model SPLs.

Partial connector colouring

Connector colouring provided an intuitive semantics of Reo connectors which lead to effective implementation techniques, first based on computing colouring tables directly, and later on encodings of colouring into constraints. One weakness of the framework is that it operates globally, giving a colouring to all primitives of the connector in lock-step, including those not involved in the interaction. This global approach limits both scalability and the available concurrency. This paper addresses these problems by introducing partiality into the connector colouring model. Partial colourings allow parts of a connector to operate independently and in isolation, increasing scalability and concurrency.

Decoupled execution of synchronous coordination models via behavioural automata

htmlabstractSynchronous coordination systems allow the exchange of data by logically indivisible actions involving all coordinated entities. This paper introduces behavioural automata, a logically synchronous coordination model based on the Reo coordination language, which focuses on relevant aspects for the concurrent evolution of these systems. We show how our automata model encodes the Reo and Linda coordination models and how it introduces an explicit predicate that captures the concurrent evolution, distinguishing local from global actions, and lifting the need of most synchronous models to involve all entities at each coordination step, paving the way to more scalable implementations.

A framework for point-free program transformation

The subject of this paper is functional program transformation in the so-called point-free style. By this we mean first translating programs to a form consisting only of categorically-inspired combinators, algebraic data types defined as fixed points of functors, and implicit recursion through the use of type-parameterized recursion patterns. This form is appropriate for reasoning about programs equationally, but difficult to actually use in practice for programming. In this paper we present a collection of libraries and tools developed at Minho with the aim of supporting the automatic conversion of programs to point-free (embedded in Haskell), their manipulation and rule-driven simplification, and the (limited) automatic application of fusion for program transformation.

Deconstructing R eo

Coordination in Reo emerges from the composition of the behavioural constraints of the primitives, such as channels, in a component connector. Understanding and implementing Reo, however, has been challenging due to interaction of the channel metaphor, which is an inherently local notion, and the non-local nature of constraint propagation imposed by composition. In this paper, the channel metaphor takes a back seat, and we focus on the behavioural constraints imposed by the composition of primitives, and phrase the semantics of Reo as a constraint satisfaction problem. Not only does this provide a clear intensional description of the behaviour of Reo connectors in terms of synchronisation and data flow constraints, it also paves the way for new implementation techniques based on constraint propagation and satisfaction. In fact, decomposing Reo into constraints provides a new computational model for connectors, which we extend to model interaction with an unknown external world beyond what is currently possible in Reo.

Reconfiguration of Reo Connectors Triggered by Dataflow

Reo is a language for coordinating autonomous components in dis- tributed environments. Coordination in Reo is performed by circuit-like connectors, which are constructed from primitive, mobile channels with well-defined behaviour. While the structure of a connector can be modeled as a graph, its behaviour is com- positionally defined using that of its primitive constituents. In previous work, we showed that graph transformation techniques are well-suited to model reconfigu- rations of connectors. In this paper, we investigate how the connector colouring semantics can be used to perform dynamic reconfigurations. Dynamic reconfigu- rations are triggered by dataflow in the connector at runtime, when certain struc- tural patterns enriched with dataflow annotations occur. For instance we are able to elegantly model dynamic Reo circuits, such as just-in-time augmentation of single- buffered channels to a circuit that models a channel with an unbounded buffer. Addi- tionally we extend Reos visual notation and the Reo animation language to describe and animate dynamically reconfiguring connectors.

A procedure for splitting processes and its application to coordination

htmlabstractWe present a procedure for splitting processes in a process algebra with multi-actions (a subset of the specification language mCRL2). This splitting procedure cuts a process into two processes along a set of actions A: roughly, one of these processes contains no actions from A, while the other process contains only actions from A. We state and prove a theorem asserting that the parallel composition of these two processes equals the original process under appropriate synchronization. We apply our splitting procedure to the process algebraic semantics of the coordination language Reo: using this procedure and its related theorem, we formally establish the soundness of splitting Reo connectors along the boundaries of their (a)synchronous regions in implementations of Reo. Such splitting can significantly improve the performance of connectors.