Application-Layer Connector Synthesis

Abstract

Abstract. The heterogeneity characterizing the systems populating the Ubiquitous Computing environment prevents their seamless interoperability. Heterogeneous protocols may be willing to cooperate in order to reach some common goal even though they meet dynamically and do not have a priori knowledge of each other. Despite numerous efforts have been done in the literature, the automated and run-time interoperability is still an open challenge for such environment. We consider interoperability as the ability for two Networked Systems (NSs) to communicate and correctly coordinate to achieve their goal(s). In this chapter we report the main outcomes of our past and recent research on automatically achieving protocol interoperability via connector synthesis. We consider application-layer connectors by referring to two conceptually distinct notions of connector: coordinator and mediator. The former is used when the NSs to be connected are already able to communicate but they need to be specifically coordinated in order to reach their goal(s). The latter goes a step forward representing a solution for both achieving correct coordination and enabling communication between highly heterogeneous NSs. In the past, most of the works in the literature described efforts to the automatic synthesis of coordinators while, in recent years the focus moved also to the automatic synthesis of mediators. Within the Connect project, by considering our past experience on automatic coordinator synthesis as a baseline, we propose a formal theory of mediators and a related method for automatically eliciting a way for the protocols to interoperate. The solution we propose is the automated synthesis of emerging mediating connectors (i.e., mediators for short).

Synthesizing self-adaptive connectors meeting functional and performance concerns

“…The synthesis process is based on a formal foundation for CONNECTors, which allows learning, reasoning about and adapting the interaction behavior of NSs at run-time through CONNECTors. In [1], [2] it is proposed an approach to the automated synthesis of CONNECTors to reconcile application protocol diversities from a functional point of view (called functional CONNECTor) that suits the CONNECT vision.…”

Using Models at Runtime to Address Assurance for Self-Adaptive Systems

“…The goal of these techniques is to generate the "correct" assembly code for the (pre-selected and pre-acquired) components that constitute the specified system, in such a way that it is possible to guarantee that the system exhibits the specified interactions only. Inverardi et al [IST11] proposed a synthesis-based approach for networking. This approach considers application-layer connectors by referring to two conceptually distinct notions of connector: coordinator and mediator.…”

Taming the interoperability challenges of complex IoT systems

“…However, these solutions focus on brokering between heterogeneous software as opposed to supporting the developers of new software requiring interoperability. Beyond this, Emergent Middleware solutions [18,19,20] have been proposed that dynamically broker interoperability between systems; these solutions rely on machine-readable software artefacts, e.g., interface descriptions and ontologies, being available for run-time analysis. Yet, the reality is that systems do not typically publish such information and interoperability remains a significant software development challenge put back in the hands of software developers.…”