Distributed prototyping from validated specifications

Abstract

We present vpl2cxx, a translator that automatically generates efficient, fully distributed C++ code from high-level system models specified in the mathematically well-founded VPL design language. As the Concurrency Workbench of the New Century (CWB-NC) verification tool includes a front-end for VPL, designers may use the full range of automatic verification and simulation checks provided by this tool on their VPL system designs before invoking the translator, thereby generating distributed prototypes from validated specifications. Besides being fully distributed, the code generated by vpl2cxx is highly readable and portable to a host of execution environments and real-time operating systems. This is achieved by encapsulating all generated code dealing with low-level interprocess communication issues in a library for synchronous communication, which in turn is built upon the Adaptive Communication Environment (ACE) client-server network programming interface. Finally, example applications show that the performance of the generated code is very good, especially for prototyping purposes. We discuss two such examples, including the RETHER real-time Ethernet protocol for voice and video applications.

From clarity to efficiency for distributed algorithms

“…There has been much work on producing executable implementations from formal specifications, e.g., from process algebras [37], I/O automata [31], Unity [35], and Seuss [40], as well as from more recently proposed high-level languages for distributed algorithms, e.g., Datalog-based languages Meld [6], Overlog [4], and Bloom [13], a Prologbased language DAHL [58], and a logic-based language EventML [14,67]. An operational semantics was studied recently for a variant of Meld, called Linear Meld, that allows updates to be encoded more conveniently than Meld by using linear logic [22].…”

From clarity to efficiency for distributed algorithms

“…There has been much work on generating executable implementations from formal specifications, e.g., from process algebras [26], I/O automata [20], Unity [23], and Seuss [31], as well as from more recently proposed high-level languages for distributed algorithms, e.g., Datalog-based languages Overlog [3] and Bloom [8], and a logic-based language EventML [9,14]. Compilation of DistAlgo to executable implementations is easy because it is designed to be so and is given an operational semantics.…”

Verification of Distributed Dataspace Architectures

“…The focus there is on the design of the coordination infrastructure, rather than on the behaviour of systems using it. In [17], a translator from the design language VPL to distributed C++ code is presented. VPL specifications can be verified using the CWB-NC toolset.…”