A framework for programming and formalizing concurrent objects

ABSTRACT

We propose an object-oriented programming model based on concurrently executing communicating agents which aims to achieve reusability and extensibility of agent descriptions by separating aspects of functionality and synchronization. A formal semantics of an agent is given as a theory in the Temporal Logic of Actions [15] such that a system of agents is formalized by the conjunction of the single agents' specifications plus some axioms representing the communication structure. This representation allows for the formal derivation of systems properties. We terminate this paper by a discussion about the proof of inheritance properties in a parallel environment.

REFERENCES

• 1: Martín Abadi , Leslie Lamport, The existence of refinement mappings, Theoretical Computer Science, v.82 n.2, p.253-284, May 31, 1991 [doi>10.1016/0304-3975(91)90224-P ]
• 2: Gul Agha , Carl Hewitt, Concurrent programming using actors, Object-oriented concurrent programming, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987
• 3: Pierre America , Frank van der Linden, A parallel object-oriented language with inheritance and subtyping, Proceedings of the European conference on object-oriented programming on Object-oriented programming systems, languages, and applications, p.161-168, September 1990, Ottawa, Canada
• 4: Jean Paul Bahsoun , L. Féraud, A Model to Design Reusable Parallel Software Components, Proceedings of the 4th International PARLE Conference on Parallel Architectures and Languages Europe, p.245-260, June 15-18, 1992
• 5: J. P. Bahsoun, L. Feraud, C. Betourne A two degrees of freedom approach for parallel programming, Proc. IEEE International Conference on Computer Languages. March 12-15 1990. New 0rleans.pp261- 270.
• 6: Pierre Cointe, Metaclasses are first class: The ObjVlisp Model, Conference proceedings on Object-oriented programming systems, languages and applications, p.156-162, October 04-08, 1987, Orlando, Florida, United States
• 7: Ole-Johan Dahl , Kristen Nygaard, SIMULA: an ALGOL-based simulation language, Communications of the ACM, v.9 n.9, p.671-678, Sept. 1966 [doi>10.1145/365813.365819]
• 8: E.W. Dijkstra. Hierarchical ordering of sequential objectprocesses. Acts Informatica. 1-1971.
• 9: Adele Goldberg , David Robson, Smalltalk-80: the language and its implementation, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1983
• 10: C. Hewitt, R. Atkinson Specification and proof technique for serializes, IEEE Trans. Soft. Eng. 1979 pp 10-13.
• 11: Dennis G. Kafura , Keung H Lee, Inheritance in Actor Based Concurrent Object-Oriented Languages, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Blacksburg, VA, 1988
• 12: Kenneth Kahn , Eric Dean Tribble , Mark Miller , Daniel G. Bobrow, Vulcan: logical concurrent objects, Research directions in object-oriented programming, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987
• 13: S. E. Keene, A programmer's guide to object-oriented programming in Common LISP, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1988
• 14: S. Krakowiak , M. Meysembourg , H. Nguyen Van , M. Riveill , C. Roisin , X. Rousset de Pina, Design and implementation of an object-oriented strongly typed language for distributed applications, Journal of Object-Oriented Programming, v.3 n.3, p.11-22, Sep./Oct. 1990
• 15: L. Lamport The Temporal Logic of Actions Research Report 79, DEC Systems Research Center, December 1991
• 16: Barbara Liskov, Abstraction and specification in program development, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1986
• 17: José Meseguer , Timothy C. Winkler, Parallel Programmming in Maude, Research Directions in High-Level Parallel Programming Languages, p.253-293, June 17-19, 1991
• 18: Bertrand Meyer, Object-oriented software construction (2nd ed.), Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1997
• 19: Alan Snyder, Inheritance and the development of encapsulated software systems, Research directions in object-oriented programming, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987
• 20: Bjarne Stroustrup, The C++ programming language, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1986
• 21: C. Tomlinson , V. Singh, Inheritance and synchronization with enabled-sets, Conference proceedings on Object-oriented programming systems, languages and applications, p.103-112, October 02-06, 1989, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
• 22: Peter Wegner, Concepts and paradigms of object-oriented programming, ACM SIGPLAN OOPS Messenger, v.1 n.1, p.7-87, Aug. 1990 [doi>10.1145/382192.383004]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.1 PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES

Additional Classification:
  F. Theory of Computation
  F.1 COMPUTATION BY ABSTRACT DEVICES
      F.1.2 Modes of Computation
          Subjects: Parallelism and concurrency

General Terms:
Design, Performance, Theory