Compositional priority specification in real-time distributed systems

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a compositional denotational semantics for prioritized real-time distributed programming languages. One of the interesting features is that it extends the existing compositional theory proposed by Koymanset al (1988) for prioritized real-time languages preserving the compositionality of the semantics. The language permits users to define situations in which an action has priority over another action without the requirement of preassigning priorities to actions for partially ordering the alphabet of actions. These features are part of the languages such as Ada designed specifically keeping in view the needs of real-time embedded systems. Further, the approach does not have the restriction of other approaches such as prioritized internal moves can pre-empt unprioritized actions etc. Our notion of priority in the environment is based on the intuition that a low priority action can proceed only if the high priority action cannot proceed due to lack of the handshaking partner at that point of execution. In other words, if some action is possible corresponding to that environment at some point of execution then the action takes place without unnecessary waiting. The proposed semantic theory provides a clear distinction between the semantic model and the execution model — this has enabled us to fully ensure that there is no unnecessary waiting.