CoordMaude: Simplifying Formal Coordination Specifications of Cooperation Environments

Abstract

Developing concurrent applications in cooperative environments is an arduous task. This is mainly due to the fact that it is very difficult to specify the synchronized interaction between the entities composing the system. Using coordination models makes this task easier. The latest trends in this area suggest that to manage the successful implementation of complex systems, coordination models must support some key features regarding the coordination constraints: their separated specification, their unanticipated evolution and their dynamic change. However, supporting these features is not only a technical challenge: it must be also guaranteed that the application of a separately specified coordination pattern to a set of encapsulated entities, or the change of the coordination constraints in an already running software system will not produce semantic errors. This is just the problem focused in this paper. In particular, a method for generating formal interpretable specifications reproducing coordinated environments is presented. The method is based on the Coordinated Roles coordination model and makes use of Maude as a formal language. The benefits obtained are: (i) easy specification using the coordination model syntax, (ii) automatic generation of the corresponding formal specification and (iii) simulation of system behaviour.