Integrating the heterogeneous control properties of software modules

Abstract

A concurrent software application, whether running on a single machine or distributed across multiple machines, is composed of tasks that interact (communicate and sychronize) in order to achieve some goal. Developing such concurrent programs so they cooperate effectively is a complex task, requiring that progrmmers craft their modules–the components from which concurrent applications are built—to meet both functional requirements and communication requirements. Unfortunately the result of this effort is a module that is difficult to reason about and even more difficult to reuse. Making programmers treat too many diverse issues simultaneously leads to increased development costs and opportunities for error. This suggests the need for ways that a developer may specify control requirements separately from the implementation of functional requirements, but then have this information used automatically when building the component executables. The result is an environment where programmers have increased flexibility in composing software modules into concurrent applications, and in reusing those same modules. This paper describes our research toward a technology for control integration, where we have developed techniques for users to express control objectives for an application and a system that translates those specifications for use in packaging executables.