Compositional Development Method Research Articles

Investigating the limits of rely/guarantee relations based on a concurrent garbage collector example

Decomposing the design (or documentation) of large systems is a practical necessity but finding compositional development methods for concurrent software is technically challenging. This paper includes the development of a difficult example in order to draw out lessons about such methods. The concurrent garbage collector development is interesting in several ways; in particular, the final step of its development appears to be just beyond what can be expressed by rely/guarantee relations. This prompts an exploration of the limitations of this well-known method. Although the rely/guarantee approach is used, most of the lessons are more general.

A Structural Proof of the Soundness of Rely/guarantee Rules

Various forms of rely/guarantee conditions have been used to record and reason about interference in ways that provide compositional development methods for concurrent programs. This article illustrates such a set of rules and proves their soundness. The underlying concurrent language allows fine-grained interleaving and nested concurrency; it is defined by an operational semantics; the proof that the rely/guarantee rules are consistent with that semantics (including termination) is by a structural induction. A key lemma which relates the states which can arise from the extra interference that results from taking a portion of the program out of context makes it possible to do the proofs without having to perform induction over the computation history. This lemma also offers a way to think about expressibility issues around auxiliary variables in rely/guarantee conditions.

Splitting atoms safely

The aim of this paper is to make a contribution to (compositional) development methods for concurrent programs. In particular, it takes a fresh look at a number of familiar ideas including the problem of interference. Some subtle issues of observability–including granularity–are explored. Based on these points, the paper sets out some requirements for an approach to developing systems by “splitting atoms safely”.

An Approach to Splitting Atoms Safely: Extended Abstract

The intention of this paper is to make a contribution to (compositional) development methods for concurrent programs. The topics touched on include interference, atomicity, observability and granularity. The paper sets out some requirements for an approach to developing systems by “splitting atoms safely”.

Principles of component-based design of intelligent agents

Compositional multi-agent system design is a methodological perspective on multi-agent system design based on the software engineering principles process and knowledge abstraction, compositionality, reuse, specification and verification. This paper addresses these principles from a generic perspective in the context of the compositional development method DESIRE. An overview is given of reusable generic models (design patterns) for different types of agents, problem solving methods and tasks, and reasoning patterns. Examples of supporting tools are described.

A compositional process control model and its application to biochemical processes

A compositional generic process control model is presented which has been applied to control enzymatic biochemical processes. The model has been designed at a conceptual and formal level using the compositional development method DESIRE, and includes processes for analysis, planning and simulation. It integrates qualitative and quantitative techniques. Its application to enzymatic chemical processes is described.

DELIBERATIVE EVOLUTION IN MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS

Evolution of automated systems, in particular evolution of automated agents based on agent deliberation, is the topic of this paper. Evolution is not a merely material process, it requires interaction within and between individuals, their environments and societies of agents. An architecture for an individual agent capable of (1) deliberation about the creation of new agents, and (2) (run-time) creation of a new agent on the basis of this, is presented. The agent architecture is based on an existing generic agent model, and includes explicit formal conceptual representations of both design structures of agents and (behavioural) properties of agents. The process of deliberation is based on an existing generic reasoning model of design. The architecture has been designed using the compositional development method DESIRE, and has been tested in a prototype implementation.

Compositional design of a generic design agent

This paper presents a generic architecture for a design agent, to be used in an Internet environment. The design agent is based on an existing generic agent model, and includes a refinement of a generic model for design, in which strategic reasoning and dynamic management of requirements are explicitly modelled. The generic architecture has been designed using the compositional development method DESIRE, and has been used to develop a prototype design agent for automated agent design.

COMPOSITIONAL SPECIFICATION AND REUSE OF A GENERIC COOPERATIVE AGENT MODEL

In this paper, one of the informally described models of agent cooperation (Jennings, 1995) has been used to develop and formally specify a generic model of a cooperative agent (GCAM). The compositional development method for multi-agent systems DESIRE supported the principled design of this model of cooperation. To illustrate reusability of the generic model, two application domains have been addressed: collaborative engineering design, and Call Center support.

Compositional design and reuse of a generic agent model

This article introduces a formally specified design of a compositional generic agent model (GAM). This agent model abstracts from specific application domains; it provides a unified formal definition of a model for weak agenthood. It can be (re) used as a template or pattern for a large variety of agent types and application-domain types. The model was designed on the basis of experiences in a number of application domains. The compositional development method DESIRE was used to design the agent model GAM at a conceptual and logical level. It serves as a unified, precisely defined, conceptual structure, which can be refined by specialization and instantiation to a large variety of other, more specific agents. To illustrate reuse of this agent model, specialization and instantiation to model cooperative information gathering agents is described in depth. Moreover, it is shown how GAM can be used to describe in a unified and, hence, more comparable manner a large number of agent architectures from the literature.

Distributed scheduling to support a call center: A cooperative multiagent approach

This article describes a multiagent system architecture to increase the value of 24-hour-a day call center service. This system supports call centers in making appointments with clients on the basis ofknowledge ofemployees and their schedules. Relevant activities are scheduled for employees in preparation ofsuch appointments. The multiagent system architecture is based on principled design, using the compositional development method for multiagent systems DESIRE. To schedule procedures in which more than one employee is involved, each employee is represented by its own personal assistant agent, and a work manager agent coordinates the schedules of the personal assistant agents and clients through the call center. The multiagent system architecture has been applied to the banking domain, in cooperation with and partially funded by the Rabobank.