Algebraic Approaches for Nets Using Formulas to Describe Practical Software Systems

kazuhito OHMAKI  Yutaka SATO  Ichiro OGATA  Kokichi FUTATSUGI  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences   Vol.E76-A   No.10   pp.1580-1590
Publication Date: 1993/10/25
Online ISSN: 
DOI: 
Print ISSN: 0916-8508
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Nets-Oriented Software Specification and Design)
Category: 
Keyword: 
Petri net,  process algebra,  CCS,  LOTOS,  user interface management system,  

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Summary: 
We often use data flow diagrams or state transition diagrams to design software systems with concurrency. We call those diagrams as nets in this paper. Semantics of any methods to describe such software systems should be defined in some formal ways. There would be no doubts that any nets should be supported by appropriate theoretical frameworks. In this paper, we use CCS as a typical algebraic approach of using formulas to express concurrent behaviors and point out the different features of CCS from Petri nets. Any approaches should be not only theoretically beautiful but also practically useful. We use a specification language LOTOS as such example which has two features, CCS and ADT, and is designed to specify practical communication protocols. Algebraic approaches of using formulas, like LOTOS, can be considered as a compact way to express concurrent behaviors. We explore our discussions of net-oriented approaches into UIMS research fields. After mentioning state transition models of UIMS, we exemplify a practically used example, VIA-UIMS, which has been developed by one of authors. VIA-UIMS employs a net-oriented architecture. It has been designed to reconstuct tools which have already been widely used in many sites.