Abstract
Formal modeling of complex systems is a non-trivial task, especially if a formal method does not facilitate separate development of the components of a system.This paper describes a methodology of building communicating X-machines from existing stand-alone Xmachine models and presents the theory that drives this methodology. An X-machine is a formal method that resembles a finite state machine but can model non-trivial data structures.This is accomplished by incorporating a typed memory tuple into the model as well as transitions labeled with functions that operate on inputs and memory values.A set of X-machines can exchange messages with each other, thus building a communicating system model.However, existing communicating X-machines theories imply that the components of a communicating system should be built from scratch.We suggest that modeling of complex systems can be split into two separate and distinct activities: (a) the modeling of standalone X-machine components and (b) the description of the communication between these components.This approach is based on a different view of the theory of communicating X-machines and it leads towards disciplined, practical, and modular development. The proposed methodology is accompanied by an example, which demonstrates the use of communicating X-machines towards the modeling of large-scale systems.
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Kefalas, P., Eleftherakis, G., Kehris, E. (2003). Communicating X-Machines: From Theory to Practice. In: Manolopoulos, Y., Evripidou, S., Kakas, A.C. (eds) Advances in Informatics. PCI 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2563. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-38076-0_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-38076-0_21
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