research-article

A relational trace logic for simple hierarchical actor-based component systems

Authors:

Ilham W. Kurnia,

Arnd Poetzsch-HeffterAuthors Info & Claims

AGERE! 2012: Proceedings of the 2nd edition on Programming systems, languages and applications based on actors, agents, and decentralized control abstractions

Pages 47 - 58

https://doi.org/10.1145/2414639.2414647

Published: 21 October 2012 Publication History

Abstract

We present a logic for proving functional properties of concurrent component-based systems. A component is either a single actor or a group of dynamically created actors. The component hierarchy is based on the actor creation tree. The actors work concurrently and communicate asynchronously. Each actor is an instance of an actor class. An actor class determines the behavior of its instances. We assume that specifications of the behavior of the actor classes are available. The logic allows deriving properties of larger components from specifications of smaller components hierarchically.

The behavior of components is expressed in terms of traces where a trace is a sequence of events. A component specification relates traces of input events to traces of output events. Generalizing Hoare-like logics from states to traces and from statements to components, we write {p} C {q} to mean that if an input trace satisfies p, component C produces output traces satisfying q; that is, p and q are assertions over traces. Such specifications are partial in that they only specify the reaction of C to input traces satisfying p.

This paper develops the trace semantics and specification technique for actor-based component systems, presents important proof rules, proves soundness of the rules, and illustrates the interplay between the trace semantics, the specification technique and the proof rules by an example derived from an industrial Erlang case study.

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A Relational Trace Logic for Simple Hierarchical Actor-Based Component Systems - The supplementary material contains a pdf file describing the proof of all lemmas in the main paper.

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Cited By

Summers AMüller P(2016)Actor ServicesProceedings of the 25th European Symposium on Programming Languages and Systems - Volume 963210.5555/3089528.3089555(699-726)Online publication date: 2-Apr-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3089528.3089555
Summers AMüller P(2016)Actor ServicesProgramming Languages and Systems10.1007/978-3-662-49498-1_27(699-726)Online publication date: 2016
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-49498-1_27
Kurnia IPoetzsch-Heffter A(2016)Modeling Actor Systems Using Dynamic I/O AutomataPerspectives of System Informatics10.1007/978-3-319-41579-6_15(186-202)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2016
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41579-6_15
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

A relational trace logic for simple hierarchical actor-based component systems
1. Theory of computation
  1. Logic
    1. Programming logic
  2. Semantics and reasoning
    1. Program reasoning

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

AGERE! 2012: Proceedings of the 2nd edition on Programming systems, languages and applications based on actors, agents, and decentralized control abstractions

October 2012

150 pages

ISBN:9781450316309

DOI:10.1145/2414639

General Chair:
Gul Agha
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Rafael H. Bordini
FACIN-PUCRS, Brazil
,
Assaf Marron
Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
,
Alessandro Ricci
University of Bologna, Italy

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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New York, NY, United States

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Published: 21 October 2012

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SPLASH '12: Conference on Systems, Programming, and Applications: Software for Humanity

October 21 - 22, 2012

Arizona, Tucson, USA

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Cited By

Summers AMüller P(2016)Actor ServicesProceedings of the 25th European Symposium on Programming Languages and Systems - Volume 963210.5555/3089528.3089555(699-726)Online publication date: 2-Apr-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3089528.3089555
Summers AMüller P(2016)Actor ServicesProgramming Languages and Systems10.1007/978-3-662-49498-1_27(699-726)Online publication date: 2016
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-49498-1_27
Kurnia IPoetzsch-Heffter A(2016)Modeling Actor Systems Using Dynamic I/O AutomataPerspectives of System Informatics10.1007/978-3-319-41579-6_15(186-202)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2016
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41579-6_15
Kurnia IPoetzsch-Heffter A(2012)Verification of Open Concurrent Object SystemsRevised Lectures of the 11th International Symposium on Formal Methods for Components and Objects - Volume 786610.1007/978-3-642-40615-7_3(83-118)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-40615-7_3

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