The Adaptive Arena: language constructs and architectural abstractions for concurrent object-oriented systems

Abstract

In this paper we present a concurrent object-oriented model in which a concurrent object, which represents a shared resource abstraction in our model, is decomposed into a hierarchy of architectural abstractions: a shared data abstraction, a synchronization abstraction, and a scheduling abstraction. It will be shown that the separation of concerns among the three major components of the concurrent objects avoids many of the conceptual difficulties that arise when integrating concurrency into the object-oriented paradigm. The proposed model presents a formal methodology for the architectural design and specification of the concurrent object-oriented software systems. The notion of scheduling policy inheritance in our model facilitates the process of engineering adaptability in the development of the intelligent reactive/adaptive systems.