Entity behaviour descriptions-A specification model for communicating entities

This paper presents the Entity Behavior Description (EBD) modelling technique for specifying the behavioral requirements of a set of communicating entities in a concurrent system. EBDs are finite state machines which describe the abstract behaviour of an entity. This abstract behavior is defined as the combination of the application-specific behavior, and the semantics of the communications. EBDs are given formal operational semantics which explicitly separate these two behavioral components; and, as such, are a fundamental component of a design process which emphasizes the strong traceability of behavioral requirements in a design.<>