Toward Comprehensive Specification of Distributed Systems

A new approach to modelling distributed systems is presented. It uses sequential processes and event synchronization as building blocks to construct a cohesive picture of the interdependent requirements for the functionality, architecture, scheduling policies, and performance attributes of a distributed system. A language called CSPS (an extension of Hoare's CSP) is used in the illustration of the approach. Employing CSP as a base allows modelled systems to be verified using techniques already developed for verifying CSP programs and leads to the emergence of a uniform incremental strategy for verifying both logical and performance properties of distributed systems. Several small... Read complete abstract on page 2.