Non-local choice and beyond: Intricacies of MSC choice nodes

Abstract

MSC is a visual formalism for specifying the behavior of systems. To obtain implementations for individual processes, the MSC choice construction poses fundamental problems. The best-studied cause is non-local choice, which e.g. is unavoidable in systems with autonomous processes. In this paper we characterize two additional problematic classes of choice nodes. Based on these three classes we point out some errors in related work. Extending our work on pragmatic implementations of non-local choice, we motivate a different choice semantics which allows a little more behavior. Finally, inspired by practical case studies, we present the first implementation approach for non-local choice nodes that can handle arbitrary numbers of processes. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.