The Building Blocks for Specifying Communication Behavior of Complex Objects: An Activity-Driven Approach

Abstract

Communication behavior represents dynamic evolution and cooperation of a group of objects in accomplishing a task. It is an important feature in object-oriented systems. We propose the concept of activity as a basic building block for declarative specification of communication behavior in object-oriented database systems, including the temporal ordering of message exchanges within object communication and the behavioral relationships between activity executions. We formally introduce two kinds of activity composition mechanisms: activity specialization and activity aggregation for abstract implementation of communication behavior. The former is suited for behavioral refinement of existing activities into specialized activities. The latter is used for behavioral composition of simpler activities into complex activities, and ultimately, into the envisaged database system. We use first-order temporal logic as an underlying formalism for specification of communication constraints. The well-known Air-traffic-control case is used as a running example to highlight the underlying concepts, to illustrate the usefulness, and to assess the effectiveness of the activity model for declarative specification of communication behavior in the relevant universe of discourse. We also propose a methodological framework for integrating activity schema with entity schema in an object-oriented design environment.