Specification and top down design of distributed systems

Abstract

Stream-processing functions provide an excellent semantic model for the abstract representation of systems of nondeterministic concurrent communicating agents. Based on this model a formalism for the specification of such functions is suggested. This way a fully modular, compositional methodology for the specification and the design of distributed systems and their components is derived. Concepts of correctness are defined and rules of inference are discussed that help to transform such specifications into a network of communicating agents. A combinatorial (“functional”) notation for the sequential and parallel composition as well as feedback for those agents is introduced.