A software architecture for distributed control systems and its transition system semantics

Abstract

A software architecture for distributed control systems is presented that is based on a shared data space coordination model. The architecture, named SPLICE, is introduced in two steps. First we give the general structure of the coordination model including the shared data space and the basic operations and we define its semantics by means of a transition system. Second we present a transition system for a refinement of the coordination model: data is distributed and replicated across a communication network using a publication-subscription protocol. We also discuss methods in SPLICE for fault-tolerance and the possibility for on-line system modification and extensions.