The hierarchical compositional interchange format

Abstract

In computer science, the development of hierarchical automata / statecharts has lead to stepwise development of complex discrete systems. Such a concept is absent in the Compositional Interchange Format (CIF), which is a modelling language based on hybrid automata. In this article we extend the CIF language with the concept of hierarchy, which results in the Hierarchical Compositional Interchange format (HCIF). Syntactically, hierarchy is introduced by adding three concepts to CIF: a hierarchy function from a location to a HCIF composition, a termination predicate, and disruptive edges. The semantics of HCIF is given by means of Structural Operational Semantics rules. The semantics of a hierarchical automaton is defined in a compositional manner, by referring only to the transition system of the substructures, and not to their syntactic representation. This compositional introduction of hierarchy allows us to keep the semantics of the HCIF operators almost unchanged with respect to their CIF versions. Finally, a case-study called Patient Support System is modelled in HCIF to show its applicability. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.