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.
This research is supported by the NWO under project 016.023.015: “Improving the Quality of Protocol Standards”.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Baeten, J.C.M., Mauw, S.: Delayed choice: an operator for joining Message Sequence Charts. In: Formal Description Techniques, pp. 340–354 (1995)
Ben-Abdallah, H., Leue, S.: Syntactic detection of process divergence and non-local choice in Message Sequence Charts. In: Brinksma, E. (ed.) TACAS 1997. LNCS, vol. 1217, pp. 259–274. Springer, Heidelberg (1997)
Brinksma, H.: Constraint-oriented specification in a constructive specification technique. In: de Bakker, J.W., de Roever, W.-P., Rozenberg, G. (eds.) REX 1989. LNCS, vol. 430, pp. 130–152. Springer, Heidelberg (1990)
Engels, A.G., Mauw, S., Reniers, M.A.: A hierarchy of communication models for message sequence charts. Science of Computer Programming 44, 253–292 (2002)
Gouda, M.G., Yu, Y.T.: Synthesis of communicating finite-state machines with guaranteed progress. IEEE Transactions on Communications COM-32(7), 779–788 (1984)
Gunter, E.L., Muscholl, A., Peled, D.A.: Compositional message sequence charts. In: Margaria, T., Yi, W. (eds.) TACAS 2001. LNCS, vol. 2031, pp. 496–511. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)
Hëlouët, L.: Some pathological message sequence charts, and how to detect them. In: Reed, R., Reed, J. (eds.) SDL 2001. LNCS, vol. 2078, pp. 348–364. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)
Henriksen, J.G., Mukund, M., Narayan Kumar, K., Thiagarajan, P.S.: Towards a theory of regular MSC languages. BRICS Report RS-99-52, Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University, Denmark (1999)
Holzmann, G.J.: The model checker Spin. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 23(5), 279–295 (1997)
International Standards Organization. Information Processing Systems – Open Systems Interconnection – LOTOS - A Formal Description Technique Based on the Temporal Ordering of Observational Behaviour, ISO 8807:1989 (1989)
ITU-T. Message sequence chart. Recommendation Z.120, ITU-T (2000)
Khendek, F., Robert, G., Butler, G., Grogono, P.: Implementability of message sequence charts. In: Workshop on SDL and MSC. SDL Forum Society (1998)
Lohrey, M.: Realizability of high-level message sequence charts: closing the gaps. Theoretical Computer Science 309(1–3), 529–554 (2003)
Madhusudan, P., Meenakshi, B.: Beyond message sequence graphs. In: Hariharan, R., Mukund, M., Vinay, V. (eds.) FSTTCS 2001. LNCS, vol. 2245, pp. 256–267. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)
Mooij, A.J., Goga, N.: Dealing with non-local choice in IEEE 1073.2’s standard for remote control. In: Amyot, D., Williams, A.W. (eds.) SAM 2004, vol. 3319, pp. 257–270. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Muccini, H.: Detecting implied scenarios analyzing non-local branching choices. In: Pezzé, M. (ed.) FASE 2003. LNCS, vol. 2621, pp. 372–386. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Reniers, M.A.: Message Sequence Chart: Syntax and Semantics. PhD thesis, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (June 1999)
Uchitel, S.: Incremental Elaboration of Scenario-Based Specifications and Behaviour Models Using Implied Scenarios. PhD thesis, Faculty of Engineering of the University of London (February 2003)
Uchitel, S., Kramer, J., Magee, J.: Detecting implied scenarios in message sequence chart specifications. In: Proceedings of the 8th European software engineering conference, pp. 74–82. ACM Press, New York (2001)
Uchitel, S., Kramer, J., Magee, J.: Synthesis of behavioral models from scenarios. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 29(2), 99–115 (2003)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Mooij, A.J., Goga, N., Romijn, J.M.T. (2005). Non-local Choice and Beyond: Intricacies of MSC Choice Nodes. In: Cerioli, M. (eds) Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering. FASE 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3442. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-31984-9_21
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-31984-9_21
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-25420-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31984-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)