Sonderforschungsbereich 501
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Faculty / Organisational entity
1996,19
Due to the large variety of modern applications and evolving network technologies, a small number of general-purpose protocol stacks will no longer be sufficient. Rather, customization of communication protocols will play a major role. In this paper, we present an approach that has the potential to substantially reduce the effort for designing customized protocols. Our approach is based on the concept of design patterns, which is well-established in object oriented software development. We specialize this concept to communication protocols, and - in addition - use formal description techniques (FDTs) to specify protocol design patterns as well as rules for their instantiation and composition. The FDTs of our choice are SDL-92 and MSCs, which offer suitable language support. We propose an SDL pattern description template and relate pattern-based configuring of communication protocols to existing SDL methodologies. Particular SDL patterns and the configuring of a customized resource reservation protocol are presented in detail.
1996,18
A new approach for modelling time that does not rely on the concept of a clock is proposed. In order to establish a notion of time, system behaviour is represented as a joint progression of multiple threads of control, which satisfies a certain set of axioms. We show that the clock-independent time model is related to the well-known concept of a global clock and argue that both approaches establish the same notion of time.
1996,17
Today's communication systems are typically structured into several layers, where each layer realizes a fixed set of protocol functionalities. These functionalities have been carefully chosen such that a wide range of applications can be supported and protocols work in a general environment of networks. However, due to evolving network technologies as well as increased and varying demands of modern applications general-purpose protocol stacks are not always adequate. To improve this situation new flexible communication architectures have been developed which enable the configuration of customized communication subsystems by composing a proper set of reusable building blocks. In particular, several approaches to automatic configuration of communication subsystems have been reported in the literature. This report gives an overview of theses approaches (F-CCS, Da CaPo, x-Kernel, and ADAPTIVE) and, in particular, defines a framework, which identifies common architectural issues and configuration tasks.
1996,14
The purpose of this expose is to explain the generic design of a customized communication subsystem. The expose addresses both functional and non-functional aspects. Starting point is a real-time requirement from the application area building automation. We show how this application requirement and some background information about the application area lead to a system architecture, a communication service, a protocol architecture and to the selection, adaptation, and composition of protocol functionalities. The reader will probably be surprised how much effort is necessary in order to implement the innocuous, innocent, inconspicuous looking application requirement. Formal description techniques (FDTs) will be used in all design phases.
1996,5
A combination of a state-based formalism and a temporal logic is proposed to get an expressive language for various descriptions of reactive systems. Thereby it is possible to use a model as well as a property oriented specification style in one description. The descriptions considered here are those of the environment, the specification, and the design of a reactive system. It is possible to express e.g. the requirements of a reactive system by states and transitions between them together with further temporal formulas restricting the behaviors of the statecharts. It is shown, how this combined formalism can be used: The specification of a small example is given and a designed controller is proven correct with respect to this specification. The combination of the langugages is based on giving a temporal semantics of a state-based formalism (statecharts) using a temporal logic (TLA).
1998,4
In order to improve the quality of software systems and to set up a more effective process for their development, many attempts have been made in the field of software engineering. Reuse of existing knowledge is seen as a promising way to solve the outstanding problems in this field. In previous work we have integrated the design pattern concept with the formal design language SDL, resulting in a certain kind of pattern formalization. For the domain of communication systems we have also developed a pool of SDL patterns with an accompanying process model for pattern application. In this paper we present an extension that combines the SDL pattern approach with the experience base concept. This extension supports a systematic method for empirical evaluation and continuous improvement of the SDL pattern approach. Thereby the experience base serves as a repository necessary for effective reuse of the captured knowledge. A comprehensive usage scenario is described which shows the advantages of the combined approach. To demonstrate its feasibility, first results of a research case study are given.
1997,2
This paper discusses the benefits and drawbacks of caching and replication strategies in the WWW with respect to the Internet infrastructure. Bandwidth consumption, latency, and overall error rates are considered to be most important from a network point of view. The dependencies of these values with input parameters like degree of replication, document popularity, actual cache hit rates, and error rates are highlighted. In order to determine the influence of different caching and replication strategies on the behavior of a single proxy server with respect to these values, trace-based simulations are used. Since the overall effects of such strate- gies can hardly be decided with this approach alone, a mathematical model has been developed to deal with their influence on the network as a whole. Together, this two-tiered approach permits us to propose quantita- tive assessments on the influence different caching and replication proposals (are going to) have on the Inter- net infrastructure.
1998,7
The notion of formal description techniques for timed systems (T-FDTs) has been introduced in [EDK98a] to provide a unifying framework for description techniques that are formal and that allow to describe the ongoing behavior of systems. In this paper we show that three well known temporal logics, MTL, MTL-R , and CTL*, can be embedded in this framework. Moreover, we provide evidence that a large number of dioeerent kinds of temporal logics can be considered as T-FDTs.
1997,4
A large set of criteria to evaluate formal methods for reactive systems is presented. To make this set more comprehensible, it is structured according to a Concept-Model of formal methods. It is made clear that it is necessary to make the catalogue more specific before applying it. Some of the steps needed to do so are explained. As an example the catalogue is applied within the context of the application domain building automation systems to three different formal methods: SDL, statecharts, and a temporallogic.