The study of distributed system design has tended to divide into two camps: either very formal methods that apply to severe abstractions of problems, or human-intuition-based methods that aid in forming the overall nature of a system design, but are often disconnected from the application of formal methods except as post-hoc verifications. Herein the author explores part of the boundary of formal design, seeking to apply formal techniques to aid in the derivation of a distributed design. This is demonstrated on there derivation of the train signalling protocol developed in the 19th century. It was this protocol that gave rise to the now-familiar concept of semaphore. However, a study of the train system shows that there is much more to its protocol than simply the instantiation of the semaphore concept. This exploration places on a more formal footing issues such as discovery of the need for information, and the origin of key invariants, without requiring that the solution be known in advance.


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    Title :

    Explorations on the formal frontier of distributed system design


    Additional title:

    Untersuchungen an der formalen Grenze des verteilten Systementwurfs


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    1992


    Size :

    9 Seiten, 1 Bild, 15 Quellen




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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