Modular Reasoning for Actor Specification Diagrams

FOR ACTOR SPECIFICATION DIAGRAMS Scott F. Smith1 and Carolyn L. Talcott2 1The Johns Hopkins University [email protected] 2Stanford University† [email protected] Abstract: Specification diagrams are a novel form of graphical notation for specifying open distributed object systems. The design goal is to define notation for specifying message-passing behavior that is expressive, intuitively understandable, and that has formal semantic underpinnings. The notation generalizes informal notations such as UML’s Sequence Diagrams and broadens their applicability to later in the design cycle. In this paper we show how it is possible to reason rigorously and modularly about specification diagrams. An Actor Theory Toolkit is used to great advantage for this purpose. INTRODUCTION