Abstract
In this paper the development of reactive software is transformed into a control problem, and the supervisory control theory for discrete event dynamic systems is suggested to solve this control problem. The operating environment under consideration is viewed as a controlled plant, the software under development as the corresponding controller, and the software requirements as the corresponding control objective. This idea leads to a constructive approach of software design, which ensures properties requireda priori of the software under development. In this way the validation of the software under development is reduced to the validation of properties independent of implementation process. We reveal the inconsistence in using the concept of reachability to specify software requirements and clarify six different definitions of reachability. Two different definitions of invariance for specifying software requirements are also clarified. We then show how to synthesize the required controller or obtain software design solutions if the underlying software requirements are specified by several new combinations of reachability and invariance. The topic of this paper falls into the scope of software cybernetics that explores the interplay between software and control.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Harel, D., Pnueli, A., On the development of reactive systems, Logics and Models of Concurrent Systems (ed. Apt, K.R.), NATO ASI series, Vol. F-13, 1985, 477–498.
Harel, D., Politi, M., Modeling Reactive Systems With Statecharts: The STATEMATE Approach, New York: MCGraw-Hill, 1998.
Alur, R., Henzinger, T. A., A really temporal logic, Proceedings of the 30th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, New York: IEEE Computer Society Press, 1989, 164–169.
Benveniste, A., Berry, G., The synchronous approach to reactive and real-time systems, Proceedings of the IEEE, 1991, 79(9): 1270–1282.
Barcio, B. T., Ramaswamy, S., BarBer, K. S. et al., An object-oriented modeling and simulation environment for reactive systems development, International Journal of Flexible Manufacturing Systems, 1997, 9(1): 51–80.
Harel, D., From play-in scenarios to code: An achievable dream, IEEE Computer, 2001, 34(1): 53–60.
Bjørner, N., Browne, A., Colón, M. et al., Verifying temporal properties of reactive systems: A STeP tutorial, Formal Methods in System Design, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000, 16(3): 227–270.
Marchand, H., Samman, M., Incremental design of a power transformer station controller synthesis methodology, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2000, 26(8): 729–741.
Ramadge, P. J., Wonham, W. M., Supervisory control of a class of discrete event processes, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, 1987, 25(1): 206–230.
Ramadge, P. J., Wonham, W. M., The control of discrete event systems, Proceedings of the IEEE, 1989, 77(1): 81–98.
Le Borgne, M., Benveniste, A., Le Guernic, P., Polynomial ideal theoretic methods in discrete events and hybrid dynamical systems, Proceedings of the 28th Conference on Decision and Control, IEEE Control Systems Society, 1989, 3(3): 2695–2700.
Le Borgne, M., Benveniste, A., Le Guernic, P., Dynamical systems over Galois fields and DEDS control problems, Proceedings of the 30th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Brighton, England, December 1991, 1505–1510.
Dutertre, B., Le Borgne, M., Control of polynomial dynamic systems: An example, Research Report 798, France: IRISA, Jan., 1994.
Marchand, H., Le Borgne, M., The supervisory control problem of discrete event systems using polynomial methods, Research Report 1271, France: IRISA, Oct., 1999.
Benveniste, A., Bournai, P., Gautier, T. et al., The signal declarative synchronous language: Controller synthesis & systems/architecture design, Proceedings of the 40th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Orlando, Florida USA, December 2001, 3284–3289.
Cai, K.Y., Optimal software testing and adaptive software testing in the context of software cybernetics, Information and Software Technology, 2002, 44: 841–855.
Cai, K.Y., Optimal stopping of multi-project software testing in the context of software cybernetics, Science in China, Ser. F, 2003, 46(5): 335–354.
Cai, K. Y., Chen, T. Y., Tse, T. H., Towards research on software cybernetics, Proceedings of the 7th IEEE International Symposium on High-Assurance Systems Engineering, HASE 2002, 240–241.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wang, X., Li, Y. & Cai, K. On the polynomial dynamic system approach to software development. Sci China Ser F 47, 437–457 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02901657
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02901657