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Knowledge-based construction of distributed constrained systems

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Abstract

The problem of deriving distributed implementations from global specifications has been extensively studied for a number of application domains. We explore it here from the knowledge perspective: A process may decide to take a local action when it has enough knowledge to do so. Such knowledge may be acquired by communication through primitives available on the platform or by static analysis. In this paper, we want to combine control and distribution, that is, we need to impose some global control constraint on a system executed in a distributed fashion. To reach that goal, we compare two approaches: either build a centralized controlled system, distribute its controller and then implement this controlled system on a distributed platform; or alternatively, directly enforce the control constraint while implementing the distributed system on the platform. We show how to achieve a solution following the second approach and explain why this is a pragmatic and more efficient strategy than the other, previously proposed one.

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Notes

  1. Alternatively, we could allow processes with more than one token, but to keep the framework simple, we restrict ourselves to simple sequential processes.

  2. As already discussed, a (folded) transition of \(N\) may appear several times in \(\sigma \) but each occurrence can be mapped to a different \(t\in T^u\) so that a local transition \(t_\pi \) is part of only one \(t\) occurring in \(\sigma \).

  3. Remember that there is at most one transition of \(T(t_j)\) in a trace.

  4. Note that for transitions that are not symmetric, e.g., because of a data flow, one may add precedence constraints between local transitions of the same global transition—but such precedence relations are not derived from the Petri net.

  5. This is true because \(\varPsi \) is a safety constraint; one may, however, lose progress.

  6. Note that the problem statement as given by the centralized controller is completely symmetric; in case of circular conflicts—in which the size of the conflict set may not be reduced by a set of local arbitrations—some asymmetry must be introduced statically (for example, using priorities) to achieve conflict resolution, or the protocol must rely on some statistical decision (such as, for example, in Ethernet).

  7. This makes clear that for a different platform and a different high level specification paradigm, the response could be different. Our aim here is to propose criteria for choosing the best approach in any given setting.

  8. Note that this does not hold if \({ selected}_t\) is also used for guaranteeing fairness properties.

  9. This is the knowledge exploited in [22].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. VERIMAG/CNRS, Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France

    Susanne Graf

  2. INRIA Rhône-Alpes, Grenoble, France

    Sophie Quinton

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  1. Susanne Graf
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  2. Sophie Quinton
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Correspondence to Susanne Graf.

Additional information

Communicated by Prof. Einar Broch Johnsen and Luigia Petre.

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Graf, S., Quinton, S. Knowledge-based construction of distributed constrained systems. Softw Syst Model 15, 1163–1180 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-014-0451-z

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