Action Refinement - An Application of Process Theory on Object-Oriented Specification

TitleAction Refinement - An Application of Process Theory on Object-Oriented Specification
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication1995
Publicno
AuthorsHuhn, M., H. Wehrheim, and G. Denker
Date PublishedNovember
PublisherUniversität Hildesheim
Abstract

In hierarchical system design, refinement allows to incrementally increase the level of detail in the system description. Several notions of refinement have been investigated in process theory and in object-oriented frameworks. From a process algebraic viewpoint, an object as the basic unit of structure and control can be understood as a process. Then \em action reification - the replacement of actions by transactions in object-oriented specification - corresponds to \em action refinement in process algebra where actions are replaced by process terms. Questions of distributed control, synchronisation, and serialisability translate naturally from the object-oriented framework into process theory and vice versa.