Modeling and Analyzing Reaction Systems in Maude

Reaction Systems (RSs) are a successful computational framework for modeling systems inspired by biochemistry. An RS defines a set of rules (reactions) over a finite set of entities (e.g., molecules, proteins, genes, etc.). A computation in this system is performed by rewriting a finite set of entities (a computation state) using all the enabled reactions in the RS, thereby producing a new set of entities (a new computation state). The number of entities in the reactions and in the computation states can be large, making the analysis of RS behavior difficult without a proper automated support. In this paper, we use the Maude language—a programming language based on rewriting logic—to define a formal executable semantics for RSs, which can be used to precisely simulate the system behavior as well as to perform reachability analysis over the system computation space. Then, by enriching the proposed semantics, we formalize a forward slicer algorithm for RSs that allows us to observe the evolution of the system on both the initial input and a fragment of it (the slicing criterion), thus facilitating the detection of forward causality and influence relations due to the absence/presence of some entities in the slicing criterion. The pursued approach is illustrated by a biological reaction system that models a gene regulation network for controlling the process of differentiation of T helper lymphocytes

A Constraint-based Language for Multiparty Interactions.

Abstract Multiparty interactions are common place in today's distributed systems. An agent usually communicates, in a single session, with other agents to accomplish a given task. Take for instance an online transaction including the vendor, the client, the credit card system and the bank. When specifying this kind of system, we probably observe a single transaction including several (binary) communications leading to changes in the state of all the involved agents. Multiway synchronization process calculi, that move from a binary to a multiparty synchronization discipline, have been proposed to formally study the behavior of those systems. However, adopting models such as Bodei, Brodo, and Bruni's Core Network Algebra (CNA), where the number of participants in an interaction is not fixed a priori, leads to an exponential blow-up in the number of states/behaviors that can be observed from the system. In this paper we explore mechanisms to tackle this problem. We extend CNA with constraints that declaratively allow the modeler to restrict the interaction that should actually happen. Our extended process algebra, called CCNA, finds application in balancing the interactions in a concurrent system, leading to a simple, deadlock-free and fair solution for the Dinning Philosopher problem. Our definition of constraints is general enough and it offers the possibility of accumulating costs in a multiparty negotiation. Hence, only computations respecting the thresholds imposed by the modeler are observed. We use this machinery to neatly model a Service Level Agreement protocol. We develop the theory of CCNA including its operational semantics and a behavioral equivalence that we prove to be a congruence. We also propose a prototypical implementation that allows us to verify, automatically, some of the systems explored in the paper

A Formal Approach to Open Multiparty Interactions

We present a process algebra aimed at describing interactions that are multiparty, i.e. that may involve more than two processes and that are open, i.e. the number of the processes they involve is not fixed or known a priori. Here we focus on the theory of a core version of a process calculus, without message passing, called Core Network Algebra (CNA). In CNA communication actions are given not in terms of channels but in terms of chains of links that record the source and the target ends of each hop of interactions. The operational semantics of our calculus mildly extends the one of CCS. The abstract semantics is given in the style of bisimulation but requires some ingenuity. Remarkably, the abstract semantics is a congruence for all operators of CNA and also with respect to substitutions, which is not the case for strong bisimilarity in CCS. As a motivating and running example, we illustrate the model of a simple software defined network infrastructure.Comment: 62 page