Deriving protocol specifications from service specifications including parameters

Abstract

The service specification concept has acquired an increasing level of recognition by protocol designers. This architectural concept influences the methodology applied to service and protocol definition. Since the protocol is seen as the logical implementation of the service, one can ask whether it is possible to formally derive the specification of a protocol providing a given service. This paper addresses this question and presents an algorithm for deriving a protocol specification from a given service specification. It is assumed that services are described by expressions, where names identifying both service primitives and previously defined services are composed using operators for sequence, parallelism and alternative. Services and service primitives may have input and output parameters. Composition of services from predefined services and service primitives is also permitted. The expression defining the service is the basis for the protocol derivation process. The algorithm presented fully automates the derivation process. Future work will focus on the optimization of traffic between protocol entities and on applications.