A formal framework for middleware behavioural specification

Abstract

The number of open specifications of middleware systems and middleware services is increasing. Despite their complexity, they are traditionally described through APIs (the operation signatures) and informal prose (the behaviour). This fact often leads to ambiguities, whilst making difficult a better understanding of what is actually described. This paper presents a formal framework, specified in LOTOS (Language Of Temporal Ordering Specification), for the specification of middleware systems. The framework consists of a set of basic/common middleware components and some guidelines on how to compose them. The components of the framework facilitate the formal specification of different middleware systems. In order to illustrate how the framework may be used, it is adopted to specify procedural (synchronous) and message-oriented (asynchronous) middleware systems.