Jackson System Development Analysed in Process Algebra

摘要

Jackson system development (JSD) is one of the few system development methods to account for the dynamics of the universe of discourse (UoD) of a database. The report uses the algebraic theory of parallel communicating processes developed by Bergstra & Klop to analyze the constructs used in JSD to model UoD dynamics. Chapter 1 extends the ABSURD formalism of Wieringa (1987a) with events as functions which map objects to objects with the same identity but possibly with a different state, and chapter 2 summarizes the parts of process algebra which will be used in the report. Process algebra has been applied only to systems with a small number of objects, whereas databases typically represent large numbers of objects. Chapter 3 gives a detailed overview of the problems of how to specify parallel execution of processes by a large number of objects. Chapter 5 applies this to the three major examples given by Jackson to illustrate JSD.