Automated dismemberment of JSD process specifications

✍ Scribed by Andrew Bass; Bryan Ratcliff

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1994
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 744 KB
• Volume: 36
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0950-5849
• DOI: 10.1016/0950-5849(94)90029-9

✦ Synopsis

In the initial phase of Jackson System Development (JSD), behaviour in the real world is modelled using long-running processes. As direct implementation of such processes can be impractical, a transformational approach called dismemberment is sometimes applied to allow the separate scheduling of portions of a process's text. A lack of automatic support has, however, made the technique difficult to use, and automation itself has not proved easy. Several writers have noted the relationship between Jackson structure diagrams and finite automata.

This paper describes in detail the transformation of JSD process specifications into deterministic finite automata, using 'subset construction', a method adapted from compiler theory. The resulting representations can be used to generate dismembered implementation routines. The algorithms have been implemented within an experimental version of the PRESTIGE JSD Workbench, a CASE tool for the JSD implementer.