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Classes and Inheritance in Actor-Oriented Design
Edward A. Lee, Xiaojun Liu, Stephen Neuendorffer

Citation
Edward A. Lee, Xiaojun Liu, Stephen Neuendorffer. "Classes and Inheritance in Actor-Oriented Design". ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS), 8(4):29-1, July 2009.

Abstract
Actor-oriented components emphasize concurrency and temporal semantics and are used for modeling and designing embedded software and hardware. Actors interact with one another through ports via a messaging schema that can follow any of several concurrent semantics. Domain-specific actor-oriented languages and frameworks are common (Simulink, LabVIEW, SystemC, etc.). However, they lack many modularity and abstraction mechanisms that programmers have become accustomed to in object-oriented components, such as classes, inheritance, interfaces, and polymorphism, except as inherited from the host language. This paper shows a form that such mechanisms can take in actor-oriented components, gives a formal structure, and describes a prototype implementation. The mechanisms support actor-oriented class definitions, subclassing, inheritance, and overriding. The formal structure imposes structural constraints on a model (mainly the "derivation invariant") that lead to a policy to govern inheritance. In particular, the structural constraints permit a disciplined form of multiple inheritance with unambiguous inheritance and overriding behavior. The policy is based formally on a generalized ultrametric space with some remarkable properties. In this space, inheritance is favored when actors are "closer" (in the generalized ultrametric), and we show that when inheritance can occur from multiple sources, one source is always unambiguously closer than the other.

Electronic downloads

Citation formats  
  • HTML
    Edward A. Lee, Xiaojun Liu, Stephen Neuendorffer. <a
    href="http://chess.eecs.berkeley.edu/pubs/429.html"
    >Classes and Inheritance in Actor-Oriented
    Design</a>, <i>ACM Transactions on Embedded
    Computing Systems (TECS)</i>, 8(4):29-1, July 2009.
  • Plain text
    Edward A. Lee, Xiaojun Liu, Stephen Neuendorffer.
    "Classes and Inheritance in Actor-Oriented
    Design". <i>ACM Transactions on Embedded
    Computing Systems (TECS)</i>, 8(4):29-1, July 2009.
  • BibTeX
    @article{LeeLiuNeuendorffer09_ClassesInheritanceInActorOrientedDesign,
        author = {Edward A. Lee and Xiaojun Liu and Stephen
                  Neuendorffer},
        title = {Classes and Inheritance in Actor-Oriented Design},
        journal = {ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems
                  (TECS)},
        volume = {8},
        number = {4},
        pages = {29:1--29:26},
        month = {July},
        year = {2009},
        abstract = {Actor-oriented components emphasize concurrency
                  and temporal semantics and are used for modeling
                  and designing embedded software and hardware.
                  Actors interact with one another through ports via
                  a messaging schema that can follow any of several
                  concurrent semantics. Domain-specific
                  actor-oriented languages and frameworks are common
                  (Simulink, LabVIEW, SystemC, etc.). However, they
                  lack many modularity and abstraction mechanisms
                  that programmers have become accustomed to in
                  object-oriented components, such as classes,
                  inheritance, interfaces, and polymorphism, except
                  as inherited from the host language. This paper
                  shows a form that such mechanisms can take in
                  actor-oriented components, gives a formal
                  structure, and describes a prototype
                  implementation. The mechanisms support
                  actor-oriented class definitions, subclassing,
                  inheritance, and overriding. The formal structure
                  imposes structural constraints on a model (mainly
                  the "derivation invariant") that lead to a policy
                  to govern inheritance. In particular, the
                  structural constraints permit a disciplined form
                  of multiple inheritance with unambiguous
                  inheritance and overriding behavior. The policy is
                  based formally on a generalized ultrametric space
                  with some remarkable properties. In this space,
                  inheritance is favored when actors are "closer"
                  (in the generalized ultrametric), and we show that
                  when inheritance can occur from multiple sources,
                  one source is always unambiguously closer than the
                  other.},
        URL = {http://chess.eecs.berkeley.edu/pubs/429.html}
    }
    

Posted by Christopher Brooks on 6 Jun 2008.
Groups: ptolemy
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