Compositional message sequence charts

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-1-2003

Abstract

A message sequence chart (MSC) is a standard notation for describing the interaction between communicating objects. It is popular among the designers of communication protocols. MSCs enjoy both a visual and a textual representation. High-level MSCs (HMSCs) allow specifying infinite scenarios and different choices. Specifically, an HMSC consists of a graph, where each node is a finite MSC with matched send and receive events, and vice versa. In this paper we demonstrate a weakness of HMSCs, which disallows one to model certain interactions. We will show, by means of an example, that some simple finite state communication protocol cannot be represented using HMSCs. We then propose an extension to the MSC standard which allows HMSC nodes to include unmatched messages. The corresponding graph notation will be called HCMSC, which stands for high-level Compositional message sequence charts. With the extended framework, we provide an algorithm for automatically constructing an MSC representation for finite state asynchronous message passing protocols. © 2002 Springer-Verlag.

Identifier

84896693456 (Scopus)

Publication Title

International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer

External Full Text Location

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-002-0085-2

e-ISSN

14332787

ISSN

14332779

First Page

78

Last Page

89

Issue

1

Volume

5

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