Contract-oriented Computing in CO2

Post date: 12-May-2012 19:48:24

Upcoming paper

Contract-oriented Computing in CO₂

M. Bartoletti, E. Tuosto and R. Zunino

Abstract. We present CO₂, a parametric calculus for contract-based computing in distributed systems. By abstracting from the actual contract language, our calculus generalises both the contracts-as-processes and contracts-as-formulae paradigms. The calculus features primitives for advertising contracts, for reaching agreements, and for querying the fulfilment of contracts. Coordination among participants happens via multi-party sessions, which are created once agreements are reached.

We present two instances of our calculus, by modelling contracts as processes in a variant of CCS, and as formulae in a logic. We formally relate the two paradigms, through an encoding from contracts-as-formulae to contracts-as-processes which ensures that the promises deducible in the logical system are exactly those reachable by its encoding as a process.

Finally, we present a coarse-grained taxonomy of possible misbehaviours in contract-oriented systems, and we illustrate them with the help of a variety of examples.

References.

M. Bartoletti, E. Tuosto, R. Zunino. Contract-oriented Computing in CO₂. In Scientific Annals of Computer Science, 22(1), 2012.