Processes, Roles and Their Interactions

TL;DR

This paper proposes a unified automata-based framework for modeling processes and their interactions in networks, addressing centralization issues by treating processes and interactions as complementary and based on the same formal building blocks.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach that models processes and their interactions uniformly using finite automata, enabling better description of nondeterministic interactions and coordination.

Findings

Automata-based modeling of processes and interactions is effective.

The framework handles nondeterminism and coordination.

Application to resource management demonstrates practicality.

Abstract

Taking an interaction network oriented perspective in informatics raises the challenge to describe deterministic finite systems which take part in networks of nondeterministic interactions. The traditional approach to describe processes as stepwise executable activities which are not based on the ordinarily nondeterministic interaction shows strong centralization tendencies. As suggested in this article, viewing processes and their interactions as complementary can circumvent these centralization tendencies. The description of both, processes and their interactions is based on the same building blocks, namely finite input output automata (or transducers). Processes are viewed as finite systems that take part in multiple, ordinarily nondeterministic interactions. The interactions between processes are described as protocols. The effects of communication between processes as well as the necessary coordination of different interactions within a processes are both based on the restriction of the transition relation of product automata. The channel based outer coupling represents the causal relation between the output and the input of different systems. The coordination condition based inner coupling represents the causal relation between the input and output of a single system. All steps are illustrated with the example of a network of resource administration processes which is supposed to provide requesting user processes exclusive access to a single resource.