Papers on CSXMS Models

This page gives details of the publications about CSXMS models which are available.  The other aspects of these models, for which there are separate pages, are as follows.

Overview

Currently there are now several papers (or other publications, but for this papers they will all be referred to as papers) on CSXMS models (or variants of them) that are in a state where it is appropriate to include details here. Others are being worked on, but are still not complete enough to justify being made publicly available, although some of them have been released on a strictly limited basis to students who were going to do work on material contained in them.

The approach that has been taken here is simply to list the papers in chronological order, with relevant notes for each.  For each paper an abstract is available, and where an electronic version of the full text is available then there is a link to this too.  This will either be to the site for the conference or journal in which the paper was published, or for some (where the original version might be hard to get at, and I don't have to worry about copyright restrictions) the full text is available here, as an Adobe Acrobat pdf file.

In order, the titles of the papers are as follows.


Modelling Logic Programming Using a Network of Communicating Machines

This paper explained some of the early ideas that Philip Bird was exploring (under my supervision) in the work for his PhD, concerned with applying machine models.  At this stage these machines were not specifically CSXMS (indeed, at the time it was written the applications of the basic X-machine model were still in the comparatively early stages of development), but they were extended finite-state machines, and essentially the underlying idea of a parallel network of communicating machines was there.

The authors are P. R. Bird and A. J. Cowling.  The paper was published in the proceedings of the 2nd Euromicro Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Processing, pages 156 - 161.  This workshop was held in Malaga on 26th to 28th January 1994.

The abstract is available.
The full text is available from the IEEE Xplore archive, for those who have a subscription to this archive.

Communicating Stream X-Machines are no more than X-Machines

This is the original paper on the CSXMS model, which (unlike attempts in earlier papers) introduced the basic concepts of it in sufficient detail that the input-output relationship for the model could be computed.

The authors are T. Balanescu, A. J. Cowling, H. Georgescu, M. Gheorghe, M. Holcombe and C. Vertan.  The paper was published in the Journal of Universal Computer Science, Volume 5, Issue 9 (1999), which is an electronic journal.

The abstract is available.
The full text is available from the e-journal website.

A Structured Way to Use Channels for Communication in X-Machine Systems

This presented an alternative approach to the formulation of a CSXMS, in which a communications server machine was added to the basic system to allow communication features such as the Ada rendezvous to be modelled.

The authors are A. J. Cowling, H. Georgescu and C. Vertan.  The paper was published in Formal Aspects of Computing, Volume 12, Number 6 (December 2000), pages 485 - 500.

The abstract is available.
I can supply offprints of the full paper on request.

P Systems with replicated rewriting and stream X-machines

This presented an application of CSXMS models to P Systems, that is to the "membrane-structured " systems that are used for some biological models.

The authors are J. Aguado, T. Balanescu, A. J. Cowling, M. Gheorghe and F. Ipate.  The paper was published in the pre-proceedings of the Workshop on Membrane Computing which was held in Curtea d'Arges, Romania on 20-25 August, 2001, pages 7 - 18.  These pre-proceedings were edited by C. Martin-Vide and G. Paun, and published as report 17/01 of the Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics, Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona, Spain (whose page provides, amongst other things, a list of these reports, but no link to download a copy of this one).

The abstract is available.
The full paper is available from the P Systems web site (the format is not specified there, but presumably is zipped postscript).

P Systems with Replicated Rewriting and Stream X-Machines (Eilenberg Machines)

This was developed from the paper above, and in particular it reflects the proposal which was made at the workshop that the name Eilenberg machine should be adopted in place of X-machine.

For this version of the paper the authors are J. Aguado, T. Balanescu, A. J. Cowling, M. Gheorghe, M. Holcombe and F. Ipate.  The paper was published in Fundamenta Informaticae, Volume 49.1-3 (2002), pages 17 - 33.

The abstract is available.
The full text of this version is available electronically, but there do not seem to be direct links to it:  the abstract page gives more details of how to find it.

Design Models and the Complexity of the Testing Problem for Distributed Systems

This is the first paper to try to link CSXMS and DFA models, by using a DFA specification to reduce the complexity of the testing problem for systems that are modelled in terms of CSXMS.

The authors are J. Aguado and A. J. Cowling.  The paper was published in the proceedings of the Workshop on the  Semantic Foundations of Engineering Design Languages (edited by Gerald Luettgen, Michael Mendler & Florence Maraninchi), pages 119 - 137.  This workshop was held in Grenoble on 14th April 2002, as a satellite workshop to the ETAPS joint conferences.

The abstract is available.
The full text is not publically available electronically.

Foundations of the X-machine Theory for Testing

This is based on material produced by Joaquin Aguado for his PhD thesis, and it compares the different approaches that have been taken to defining the X-machine model, with a particular emphasis on the use of the model for testing systems.

The authors are J. Aguado and A. J. Cowling, and it was published as a departmental research report, under the reference CS-02-06 (2002).

The abstract is available.
The full text is available, from the department's research report archive.

Systems of Communicating X-machines for Specifying Distributed Systems

This is based on material produced by Joaquin Aguado for his PhD thesis, and compares the different approaches that have been taken to defining the CSXMS model, with a particular emphasis on its application to distributed systems.

The authors are J. Aguado and A. J. Cowling, and it was published as a departmental research report, under the reference CS-02-07 (2002).

The abstract is available.
The full text is available, from the department's research report archive.

Formal Verification of X-machine models:  Towards Formal Development of Computer-Based Systems

This is George Eleftherakis's PhD thesis, dated November 2003 and accepted by the University of Sheffield.  Its principal contribution was the development of a method for model checking X-machine specifications, as the core of an integrated lightweight method for using such specifications in the development of software.

Although the work was carried out under supervision, G. Eleftherakis is the sole author (as is the normal practice for PhD theses).

The abstract is available.
The full text is available, from the department's research thesis archive (size about 1.51MB).

An Agile Formal Development Methodology

This is based on material produced by George Eleftherakis for his PhD thesis, and describes in more detail some aspects of the integrated lightweight method that he developed for using X-machine specifications in the development of software.

The authors are G. Eleftherakis and A. J. Cowling.  The paper was published in the proceedings of the First South-East European Workshop on Formal Methods (edited by Dimitris Dranidis and Kalliope Tigka), pages 36 - 47.  These proceedings were produced  by SEERC (the South-East European Research Centre), Thessaloniki, 2004, and more details of them can be found at the SEERC page by following the links to Publications, and then SEERC Publications.  This workshop was held in Thessaloniki on 20th November 2003, as a satellite to the 1st Balkan conference in Informatics.

The abstract is available.
The full text is available, as an Adobe Acrobat pdf file (size 563kB).

Unifying Programming Paradigms: Logic programming & finite state automata

This is Philip Bird's PhD thesis, dated October 2004 and accepted by the University of Sheffield in May 2005.  (This may sound like a long time after the first paper described on this page, but Philip had been a part-time student, his day job latterly being at Northern College).  Its principal contribution was, as the title suggests, the development of a machine model for logic programming, where the machines were essentially X-machines forming a CSXMS, although the model was not defined rigorously as a variant of a CSXMS.

Although the work was carried out under supervision, P. R. Bird is the sole author (as is the normal practice for PhD theses).

The abstract is available.
The full text is available, from the department's research thesis archive (size about 1.39MB).

Conformance Testing of Distributed Systems: an X-machine based Approach

This is Joaquin Aguado's PhD thesis, dated November 2004 and accepted by the University of Sheffield.  Its principal contribution was the development of a method for testing distributed software systems, based on separate testing of individual sub-systems.

Although the work was carried out under supervision, J. Aguado is the sole author (as is the normal practice for PhD theses).

The abstract is available.
The full text is available, from the department's research thesis archive (size about 4.6MB).

A Formal Model for Test Frames

This paper applies the concepts of X-machines to the problem of defining the concept of test frames.

The author is A. J. Cowling, and it was published in the proceedings of the UK Software Testing Conference 2005 (edited by Phil McMinn), pages 83 - 98.  This conference was held in Sheffield on 5th and 6th September 2005, and the full proceedings were published as a departmental research report, under the reference CS-05-07 (2005), and are available from the department's research report archive.

The abstract is available.
The full text (ie just of this paper) is available, as an Adobe Acrobat pdf file (size 103kB).

This page created by A. J. Cowling, and last updated on 13 October 2006