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

• http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/publications/papers/07/classesandInheritance/index.htm
• http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1550987.1550992

• 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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