Abstract:

The New Work Item on the extensions of LOTOS has established a list of desirable features that are candidates for incorporation in the language, and a list of requirements that E-LOTOS should aim to fulfil. One of these requirements is the ability of the language to describe concepts related to the Open Distributed Processing (ODP) framework. LOTOS is known not to address properly some of the modelling problems raised by modern distributed systems. One major issue is to describe the dynamic reconfiguration of components and the changing communication patterns that characterise ODP. The present contribution is a first attemp towards the introduction of mobility in LOTOS. It is aimed at enhancing the language while preserving its main advantages as a modular and concise specification technique. It draws upon research done in the area of mobile process algebras in general and upon Milner's pi-calculus in particular. The present text is not yet a finalised answer but is aimed at opening the technical discussion on the issue of mobility. It presents a Synchronous Mobile Calculus (SMC) a calculus which exhibits features common to LOTOS and the p-calculus.