期刊名称：International Journal of Software Engineering and Its Applications
印刷版ISSN：1738-9984
出版年度：2012
卷号：6
期号：4
出版社：SERSC
摘要：In this paper, we have studied the notion of atomicity in message-passing distributed pro- grams. Thedifferencebetweenthenotionofatomicityinsharedmemoryprogramsandmessage- passingprogramshasbeendiscussedindetail. Duetothenatureofcommunicationinmessage- passing programs, the atomicity requirement in shared memory programs (serializability) does not guarantee the same level of atomicity in message-passing programs. We have referred to the atomicity level guaranteed by the serializability requirement in message-passing programs as the weak atomicity. We have defined the requirements that guarantee a level of atomicity in message-passing programs similar to that in shared memory programs. We have referred to it as the strong atomicity requirement. Both of weak and strong atomicity have been formally defined. The notion of atomicity can be employed to significantly reduce the state space to be consid- ered in verification. Moreover, atomicity violations in a run typically indicate the presence of program bugs. Consequently, the concepts presented in this paper can be exploited to reduce the cost of the verification of message-passing distributed programs.
关键词：Distributed programs; Atomicity; Verification; State space reduction; Testing;Debugging.
