Section: New Results

Programming support for Autonomic Computing

Reactive languages

Participants : Gwenaël Delaval, Lucie Muller, Eric Rutten.

Our work in reactive programming for autonomic computing systems is focused on the specification and compilation of declarative control objectives, under the form of contracts, enforced upon classical mode automata as defined in synchronous languages. The compilation involves a phase of Discrete Controller Synthesis, integrating the tool ReaX, in order to obtain an imperative executable code. The programming language Heptagon / BZR (see Section Software and Platforms) integrates our research results [5].

An ongoing topic is on abstraction methods for compilation using discrete controller synthesis (needed for example, in order to program the controllers for systems where the useful data for control can be of arbitrary types (integer, real, ...), or also for systems which are naturally distributed, and require a decentralized controller).

Recent work concerns compilation and diagnosis for discrete controller synthesis. The compilation involving a phase of controller synthesis can fail to find a solution, if the problem is overconstrained. The compiler does notify so to the programmer, but the latter would need a diagnosis in order to understand where and how to debug the program. Such diagnosis is made especially difficult by the declarative nature of the synthesis.

This was the object of the M1 TER internship of Lucie Muller [19].

Domain-specific languages

Participants : Gwenaël Delaval, Soguy Mak Kare Gueye, Eric Rutten.

Our work in Domain-specific languages (DSLs) is founded on our work in component-based programming for autonomic computing systems as examplified by e.g., Fractal . We consider essentially the problem of specifying the control of components assembly reconfiguration, with an approach based on the integration within such a component-based framework of a reactive language as in Section 7.1.1 [4]. In recent work, we proposed an extension of a classical Software Architecture Description Languages (ADL) with Ctrl-F, DSL for the specification of dynamic reconfiguration behavior in a [1]. Based on this experience, we also proposed a DSL called Ctrl-DPR [6], allowing designers to easily generate Autonomic Managers for DPR FPGA systems (see Section 7.2.3).

Ongoing work involves a generalization from our past experiences in software components, DPR FPGA, as well as IoT [8], and Cyberphysical Systems. As we observed a similarity in objects and structures (e.g., tasks, implementation versions, resources, and upper-level application layer), we are considering a more general DSL, which could be specialized towards such different target domains, and where the compilation towards reactive models could be studied and improved, especially considering the features of Section 7.1.1. This direction will also lead us to study the definition of software architecture patterns for multiple loops Autonomic Managers, particularly hierarchical, with lower layers autonomy alleviating management burden from the upper layers as in Section 7.2.