Specifying concurrent systems with TSL

Abstract

The Task Sequencing Language (TSL), which lets programmers specify constraints on the behavior of concurrent programs, is described. The constraints, specified by high-level annotations to Ada programs, are monitored at runtime; when a violation is detected, control is returned to the user, along with information about the nature of the violation. It is argued that such a tool is a necessary crutch for human reasoning capabilities when dealing with the complexities of concurrent process interaction. The first large-scale application of TSL, the specification and validation of a distributed tasking supervisor for Ada, is described.