Sequence Specification for Concurrent Object-Oriented Applications

Modeling synchronization among threads is important for the specification, design, and testing of concurrent object-oriented applications such as those written in Java. This paper proposes Synchronized Method Sequence Specification (SMtSS), a mechanism for specifying synchronization requirements among multiple threads sharing a common object. SMtSS identifies two kinds of synchronization among the sharing threads, internal and external ones, and explicitly specifies the synchronization scenarios. SMtSS also proposes notations for specifying different data integrity constraints on method executions. This paper also proposes specification-slicing techniques to obtain specific behavior of certain threads from SMtSS specifications. Finally, this paper discusses how SMtSS specifications can be useful in the design and testing of concurrent object-oriented applications in Java.