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Message-ID: <001b01c15416$5a3522d0$25301497@ADINA>
From: "Gianugo Rabellino" <gianugo@rabellino.it>
To: <cocoon-dev@xml.apache.org>
References: <3BC30E19.AE62D806@levigo.de> <3BC453D2.8237DE1C@apache.org>
 <3BC5CF38.F49B46EE@levigo.de> <3BC709CF.55A42732@apache.org>
Subject: Re: [RT] Flowmaps revisited
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2001 20:39:10 +0200
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Ciao,

> > > This will finally give a "global" view of what a web application
does
> > > and how it does it in all places both in the publishing of each
state
> >
> > Which, if sticking to my notation, would be "... each _visible_
state...".

this is really great stuff, and I'm eager to put up a comprehensive
reply with my ideas about it.

Meanwhile, and just to add some FFT, I think that some previous study on
finite state machines might help the discussion. I found really
valuable, while oriented specifically to concurrency issue, the
Magee&Kramer book (Concurrency. state models & Java programs) which uses
heavily the FSP (Finite State Process) formalism together with the LTS
(Labeled Transition System) modeling. FSP is a quite powerful ASCII
notation  that can be easily parsed in order to produce a state model:
it defines quite cleary states, transitions and actions that can take
place in an arbitrary flow. It might seem a bit ankward in the
beginning, but if you get used it becomes quite natural and expressful.

You can read more about FSP at
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~jnm/LTSdocumention/FSP-notation.html, where
resources for LTS can be found too at the site home page
(http://www-dse.doc.ic.ac.uk/concurrency/).  Tthere is also a Java
tool - the LTS Analyzer ot LTSA - which is pretty cool in animating the
process flow designed in FSP.

I still need to study it a bit more but, for what I have seen until now,
it seems to me a powerful and well established notation in the CS world:
how about exploring the opportunity to use this meta language (and maybe
some of the available tools) to further carry on this (and possibly
others) thread? We might discover that FSP expresses quite well our
needs and maybe come up with the Flowmap being expressed as an "XMLized"
FSP language.

Just my 0.02 euro. :)

Ciao,

--
Gianugo Rabellino


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