Programming Research Group Technical Monograph PRG-50

Roger Gimson and Carroll Morgan

July 1985, 85 pages, ISBN 0-902928-31-7

Work on the Distributed Computing Software Project began at Oxford University Programming Research Group in 1982. The goal of the project is to construct and publish the specification of a loosely-coupled distributed operating system, based on the model of autonomous clients having access to a number of shared services. A fundamental objective of the project is to make use of mathematical techniques of program specification to assist the design, development and presentation of distributed system services.

In this monograph we present some of the results of the first stage of the project. In the first chapter we include a paper which gives an overview of the use of mathematics in system design, and its application to the specification of an example file service. It illustrates how abstraction from details of implementation can allow the exploration of novel system designs. The following chapters contain the user documentation for some of the services which have been implemented to date. They illustrate how it has been possible to make use of mathematical techniques to provide precise manuals for users of the services.