Carla: A Rule Language for Specifying Communications Architectures

Due to the unique requirements of a series of projects to specify communications architectures using graphical representations (Cara and MFD), we have developed the communications-oriented rule-based language Carla (Cara Rule Language), which provides an executable specification of the architecture being developed. Carla is designed to provide the ability to specify and simulate high-level, possibly incomplete, specifications of communications architectures, and to allow the developer to refine the specification through the addition of behavior-describing rules. Carla is also well-suited to creating black-box specifications of any system whose behavior depends on input/output history. We describe the features of the language, discuss various design issues, and provide examples of various communications protocols specified in Carla.

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