Development of class-level and instance-level design models for distributed-object software

Leading the pack of new-generation software applications are distributed applications, which are well suited to designs based on distributed objects. To help cope with the increased complexity of such systems, developers can benefit from formal methods and associated tools that support specification and analysis. This paper presents a Petri net motivated approach for modeling distributed-object software. Both class-level and instance-level models are defined, with the goal of supporting scalable designs. Model analysis, with state space reduction due to symmetry among object instances, is also considered. A case-study is presented to illustrate the specific modeling and analysis features.