Emile: The EventML Explorer

The protocols needed to coordinate the activities of distributed components, such as consensus algorithms, are notoriously difficult to design, implement, and verify. Abstraction is the only way to gain intellectual control over this complex problem; so ATC-NY and Cornell University have developed Event Logic, a high-level model for describing and reasoning about distributed systems, and EventML, a high-level functional language for implementing distributed protocols by ¿programming with events.¿ To integrate these conceptual tools with standard processes of system development ATC-NY will develop ¿mile, a software tool providing: a semantic interface to EventML that translates assertions about properties of EventML programs into logical forms to which powerful existing analysis tools can be applied, along with a ¿logical manager¿ that can direct analyses involving the interaction of these tools. We will demonstrate ¿mile by using it to verify the key properties of EventML source code for standard consensus algorithms, such as Paxos.

¿mile supports the development of critical protocols that underlie highly reliable distributed systems (whether systems are ¿naturally¿ distributed, or replicated for fault tolerance)¿for example, air traffic control.

¿mile supports the development of critical protocols that underlie highly reliable distributed systems (whether systems are ¿naturally¿ distributed, or replicated for fault tolerance)¿for example, the New York Stock Exchange, the AEGIS combat system, Google¿s Chubby service (on which Google File System and Google Analytics rely).

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