Formal design of self-stabilizing programs

Abstract

Distributed algorithms, self-stabilizing systems in particular, are often too delicate to be argued informally. Formal proofs are much more reliable, but unfortunately are often long and complicated. Some of the complication is inherent, but some is also the result of poor notation and formalism which is not abstract enough. Improving them would make formal proofs easier to write and to understand, which will also make them less error prone. In this spirit, this paper proposes an extension of the logic UNITY with a number of new operators to model self-stabilization and a formalization of a number of useful design strategies. They should enhance the formalism offered by UNITY with better abstraction to specify and reason about self-stabilization.