Protocol visualization using LOTOS multi-rendezvous mechanism

In this paper, we propose a method for visualizing LOTOS specifications using multi-rendezvous mechanism. For visualization, we have extended LOTOS by introducing some primitive animation events. Using the extended LOTOS, we describe a visualization scenario for events where we would like to visualize their execution. Then, we execute the original specification and its visualization scenario in parallel under LOTOS multi-rendezvous mechanism so that the corresponding animation is activated when each event is executed. The pair of the original specification and its visualization scenario is converted into the multi-threaded object code using our LOTOS compiler. In our visualization method we can specify the visualization scenario without modifying the original specification, and we can derive an object code which animates the original specification in real time. We have tried to visualize a LOTOS specification of "Dijkstra's dining philosophers", and evaluated the usefulness of our approach.