A survey of Alvis communication modes

Concurrent systems appear natural and intuitive solution for many real IT problems. However, designing a more complex concurrent system is a difficult task. The main problem is that for systems that have more than several subsystems it becomes difficult to control their properties at the design stage. Applications of formal methods in the development process may remarkable reduce the problem. An important issue is to choose a suitable formal modelling language, that supports the required methods of communication between subsystems. The paper provides a survey of communication modes introduced to the Alvis modelling language and discusses how the communication modes may be used while modelling concurrent systems.