Yang Zhao and Yuhong Xiong and Edward A. Lee and Xiaojun Liu and Lizhi C. Zhong

EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley

Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2007-21

January 30, 2007

http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2007/EECS-2007-21.pdf

Ptolemy II is a component-based design and modeling environment. It has a polymorphic type system that supports both base types and structured types, such as arrays, records and unions. This paper presents the extensions to the base type system that support structured types. In the base type system, all the types are organized into a type lattice, and type constraints in the form of inequalities can be solved efficiently over the lattice. We take a hierarchical and granular approach to add structured types to the lattice, and extend the format of inequality constraints to allow arbitrary nesting of structured types. We also analyze the convergence of the constraint solving algorithm on an infinite lattice after structured types are added. To show the application of structured types, we present two Ptolemy II models that have direct real-world background. The first one describes the workflow of a charity organization, and the second one implements part of the IEEE 802.11 specifications. These models make extensive use of record and union types to represent structured information.

---

BibTeX citation:

@techreport{Zhao:EECS-2007-21,
    Author= {Zhao, Yang and Xiong, Yuhong and Lee, Edward A. and Liu, Xiaojun and Zhong, Lizhi C.},
    Title= {The Design and Application of Structured Types in Ptolemy II},
    Year= {2007},
    Month= {Jan},
    Url= {http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2007/EECS-2007-21.html},
    Number= {UCB/EECS-2007-21},
    Note= {Accepted for publication in the Journal of Intelligent Systems.},
    Abstract= {Ptolemy II is a component-based design and modeling
environment. It has a polymorphic type system that supports
both base types and structured types, such as arrays, records
and unions. This paper presents the extensions to the base type
system that support structured types. In the base type system, all
the types are organized into a type lattice, and type constraints
in the form of inequalities can be solved efficiently over the
lattice. We take a hierarchical and granular approach to add
structured types to the lattice, and extend the format of inequality
constraints to allow arbitrary nesting of structured types. We
also analyze the convergence of the constraint solving algorithm
on an infinite lattice after structured types are added. To show
the application of structured types, we present two Ptolemy II
models that have direct real-world background. The first one
describes the workflow of a charity organization, and the second
one implements part of the IEEE 802.11 specifications. These
models make extensive use of record and union types to represent
structured information.},
}

EndNote citation:

%0 Report
%A Zhao, Yang 
%A Xiong, Yuhong 
%A Lee, Edward A. 
%A Liu, Xiaojun 
%A Zhong, Lizhi C. 
%T The Design and Application of Structured Types in Ptolemy II
%I EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley
%D 2007
%8 January 30
%@ UCB/EECS-2007-21
%U http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2007/EECS-2007-21.html
%F Zhao:EECS-2007-21