Knowledge-based construction of distributed constrained systems

The problem of deriving distributed implementations from global specifications has been extensively studied for a number of application domains. We explore it here from the knowledge perspective: A process may decide to take a local action when it has enough knowledge to do so. Such knowledge may be acquired by communication through primitives available on the platform or by static analysis. In this paper, we want to combine control and distribution, that is, we need to impose some global control constraint on a system executed in a distributed fashion. To reach that goal, we compare two approaches: either build a centralized controlled system, distribute its controller and then implement this controlled system on a distributed platform; or alternatively, directly enforce the control constraint while implementing the distributed system on the platform. We show how to achieve a solution following the second approach and explain why this is a pragmatic and more efficient strategy than the other, previously proposed one.