This book presents a practical theory of reactive systems. The theory supports incremental development of operational, object-oriented models in steps that preserve already established properties. Models are given in an action-oriented language, and their modularity relates to aspects in aspect-oriented programming. The emphasis is on theoretical understanding of reactive behaviors and on using horizontal modularity to manage their complexity. Special chapters are devoted to the applicability of the theory to distributed and real-time systems. Incremental specification is illustrated in the book by a number of examples of varying size and complexity.
Reino Kurki-Suonio has a PhD in mathematics from the University of Helsinki. He entered the field of computing in 1960. In 1965 he moved from industry to the University of Tampere to start the first computer science department in Finland. In 1980 he was invited to develop education in information technology at Tampere University of Technology, where he currently serves as professor emeritus at the Institute of Software Systems. During his career he has held visiting positions at Carnegie Mellon and Stanford Universities, and has served as the Chair of IFIP Technical Committee on Software, Theory and Practice.