Encoding Nets-Within-Nets in Maude

Self-adaptive systems gain growing attention to raise service quality and reduce development costs. But on the other hand, self-adaptation is a source of complexity which needs suitable methodologies/models/tools supporting the whole life cycle. A particularly challenging point is the dynamic reconfiguration of a system. This feature, typical of modern distributed systems, has led to the definition of ad-hoc formalisms, e.g. the pi-calculus or nets-within-nets, which essentially build on top of the concept of a changing system structure. But even with syntactic sugar, these formalisms differ enough from the “daily” programming languages. This work aims to bridge the gap between the theory and the practice of dynamically-reconfigurable systems. Here, we introduce an abstract machine for the nets-within-nets approach. Our encoding is in the well-known Maude language, whose rewriting logic semantics ensures the mathematical soundness needed for analysis and an intuitive operational perspective