The Hamlet Application Design Language: introductory definition report

This report provides an introduction to the definition of the Hamlet Application Design Language (ADL). ADL is a graphical-based language and notation supporting the design of parallel real-time applications. Designs expressed in ADL are based on a model of processes that communicate by message-passing. Communication can either be synchronous or asynchronous, and orthogonally, may be subject to blocking, delaying, or nonblocking timing constraints. The language has been devised in such a way that automated (skeletal) code generation can be supported. To this aim, structural aspects are expressed in a notation somewhat similar to data-flow diagrams, whereas behavioral aspects are expressed as state-transition machines following a syntax similar to that of SDL. Exploitation of parallelism is obtained by annotating a design with process replication specifications.