computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includin ...

, Constraint automata are a formalism to describe the behavior and possible data flow in coordination models. It was introduced by Arbab et al."Effective Modeling of Software Architectural Assemblies Using Constraint Automata"
by Nikunj R. Mehta, Marjan Sirjani, and Farhad Arbab. CWI Technical Report SEN-R0309, October 22, 2003. as a variation of

finite automata A finite-state machine (FSM) or finite-state automaton (FSA, plural: ''automata''), finite automaton, or simply a state machine, is a mathematical model of computation. It is an abstract machine that can be in exactly one of a finite number o ...

for

model checking In computer science, model checking or property checking is a method for checking whether a finite-state model of a system meets a given specification (also known as correctness). This is typically associated with hardware or software system ...

Reo connector circuits. Constraint automata can be considered generalizations of

probabilistic automata In mathematics and computer science, the probabilistic automaton (PA) is a generalization of the nondeterministic finite automaton; it includes the probability of a given transition into the transition function, turning it into a transition matr ...

, in which data constraints, instead of probabilities, label state transitions and influence their firing.

References

{{reflist Automata (computation)

See also

References