Reo Connector Animation

In this talk we present Connector Animation---a framework which combines Connector Colouring semantics and the visual syntax of Reo connectors to define Animation Description. The Animation Description is a formal abstract representation for both the structure and the behaviour of Reo connectors suitable to be animated using standard animation tools. The Connector Animation framework allows to compositionally map the conceptual and structural aspects---synchrony, exclusion, buffers, data-flow, replication of data, data discrimination---inherent to Reo connector into animation descriptions. The compositional construction of animations in Connector Animation allows to exploit the modular structure of Reo connectors and allows to elegantly integrate the animations into support tools for simulation, verification and generation of code for Reo connectors. The resulting animations prove to be an important asset for Reo connector developers making their task more reliable, simpler and less error prone. We have implemented a prototype of Connector Animation in Haskell and used Flash to animate the generated animation descriptions for several Reo connectors. The resulting animations are gathered on-line here.  

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