TABLE OF CONTENTS Part I introduces the design concepts used in all chapters.
Chapter 1. I define reactive systems as systems that, when switched on, are able to create desirable effects in their environment by responding to events.
Chapter 2. The environment is structured into subject and connection domains. The subject domain is the part of the world that the system communicates about; a connection domain is a part of the world that the system communicates with. Subject and connection domains may overlap.
Chapter 3. I analyze the structure of the chain of events from an external event to a system stimulus and from the system response to the desired effect in the environment. Examples are given of environment assumptions that we need in order to argue that the stimulus-response behavior of the system will indeed lead to the desired emergent behavior of the composite system.
Chapter 4. I distinguish external system properties from system decomposition and partitions system properties into functional properties, quality properties, and other properties. Functional properties are partitioned into desired services, behavior, and communication of the system. This classification of properties provides the primary structuring principle of the book.
This chapter gives examples of reactive systems and contrasts them to transformational systems, listing the characteristics that divide reactive systems from transformational systems. The chapter also lists the four case studies that appear in many examples and describes the three additional case...
