Composing specifications for coordination

We introduce Oikos_adtl, a specification language for distributed systems based on asynchronous communication via remote writings. The language is designed to support the composition of specifications. It allows expressing the global properties of a system in terms of the local properties of the components and of coordination patterns. Oikos_adtl is based on an asynchronous, distributed, temporal logic, which extends Unity to deal with components and events. We present the specification language and its semantics, introduce a number of compositionality theorems, and discuss some coordination patterns. A fragment of a standard case study is used to validate pragmatically the approach, with respect to expressiveness and work-ability.