protokollina

Protokollina is a hypothetical language for describing communication protocols. The name blends German protokoll with the Italian diminutive suffix -ina, signaling its educational focus rather than a formal standard. It aims to provide a concise, human-readable syntax and a formal semantics suitable for reasoning about protocol correctness.

Design and syntax: Protokollina specifies protocol participants, called roles, along with their local states and the messages exchanged between them. Protocols are defined as a set of states and transitions, where transitions are labeled with send or receive events and optional guards. Message schemas describe the fields and types of payloads. The language supports nondeterministic choice, timeouts, and error handling paths. Semantics are defined in terms of state machines or labeled transition systems, enabling formal analysis.

Usage and tooling: Protokollina is used primarily in education and research to illustrate protocol specification, verification, and comparison. It is commonly paired with model-checking or theorem-proving tools to verify properties such as safety, liveness, and security requirements. Because it abstracts away implementation details, it serves as a bridge between informal design discussions and formal verification.

Examples and scope: Typical examples include a simple request–response handshake, a three-phase commit style transaction, or a lightweight key exchange. The language emphasizes clarity over performance and is not intended as an implementation language for deployed systems.

History: The concept emerged in academic contexts in the early 2020s as a teaching aid for protocol engineering and verification.