Paper
In Perfect Harmony: Orchestrating Causality in Actor-Based Systems
Authors
Vladyslav Mikytiv, Bernardo Toninho, Carla Ferreira
Abstract
Runtime verification has gained popularity as a lightweight approach for increasing assurance in systems under scrutiny. Performing runtime checks enables dynamic monitoring and alerts for unexpected behavior, thereby improving reliability and correctness. Actor-based systems present significant challenges for runtime verification. Properties frequently span multiple actors with complex causal dependencies, while nondeterministic message interleavings can obscure execution semantics. Moreover, most existing monitoring tools are designed for single-process behavior. This paper presents ACTORCHESTRA, a runtime verification framework for Erlang that automatically tracks causality across multi-actor interactions. The framework instruments Erlang systems that comply with OTP guidelines via targeted code injection. This method establishes the orchestration infrastructure required to track causal relationships between actors without requiring manual modifications to the target system. To ease the specification of multi-actor properties, the framework provides WALTZ, a specification language that automatically compiles properties into executable Erlang monitors that integrate with the instrumented system. Three case studies demonstrate ACTORCHESTRA's effectiveness in detecting complex behavioral violations in real-world actor systems. A performance evaluation quantifies the runtime overhead of the monitoring infrastructure and analyzes the trade-offs between added safety guarantees and execution costs.
Metadata
Related papers
Fractal universe and quantum gravity made simple
Fabio Briscese, Gianluca Calcagni • 2026-03-25
POLY-SIM: Polyglot Speaker Identification with Missing Modality Grand Challenge 2026 Evaluation Plan
Marta Moscati, Muhammad Saad Saeed, Marina Zanoni, Mubashir Noman, Rohan Kuma... • 2026-03-25
LensWalk: Agentic Video Understanding by Planning How You See in Videos
Keliang Li, Yansong Li, Hongze Shen, Mengdi Liu, Hong Chang, Shiguang Shan • 2026-03-25
Orientation Reconstruction of Proteins using Coulomb Explosions
Tomas André, Alfredo Bellisario, Nicusor Timneanu, Carl Caleman • 2026-03-25
The role of spatial context and multitask learning in the detection of organic and conventional farming systems based on Sentinel-2 time series
Jan Hemmerling, Marcel Schwieder, Philippe Rufin, Leon-Friedrich Thomas, Mire... • 2026-03-25
Raw Data (Debug)
{
"raw_xml": "<entry>\n <id>http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.17909v1</id>\n <title>In Perfect Harmony: Orchestrating Causality in Actor-Based Systems</title>\n <updated>2026-03-18T16:47:25Z</updated>\n <link href='https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.17909v1' rel='alternate' type='text/html'/>\n <link href='https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.17909v1' rel='related' title='pdf' type='application/pdf'/>\n <summary>Runtime verification has gained popularity as a lightweight approach for increasing assurance in systems under scrutiny. Performing runtime checks enables dynamic monitoring and alerts for unexpected behavior, thereby improving reliability and correctness. Actor-based systems present significant challenges for runtime verification. Properties frequently span multiple actors with complex causal dependencies, while nondeterministic message interleavings can obscure execution semantics. Moreover, most existing monitoring tools are designed for single-process behavior. This paper presents ACTORCHESTRA, a runtime verification framework for Erlang that automatically tracks causality across multi-actor interactions. The framework instruments Erlang systems that comply with OTP guidelines via targeted code injection. This method establishes the orchestration infrastructure required to track causal relationships between actors without requiring manual modifications to the target system. To ease the specification of multi-actor properties, the framework provides WALTZ, a specification language that automatically compiles properties into executable Erlang monitors that integrate with the instrumented system. Three case studies demonstrate ACTORCHESTRA's effectiveness in detecting complex behavioral violations in real-world actor systems. A performance evaluation quantifies the runtime overhead of the monitoring infrastructure and analyzes the trade-offs between added safety guarantees and execution costs.</summary>\n <category scheme='http://arxiv.org/schemas/atom' term='cs.SE'/>\n <category scheme='http://arxiv.org/schemas/atom' term='cs.LO'/>\n <published>2026-03-18T16:47:25Z</published>\n <arxiv:comment>Accepted at the 19th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST 2026)</arxiv:comment>\n <arxiv:primary_category term='cs.SE'/>\n <author>\n <name>Vladyslav Mikytiv</name>\n </author>\n <author>\n <name>Bernardo Toninho</name>\n </author>\n <author>\n <name>Carla Ferreira</name>\n </author>\n </entry>"
}