We've just published Jeff Lowery's new article on developing finite state machines in Java. Jeff's article demonstrates how Java enums and EnumSets can be applied to define and validate states and state transitions.
Finite state machines (FSMs) are finding increasing application today. This type of modeling reminds me of my education in physics and chemistry, where a set of distinct potential states exist, and the physical universe toggles among those possibilities. The notion of "in between" doesn't really exist in such a universe. Yet, when you think of electrons jumping between energy states, or quantum mechanics -- you realize that the basis of much of our understanding of the physical universe relies on conceiving the micro-universe as being a kind of finite state machine.
Hence, the growing recognition of the validity of applying states and state transitions to a wide variety of practical problems does indeed make a lot of sense. The macro-scale universe reflects the finite state machine nature that appears to model the micro-scale universe well.
Jeff's article starts out with describing how a typical application can be understood as consisting of a set of states and transitions between those states:
A typical application will go through multiple states during a runtime session, e.g., RUNNING -> PAUSED -> RESTARTED, or (in the case of a data entry form) ENTER -> VALIDATE -> SAVE. The state transitions are initiated by runtime events, such as when a user presses an PAUSE button or hits the ENTER key after entering data in a field. The FSM determines what actions occur when an event is received, and the resulting state. The transition to a new state will invoke a change in the immediate or subsequent behavior of an application.
Jeff goes on to further illustrate and demonstrate the principals of finite state machines and their applicability within applications through a "Bouncing Bomb" application. After describing how the code works for an initial application, Jeff goes on to describe how the application can be transformed to permit concurrent states:
Here's a question: When the application is still running, why not allow the user to set a configuration for the next run? The new configuration would then be ready for the next run when the current run ended. To enable that behavior, two states would have to be allowed to be active at once: RUNNING and CONFIGURING.
How might such concurrent states be handled? The first thing to change is the type of the currentState instance in the StateMachine. One approach is to use an EnumSet to hold both the primary and concurrent state enum values, and change the stateMap key to an EnumSet<State> and its values to an array of EnumSets.
Jeff Lowery's A Finite State Machine Supporting Concurrent States is an article I found interesting both from the point of view of the coding itself and the broader theoretical realm that the demonstration application addresses. Take a look and see what you think!
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Our Feature Articles include Jeff Lowery's new article A Finite State Machine Supporting Concurrent States, which demonstrates how Java enums and EnumSets can be used as a basis to define and validate application states and state transitions. We're also featuring Jeff Friesen's article Introducing Custom Paints to JavaFX, which shows how you can leverage undocumented JavaFX capabilities to support custom paints in JavaFX Version 1.2.
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