Tradeoffs in Reactive Systems Design (Dagstuhl Seminar 25091)

Abstract

Reactive systems - software systems that continuously interact with their physical or digital environment - are central to safety-critical domains such as autonomous vehicles, industrial automation, and medical devices. These systems face inherent design tensions: the need to be predictable yet adaptable, timely yet accurate, consistent yet available, and secure yet accessible. Addressing one requirement often undermines another, revealing tradeoffs that are not merely engineering challenges but fundamental limits. This seminar aimed to confront these tradeoffs directly, drawing on insights from real-time systems, distributed computing, formal methods, machine learning, and security. By exploring case studies, formal frameworks, and practical tools, we made progress in the understanding of how to make design decisions when no single solution satisfies all competing goals. Interactive sessions and demos gave participants a tangible sense of the costs and compromises involved. With all this, we achieved the seminar’s goal, namely, to cultivate a shared understanding of how to navigate the complex design space of reactive systems and chart paths toward more robust and principled solutions.