Abstract
Determinism is a semantic property of (a fragment of) a language that specifies that a program cannot evolve operationally in several different ways. Idempotence is a property of binary composition operators requiring that the composition of two identical specifications or programs will result in a piece of specification or program that is equivalent to the original components. In this paper, we propose two (related) meta-theorems for guaranteeing determinism and idempotence of binary operators. These meta-theorems are formulated in terms of syntactic templates for operational semantics, called rule formats. We show the applicability of our formats by applying them to various operational semantics from the literature.
The work of Aceto, Birgisson and Ingolfsdottir has been partially supported by the projects “The Equational Logic of Parallel Processes” (nr. 060013021), and “New Developments in Operational Semantics” (nr. 080039021) of the Icelandic Research Fund. Birgisson has been further supported by a research-student grant nr. 080890008 of the Icelandic Research Fund.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Aceto, L., Fokkink, W.J., Verhoef, C.: Structural operational semantics. In: Handbook of Process Algebra, ch. 3, pp. 197–292. Elsevier, Amsterdam (2001)
Baeten, J.C.M., Middelburg, C.A.: Process Algebra with Timing. EATCS Monographs. Springer, Berlin (2002)
Baeten, J.C.M., Weijland, W.P.: Process Algebra. Cambridge Tracts in Theoretical Computer Science, vol. 18. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1990)
Baeten, J.C.M., Mauw, S.: Delayed choice: An operator for joining Message Sequence Charts. In: Proceedings of Formal Description Techniques. IFIP Conference Proceedings, vol. 6, pp. 340–354. Chapman & Hall, Boca Raton (1995)
Bergstra, J.A., Klop, J.W.: Process algebra for synchronous communication. Information and Control 60(1-3), 109–137 (1984)
Cranen, S., Mousavi, M.R., Reniers, M.A.: A rule format for associativity. In: van Breugel, F., Chechik, M. (eds.) CONCUR 2008. LNCS, vol. 5201, pp. 447–461. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
D’Argenio, P.R.: τ-angelic choice for process algebras (revised version). Technical report, LIFIA, Depto. de Informática, Fac. de Cs. Exactas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata (1995)
Fokkink, W.J., Duong Vu, T.: Structural operational semantics and bounded nondeterminism. Acta Informatica 39(6-7), 501–516 (2003)
Groote, J.F.: Transition system specifications with negative premises. Theoretical Computer Science 118(2), 263–299 (1993)
Hennessy, M., Plotkin, G.D.: Finite conjuncitve nondeterminism. In: Rozenberg, G. (ed.) APN 1987. LNCS, vol. 266, pp. 233–244. Springer, Heidelberg (1987)
Hoare, C.A.R.: Communicating Sequential Processes. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1985)
Lanotte, R., Tini, S.: Probabilistic congruence for semistochastic generative processes. In: Sassone, V. (ed.) FOSSACS 2005. LNCS, vol. 3441, pp. 63–78. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Mousavi, M.R., Phillips, I.C.C., Reniers, M.A., Ulidowski, I.: Semantics and expressiveness of ordered SOS. Information and Computation 207(2), 85–119 (2009)
Mousavi, M.R., Reniers, M.A.: Orthogonal extensions in structural operational semantics. In: Caires, L., Italiano, G.F., Monteiro, L., Palamidessi, C., Yung, M. (eds.) ICALP 2005. LNCS, vol. 3580, pp. 1214–1225. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Mousavi, M.R., Reniers, M.A., Groote, J.F.: A syntactic commutativity format for SOS. Information Processing Letters 93, 217–223 (2005)
Mousavi, M.R., Reniers, M.A., Groote, J.F.: SOS formats and meta-theory: 20 years after. Theoretical Computer Science (373), 238–272 (2007)
Nicollin, X., Sifakis, J.: The algebra of timed processes ATP: Theory and application. Information and Computation 114(1), 131–178 (1994)
Plotkin, G.D.: A structural approach to operational semantics. Journal of Logic and Algebraic Progamming 60, 17–139 (2004); This article first appeared as Technical Report DAIMI FN-19, Computer Science Department, Aarhus University
Tini, S.: Rule formats for compositional non-interference properties. Journal of Logic and Algebraic Progamming 60, 353–400 (2004)
Ulidowski, I., Yuen, S.: Process languages with discrete relative time based on the ordered SOS format and rooted eager bisimulation. Journal of Logic and Algebraic Progamming 60, 401–460 (2004)
van Weerdenburg, M., Reniers, M.A.: Structural operational semantics with first-order logic. In: Pre-proceedings of SOS 2008, pp. 48–62 (2008)
Verhoef, C.: A congruence theorem for structured operational semantics with predicates and negative premises. Nordic Journal of Computing 2(2), 274–302 (1995)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Aceto, L., Birgisson, A., Ingolfsdottir, A., Mousavi, M., Reniers, M.A. (2010). Rule Formats for Determinism and Idempotence. In: Arbab, F., Sirjani, M. (eds) Fundamentals of Software Engineering. FSEN 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5961. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11623-0_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11623-0_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-11622-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-11623-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)