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Weak Sequential Composition in Process Algebras

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CONCUR ’94: Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 1994)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 836))

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Abstract

In this paper we study a special operator for sequential composition, which is defined relative to a dependency relation over the actions of a given system. The idea is that actions which are not dependent (intuitively because they share no common resources) do not have to wait for one another to proceed, even if they are composed sequentially. Such a notion has been studied before in a linear-time setting, but until recently there has been no systematic investigation in the context of process algebras.

We give a structural operational semantics for a process algebraic language containing such a sequential composition operator, which shows some interesting interplay with choice. We give a complete axiomatisation of strong bisimilarity and we show consistency of the operational semantics with an event-based denotational semantics developed recently by the second author. The axiom system allows to derive the communication closed layers law, which in the linear time setting has been shown to be a very useful instrument in correctness preserving transformations. We conclude with a couple of examples.

Research partially supported by the HCM Cooperation Network “EXPRESS» (Expressiveness of Languages for Concurrency), the Esprit Basic Research Working Group 6067 (CALIBAN) and a Graduiertenfürderungsstipendium of the University of Hildesheim

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Rensink, A., Wehrheim, H. (1994). Weak Sequential Composition in Process Algebras. In: Jonsson, B., Parrow, J. (eds) CONCUR ’94: Concurrency Theory. CONCUR 1994. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 836. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-48654-1_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-48654-1_20

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-58329-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48654-1

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