On the Unification of Process Semantics: Observational Semantics

  • Authors:
  • David Frutos Escrig;Carlos Gregorio Rodríguez;Miguel Palomino

  • Affiliations:
  • Departamento de Sistemas Informáticos y Computación, UCM,;Departamento de Sistemas Informáticos y Computación, UCM,;Departamento de Sistemas Informáticos y Computación, UCM,

  • Venue:
  • SOFSEM '09 Proceedings of the 35th Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science
  • Year:
  • 2009
  • Logics for contravariant simulations

    FMOODS'10/FORTE'10 Proceedings of the 12th IFIP WG 6.1 international conference and 30th IFIP WG 6.1 international conference on Formal Techniques for Distributed Systems

  • Defining distances for all process semantics

    FMOODS'12/FORTE'12 Proceedings of the 14th joint IFIP WG 6.1 international conference and Proceedings of the 32nd IFIP WG 6.1 international conference on Formal Techniques for Distributed Systems

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Abstract

The complexity of parallel systems has produced a large collection of semantics for processes. Van Glabbeek's linear time-branching time spectrum provides a classification of most of these semantics; however, no suitable unified definitions were available. We have discovered how to unify them, both in an observational framework and in an equational framework. In this first part of our study we present the observational semantics, that stresses the differences between the simulation (branching) semantics and the extentional (linear) semantics. As a result we rediscover the classification in van Glabbeek's spectrum and shed light on it, obtaining a framework where we can consider all the semantics in the spectrum at the same time. Also, we have discovered some "lost links" that correspond to semantics, possibly not too interesting (at the moment), that provide a clearer picture of the spectrum.