Action Refinement in Process Algebras (Distinguished Dissertations in Computer Science)

Dr. Aceto studies the notion of action refinement in the setting of process description languages, together with behavioral equivalences for them and their associated proof systems. The presentation is organized into three parts. In the first, a semantic theory of processes based on atomic actions is used to give results that serve as a stepping stone toward the more complex theories needed to support action refinement. The core of the book then develops suitable notions of process equivalence for increasingly complex languages with operators for action refinement. This approach is used to highlight the difficulties introduced by synchronization among actions and scoping operators. In the final part, the author deals with the possibility of using action refinement to "observe" indirectly the causal relationships among actions in a system. A preliminary semantic theory for concurrent systems that relates concurrency and nondeterminism without reducing the former to the latter is also studied in some detail.