Abstract
We develop a general framework for a variety of concurrent languages all based on asynchronous communication, like data flow, concurrent logic, concurrent constraint languages and CSP with asynchronous channels. The main characteristic of these languages is that processes interact by reading and modifying the state of some common data structure. We abstract from the specific features of the various communication mechanisms by means of a uniform language where actions are interpreted as partially defined transformations on an abstract set of states. Suspension is modelled by an action being undefined in a state. The languages listed above can be seen as instances of our paradigm, and can be obtained by fixing a specific set of states and interpretation of the actions.
The computational model of our paradigm is described by a transition system in the style of Plotkin's SOS. A compositional model is presented that is based on traces (of pairs of states). This sharply contrasts with the synchronous case, where some additional branching information is needed to describe deadlock. In particular, we show that our model is more abstract than the standard failure set semantics (that is known to be fully abstract for the classical synchronous paradigms).
We also investigate the problem of full abstraction, with respect to various observation criteria. To tackle this problem, we have to consider the particular features of the specific languages. We study some cases, for which we give a fully abstract semantics.
Part of this work was carried out in the context of ESPRIT Basic Research Action (3020) Integration. The research of F.S. de Boer was partially supported by the Dutch REX (Research and Education in Concurrent Systems) project and the Basic Research Action SPEC.
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de Boer, F.S., Kok, J.N., Palamidessi, C., Rutten, J.J.M.M. (1991). The failure of failures in a paradigm for asynchronous communication. In: Baeten, J.C.M., Groote, J.F. (eds) CONCUR '91. CONCUR 1991. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 527. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-54430-5_84
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