232 research outputs found
A Universal Session Type for Untyped Asynchronous Communication
In the simply-typed lambda-calculus we can recover the full range of expressiveness of the untyped lambda-calculus solely by adding a single recursive type U = U -> U. In contrast, in the session-typed pi-calculus, recursion alone is insufficient to recover the untyped pi-calculus, primarily due to linearity: each channel just has two unique endpoints. In this paper, we show that shared channels with a corresponding sharing semantics (based on the language SILL_S developed in prior work) are enough to embed the untyped asynchronous pi-calculus via a universal shared session type U_S. We show that our encoding of the asynchronous pi-calculus satisfies operational correspondence and preserves observable actions (i.e., processes are weakly bisimilar to their encoding). Moreover, we clarify the expressiveness of SILL_S by developing an operationally correct encoding of SILL_S in the asynchronous pi-calculus
Characteristic Bisimulation for Higher-Order Session Processes
Characterising contextual equivalence is a long-standing issue for higher-order (process) languages. In the setting of a higher-order pi-calculus with sessions, we develop characteristic bisimilarity, a typed bisimilarity which fully characterises contextual equivalence. To our knowledge, ours is the first characterisation of its kind. Using simple values inhabiting (session) types, our approach distinguishes from untyped methods for characterising contextual equivalence in higher-order processes: we show that observing as inputs only a precise finite set of higher-order values suffices to reason about higher-order session processes. We demonstrate how characteristic bisimilarity can be used to justify optimisations in session protocols with mobile code communication
On Asynchronous Session Semantics
This paper studies a behavioural theory of the π-calculus with session types under the fundamental principles of the practice of distributed computing — asynchronous communication which is order-preserving inside each connection (session), augmented with asynchronous inspection of events (message arrivals). A new theory of bisimulations is introduced, distinct from either standard
asynchronous or synchronous bisimilarity, accurately capturing the semantic nature of session-based asynchronously communicating processes augmented with
event primitives. The bisimilarity coincides with the reduction-closed barbed congruence. We examine its properties and compare them with existing semantics.
Using the behavioural theory, we verify that the program transformation of multithreaded into event-driven session based processes, using Lauer-Needham duality,
is type and semantic preserving
Session Types in Concurrent Calculi: Higher-Order Processes and Objects
This dissertation investigates different formalisms, in the form of programming language calculi,
that are aimed at providing a theoretical foundation for structured concurrent programming based
on session types. The structure of a session type is essentially a process-algebraic style description
of the behaviour of a single program identifier serving as a communication medium (and usually
referred to as a channel): the types incorporate typed inputs, outputs, and choices which can be
composed to form larger protocol descriptions. The effectiveness of session typing can be attributed
to the linear treatment of channels and session types, and to the use of tractable methods
such as syntactic duality to decide if the types of two connected channels are compatible. Linearity
is ensured when accumulating the uses of a channel into a composite type that describes also
the order of those actions. Duality provides a tractable and intuitive method for deciding when
two connected channels can interact and exchange values in a statically determined type-safe way.
We present our contributions to the theory of sessions, distilled into two families of programming
calculi, the first based on higher-order processes and the second based on objects. Our work unifies,
improves and extends, in manifold ways, the session primitives and typing systems for the
Lambda-calculus, the Pi-calculus, the Object-calculus, and their combinations in multi-paradigm
languages. Of particular interest are: the treatment of infinite interactions expressed with recursive
sessions; the capacity to encapsulate channels in higher-order structures which can be exchanged
and kept suspended, i.e., the use of code as data; the integration of protocol structure directly
into the description of objects, providing a powerful and uniformly extensible set of implementation
abstractions; finally, the introduction of asynchronous subtyping, which enables controlled
reordering of actions on either side of a session. Our work on higher-order processes and on object
calculi for session-based concurrent programming provides a theoretical foundation for programming
language design integrating functional, process, and object-oriented features
Core higher-order session processes: tractable equivalences and relative expressiveness
This work proposes tractable bisimulations for the higher-order - calculus with session primitives (HO ) and o ers a complete study of the expressivity of its most significant subcalculi. First we develop three typed bisimulations, which are shown to coincide with contextual equivalence. These characterisations demonstrate that observing as inputs only a specific finite set of higher-order values (which inhabit session types) su ces to reason about HO processes. Next, we identify HO, a minimal, second-order subcalculus of HO in which higher-order applications/abstractions, name-passing, and recursion are absent. We show that HO can encode HO extended with higher-order applications and abstractions and that a first-order session -calculus can encode HO . Both encodings are fully abstract. We also prove that the session -calculus with passing of shared names cannot be encoded into HO without shared names. We show that HO , HO, and are equally expressive; the expressivity of HO enables e ective reasoning about typed equivalences for higher-order processes
Behavioural Types for Actor Systems
Recent mainstream programming languages such as Erlang or Scala have renewed
the interest on the Actor model of concurrency. However, the literature on the
static analysis of actor systems is still lacking of mature formal methods. In
this paper we present a minimal actor calculus that takes as primitive the
basic constructs of Scala's Actors API. More precisely, actors can send
asynchronous messages, process received messages according to a pattern
matching mechanism, and dynamically create new actors, whose scope can be
extruded by passing actor names as message parameters. Drawing inspiration from
the linear types and session type theories developed for process calculi, we
put forward a behavioural type system that addresses the key issues of an actor
calculus. We then study a safety property dealing with the determinism of
finite actor com- munication. More precisely, we show that well typed and
balanced actor systems are (i) deadlock-free and (ii) any message will
eventually be handled by the target actor, and dually no actor will
indefinitely wait for an expected messag
The role of concurrency in an evolutionary view of programming abstractions
In this paper we examine how concurrency has been embodied in mainstream
programming languages. In particular, we rely on the evolutionary talking
borrowed from biology to discuss major historical landmarks and crucial
concepts that shaped the development of programming languages. We examine the
general development process, occasionally deepening into some language, trying
to uncover evolutionary lineages related to specific programming traits. We
mainly focus on concurrency, discussing the different abstraction levels
involved in present-day concurrent programming and emphasizing the fact that
they correspond to different levels of explanation. We then comment on the role
of theoretical research on the quest for suitable programming abstractions,
recalling the importance of changing the working framework and the way of
looking every so often. This paper is not meant to be a survey of modern
mainstream programming languages: it would be very incomplete in that sense. It
aims instead at pointing out a number of remarks and connect them under an
evolutionary perspective, in order to grasp a unifying, but not simplistic,
view of the programming languages development process
Machine-Checked Semantic Session Typing
Session types- A family of type systems for message-passing concurrency-have been subject to many extensions, where each extension comes with a separate proof of type safety. These extensions cannot be readily combined, and their proofs of type safety are generally not machine checked, making their correctness less trustworthy. We overcome these shortcomings with a semantic approach to binary asynchronous affine session types, by developing a logical relations model in Coq using the Iris program logic. We demonstrate the power of our approach by combining various forms of polymorphism and recursion, asynchronous subtyping, references, and locks/mutexes. As an additional benefit of the semantic approach, we demonstrate how to manually prove typing judgements of racy, but safe, programs that cannot be type checked using only the rules of the type system. Programming Language
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