Musings on Encodings and Expressiveness

This paper proposes a definition of what it means for one system description language to encode another one, thereby enabling an ordering of system description languages with respect to expressive power. I compare the proposed definition with other definitions of encoding and expressiveness found in the literature, and illustrate it on a case study: comparing the expressive power of CCS and CSP.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS/SOS 2012, arXiv:1208.244

Dynamic Congruence vs. Progressing Bisimulation for CCS

Weak Observational Congruence (woc) defined on CCS agents is not a bisimulation since it does not require two states reached by bisimilar computations of woc agents to be still woc, e.g. \alpha.\tau.\beta.nil and \alpha.\beta.nil are woc but \tau.\beta.nil and \beta.nil are not. This fact prevent us from characterizing CCS semantics (when \tau is considered invisible) as a final algebra, since the semantic function would induce an equivalence over the agents that is both a congruence and a bisimulation. In the paper we introduce a new behavioural equivalence for CCS agents, which is the coarsest among those bisimulations which are also congruences. We call it Dynamic Observational Congruence because it expresses a natural notion of equivalence for concurrent systems required to simulate each other in the presence of dynamic, i.e. run time, (re)configurations. We provide an algebraic characterization of Dynamic Congruence in terms of a universal property of finality. Furthermore we introduce Progressing Bisimulation, which forces processes to simulate each other performing explicit steps. We provide an algebraic characterization of it in terms of finality, two logical characterizations via modal logic in the style of HML and a complete axiomatization for finite agents (consisting of the axioms for Strong Observational Congruence and of two of the three Milner's $\tau$-laws). Finally, we prove that Dynamic Congruence and Progressing Bisimulation coincide for CCS agents