Reactive Systems over Cospans

The theory of reactive systems, introduced by Leifer and Milner and previously extended by the authors, allows the derivation of well-behaved labelled transition systems (LTS) for semantic models with an underlying reduction semantics. The derivation procedure requires the presence of certain colimits (or, more usually and generally, bicolimits) which need to be constructed separately within each model. In this paper, we offer a general construction of such bicolimits in a class of bicategories of cospans. The construction sheds light on as well as extends Ehrig and Konig’s rewriting via borrowed contexts and opens the way to a unified treatment of several applications

Deriving bisimulation congruences in the DPO approach to graph rewriting. Long version

Motivated by recent work on the derivation of labelled transitions and bisimulation congruences from unlabelled reaction rules, we show how to solve this problem in the DPO (double-pushout) approach to graph rewriting. Unlike in previous approaches, we consider graphs as objects, instead of arrows, of the category under consideration. This allows us to present a very simple way of deriving labelled transitions (called rewriting steps with borrowed context) which smoothly integrates with the DPO approach, has a very constructive natureand requires only a minimum of category theory. The core part of this paper is the proof sketch that the bisimilarity based on rewriting with borrowed contexts is a congruence relation

Full Semantics Preservation in Model Transformation – A Comparison of Proof Techniques

Model transformation is a prime technique in modern, model-driven software design. One of the most challenging issues is to show that the semantics of the models is not affected by the transformation. So far, there is hardly any research into this issue, in particular in those cases where the source and target languages are different.\ud \ud In this paper, we are using two different state-of-the-art proof techniques (explicit bisimulation construction versus borrowed contexts) to show bisimilarity preservation of a given model transformation between two simple (self-defined) languages, both of which are equipped with a graph transformation-based operational semantics. The contrast between these proof techniques is interesting because they are based on different model transformation strategies: triple graph grammars versus in situ transformation. We proceed to compare the proofs and discuss scalability to a more realistic setting.\u

Application Conditions for Reactive Systems with Applications to Bisimulation Theory

This paper presents generalized application conditions (GACs), a new formalism for nested application conditions. GACs are not only suitable for DPO rewriting, but for rewriting in reactive systems as well. The main theorem states that it is possible to construct an equivalent reactive system rule with a GAC for a DPO rule with application conditions under very mild conditions. The resulting reactive system rules live in the cospan category of the category C, in which the DPO rules live. It turns out that these GACs for reactive systems provide a slightly more powerful way to control the application of a rewriting rule, than it is possible in the original DPO setting. At the end, we give a short outlook on the applications of this formalism to the field of bisimulation theory, sketch our latest results and discuss future work

Adequacy Issues in Reactive Systems: Barbed Semantics for Mobile Ambients

Reactive systems represent a meta-framework aimed at deriving behavioral congruences for those specification formalisms whose operational semantics is provided by rewriting rules. The aim of this thesis is to address one of the main issues of the framework, concerning the adequacy of the standard observational semantics (the IPO and the saturated one) in modelling the concrete semantics of actual formalisms. The problem is that IPO-bisimilarity (obtained considering only minimal labels) is often too discriminating, while the saturated one (via all labels) may be too coarse, and intermediate proposals should then be put forward. We then introduce a more expressive semantics for reactive systems which, thanks to its flexibility, allows for recasting a wide variety of observational, bisimulation-based equivalences. In particular, we propose suitable notions of barbed and weak barbed semantics for reactive systems, and an efficient characterization of them through the IPO-transition systems. We also propose a novel, more general behavioural equivalence: L-bisimilarity, which is able to recast both its IPO and saturated counterparts, as well as the barbed one. The equivalence is parametric with respect to a set L of reactive systems labels, and it is shown that under mild conditions on L it is a congruence. In order to provide a suitable test-bed, we instantiate our proposal over the asynchronous CCS and, most importantly, over the mobile ambients calculus, whose semantics is still in a flux

04241 Abstracts Collection -- Graph Transformations and Process Algebras for Modeling Distributed and Mobile Systems

Recently there has been a lot of research, combining concepts of process algebra with those of the theory of graph grammars and graph transformation systems. Both can be viewed as general frameworks in which one can specify and reason about concurrent and distributed systems. There are many areas where both theories overlap and this reaches much further than just using graphs to give a graphic representation to processes. Processes in a communication network can be seen in two different ways: as terms in an algebraic theory, emphasizing their behaviour and their interaction with the environment, and as nodes (or edges) in a graph, emphasizing their topology and their connectedness. Especially topology, mobility and dynamic reconfigurations at runtime can be modelled in a very intuitive way using graph transformation. On the other hand the definition and proof of behavioural equivalences is often easier in the process algebra setting. Also standard techniques of algebraic semantics for universal constructions, refinement and compositionality can take better advantage of the process algebra representation. An important example where the combined theory is more convenient than both alternatives is for defining the concurrent (noninterleaving), abstract semantics of distributed systems. Here graph transformations lack abstraction and process algebras lack expressiveness. Another important example is the work on bigraphical reactive systems with the aim of deriving a labelled transitions system from an unlabelled reactive system such that the resulting bisimilarity is a congruence. Here, graphs seem to be a convenient framework, in which this theory can be stated and developed. So, although it is the central aim of both frameworks to model and reason about concurrent systems, the semantics of processes can have a very different flavour in these theories. Research in this area aims at combining the advantages of both frameworks and translating concepts of one theory into the other. The Dagsuthl Seminar, which took place from 06.06. to 11.06.2004, was aimed at bringing together researchers of the two communities in order to share their ideas and develop new concepts. These proceedings4 of the do not only contain abstracts of the talks given at the seminar, but also summaries of topics of central interest. We would like to thank all participants of the seminar for coming and sharing their ideas and everybody who has contributed to the proceedings

Conditional Bisimilarity for Reactive Systems

Reactive systems \`a la Leifer and Milner, an abstract categorical framework for rewriting, provide a suitable framework for deriving bisimulation congruences. This is done by synthesizing interactions with the environment in order to obtain a compositional semantics. We enrich the notion of reactive systems by conditions on two levels: first, as in earlier work, we consider rules enriched with application conditions and second, we investigate the notion of conditional bisimilarity. Conditional bisimilarity allows us to say that two system states are bisimilar provided that the environment satisfies a given condition. We present several equivalent definitions of conditional bisimilarity, including one that is useful for concrete proofs and that employs an up-to-context technique, and we compare with related behavioural equivalences. We instantiate reactive systems in order to obtain DPO graph rewriting and consider a case study in this setting

Checking bisimilarity for attributed graph transformation

Borrowed context graph transformation is a technique developed by Ehrig and Koenig to define bisimilarity congruences from reduction semantics defined by graph transformation. This means that, for instance, this technique can be used for defining bisimilarity congruences for process calculi whose operational semantics can be defined by graph transformation. Moreover, given a set of graph transformation rules, the technique can be used for checking bisimilarity of two given graphs. Unfortunately, we can not use this ideas to check if attributed graphs are bisimilar, i.e. graphs whose nodes or edges are labelled with values from some given data algebra and where graph transformation involves computation on that algebra. The problem is that, in the case of attributed graphs, borrowed context transformation may be infinitely branching. In this paper, based on borrowed context transformation of what we call symbolic graphs, we present a sound and relatively complete inference system for checking bisimilarity of attributed graphs. In particular, this means that, if using our inference system we are able to prove that two graphs are bisimilar then they are indeed bisimilar. Conversely, two graphs are not bisimilar if and only if we can find a proof saying so, provided that we are able to prove some formulas over the given data algebra. Moreover, since the proof system is complex to use, we also present a tableau method based on the inference system that is also sound and relatively complete.Postprint (published version

Adhesive DPO Parallelism for Monic Matches

AbstractThis paper presents indispensable technical results of a general theory that will allow to systematically derive from a given reduction system a behavioral congruence that respects concurrency. The theory is developed in the setting of adhesive categories and is based on the work by Ehrig and König on borrowed contexts; the latter are an instance of relative pushouts, which have been proposed by Leifer and Milner. In order to lift the concurrency theory of dpo rewriting to borrowed contexts we will study the special case of dpo rewriting with monic matches in adhesive categories: more specifically we provide a generalized Butterfly Lemma together with a Local Church Rosser and Parallelism theorem