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The Inner and Outer Algebras of Unified Concurrency
Algebras have always played a critical role in Unifying Theories
of Programming, especially in their role in providing the "laws"
of programming. The algebraic laws form a triad with two other forms,
namely operational and denotational semantics. In this paper we demonstrate
that algebras are not just for providing external laws for reasoning
about programs. In addition, they can be very benefcial for assisting in
the development of theoretical models, most notably denotational semantics.
We refer to the algebras used to develop a denotational model
as \u27inner algebras", while the resulting algebraic semantics we consider
to be an "outer algebra". In this paper we present a number of inner algebras
that arose in the development of a fully compositional denotational
semantics, called UTCP, for shared-state concurrency. We explore how
these algebras helped to develop (and debug!) the theory, and discuss
how they may assist in the ultimate aim of exposing the outer algebra of
UTCP, which we expect to be very similar to Concurrent Kleene Algebra