Metric Semantics and Full Abstractness for Action Refinement and Probabilistic Choice

This paper provides a case-study in the field of metric semantics for probabilistic programming. Both an operational and a denotational semantics are presented for an abstract process language L_pr, which features action refinement and probabilistic choice. The two models are constructed in the setting of complete ultrametric spaces, here based on probability measures of compact support over sequences of actions. It is shown that the standard toolkit for metric semantics works well in the probabilistic context of L_pr, e.g. in establishing the correctness of the denotational semantics with respect to the operational one. In addition, it is shown how the method of proving full abstraction --as proposed recently by the authors for a nondeterministic language with action refinement-- can be adapted to deal with the probabilistic language L_pr as well

Least fixed points revisited

Parameter mechanisms for recursive procedures are investigated. Contrary to the view of Manna et al., it is argued that both call-by-value and call-by-name mechanisms yield the least fixed points of the functionals determined by the bodies of the procedures concerned. These functionals differ, however, according to the mechanism chosen. A careful and detailed presentation of this result is given, along the lines of a simple typed lambda calculus, with interpretation rules modelling program execution in such a way that call-by-value determines a change in the environment and call-by-name a textual substitution in the procedure body

Four domains for concurrency

AbstractWe give four domains for concurrency in a uniform way by means of domain equations. The domains are intended for modelling the four possible combinations of linear time versus branching time, and of interleaving versus noninterleaving concurrency. We use the linear time, noninterleaved domain to give operational and denotational semantics for a simple concurrent language with recursion, and prove that O = D