Timing issues are of growing importance for the conceptualization and design of computer-based systems. Timing may simply be essential for the correct behaviour of a system, e.g. of a controller. Even if timing is not essential for the correct behaviour of a system, there may be good reasons to introduce it in such a way that suitable timing becomes relevant for the correct behaviour of a complex system. This book is unique in presenting four algebraic theories about processes, each dealing with timing from a different point of view, in a coherent and systematic way. The timing of actions is either relative or absolute and the underlying time scale is either discrete or continuous.

Process Algebra is a formal description technique for complex computer systems, especially those involving communicating, concurrently executing components. It is a subject that concurrently touches many topic areas of computer science and discrete math, including system design notations, logic, concurrency theory, specification and verification, operational semantics, algorithms, complexity theory, and, of course, algebra.This Handbook documents the fate of process algebra since its inception in the late 1970's to the present. It is intended to serve as a reference source for researchers, students, and system designers and engineers interested in either the theory of process algebra or in learning what process algebra brings to the table as a formal system description and verification technique. The Handbook is divided into six parts spanning a total of 19 self-contained Chapters. The organization is as follows. Part 1, consisting of four chapters, covers a broad swath of the basic theory of process algebra. Part 2 contains two chapters devoted to the sub-specialization of process algebra known as finite-state processes, while the three chapters of Part 3 look at infinite-state processes, value-passing processes and mobile processes in particular. Part 4, also three chapters in length, explores several extensions to process algebra including real-time, probability and priority. The four chapters of Part 5 examine non-interleaving process algebras, while Part 6's three chapters address process-algebra tools and applications.

Presents a unified overview of the various process algebras currently in use and sets the standard for the field.

Collects the Latest Research Involving the Application of Process Algebra to ComputingExploring state-of-the-art applications, Process Algebra for Parallel and Distributed Processing shows how one formal method of reasoning-process algebra-has become a powerful tool for solving design and implementation challenges of concurrent systems. Parallel Pr

Automated and semi-automated manipulation of so-called labelled transition systems has become an important means in discovering flaws in software and hardware systems. Process algebra has been developed to express such labelled transition systems algebraically, which enhances the ways of manipulation by means of equational logic and term rewriting. The theory of process algebra has developed rapidly over the last twenty years, and verification tools have been developed on the basis of process algebra, often in cooperation with techniques related to model checking. This textbook gives a thorough introduction into the basics of process algebra and its applications.

ACP, the Algebra of Communicating Processes, is an algebraic approach to the study of concurrent processes, initiated by Jan Bergstra and Jan Will em Klop in the early eighties. These proceedings comprise the contributions to ACP94, the first workshop devoted to ACP. The work shop was held at Utrecht University, 16-17 May 1994. These proceedings are meant to provide an overview of current research in the area of ACP. They contain fifteen contributions. The first one is a classical paper on ACP by J.A. Bergstra and J.W. Klop: The Algebra of Recursively Defined Processes and the Algebra of Regular Processes, Report IW 235/83, Mathematical Centre, Amsterdam, 1983. It serves as an introduction to the remainder of the proceedings and, indeed, as a general introduction to ACP. An extended abstract of this paper is published under the same title in the ICALP' 84 proceedings. Of the re maining contributions, three were submitted by the invited speakers and the others were selected by the programme committee. As for the presentations, Jos Baeten, Rob van Glabbeek, Jan Friso Groote, and Frits Vaandrager were each invited to deliver a lecture. A paper relating to Frits Vaandrager's lecture has already been submitted for publication elsewhere and is not, therefore, included in these pro ceedings. Gabriel Ciobanu, one of our guests, gave an impression of his work in an extra lecture. Furthermore, ten presentations were given on the basis of selected papers.

A large class of computing systems can be specified and verified by abstracting away from the temporal aspects of their behavior. In real-time systems,instead, time issues become essential. Their correctness depends not only on which functions they can perform, but also on the action execution time. Due to their importance and design challenges, real-time systems have attracted the attention of a considerable number of computer scientists and engineers from various research areas. This volume collects a set of papers accompanying the lectures of the fourth edition of the International School on Formal Methods for the Design of Computer, Communication and Software Systems (SFM). The school addressed the use of formal methods in computer science as a prominent approach to the r- orous design of computer, communication and software systems. The main aim of the SFM series is to o?er a good spectrum of current research in foundations as well as applications of formal methods, which can be of help for graduate students and young researchers who intend to approach the field. SFM-04:RT was devoted to real-time systems. It covered formal models and languages for the specification,modeling,analysis,and verification of the seti- critical systems, the expressiveness of such models and languages, as well as supporting tools and related applications in different domains.