A higher-order process calculus is a calculus for communicating systems which contains higher-order constructs like communication of terms. We analyse the notion of bisimulation in these calculi. We argue that both the standard definition of bisimulation (i.e., the one for CCS and related calculi), as well as higher-order bisimulation [E. Astesiano,

The seal-calculus is a distributed process calculus in which locations and movement of computational entities are explicit. The calculus is targeted at secure distributed applications over large scale open networks such as the Internet. Security is addressed by the addition of a finegrain access control mechanism. This paper motivates our design choices, presents the syntax and reduction semantics of the calculus, and demonstrates its expressiveness by examples focused on security and management of large distributed systems.

Developing a theory of bisimulation in higher-order languages can be hard. Particularly challenging can be: (1) the proof of congruence, as well as enhancements of the bisimulation proof method with “up-to context ” techniques, and (2) obtaining definitions and results that scale to languages with different features. To meet these challenges, we present environmental bisimulations, a form of bisimulation for higher-order languages, and its basic theory. We consider four representative calculi: pure λ-calculi (call-by-name and call-byvalue), call-by-value λ-calculus with higher-order store, and then Higher-Order π-calculus. In each case: we present the basic properties of environmental bisimilarity, including congruence; we show that it coincides with contextual equivalence; we develop some up-to techniques, including up-to context, as examples of possible enhancements of the associated bisimulation method. Unlike previous approaches (such as applicative bisimulations, logical relations, Sumii-Pierce-Koutavas-Wand), our method does not require induction/indices on evaluation derivation/steps (which may complicate the proofs of congruence, transitivity, and the combination with up-to techniques), or sophisticated methods such as Howe’s for proving congruence. It also scales from the pure λ-calculi to the richer calculi with simple congruence proofs. 1

Marcelo Fiore , Glynn Winskel (1) BRICS , University of Aarhus, Denmark (2) LFCS, University of Edinburgh, Scotland December 1997 Abstract We develop a 2-categorical theory for recursively defined domains.

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Bigraphs have been introduced with the aim to provide a topographical meta-model for mobile, distributed agents that can manipulate their own linkages and nested locations, generalising both characteristics of the π-calculus and the Mobile Ambients calculus. We give the first bigraphical presentation of a non-linear, higher-order process calculus with nested locations, non-linear active process mobility, and local names, the calculus of Higher-Order Mobile Embedded Resources (Homer). The presentation is based on Milner’s recent presentation of the λ-calculus in local bigraphs. The combination of non-linear active process mobility and local names requires a new definition of parametric reaction rules and a representation of the location of names. We suggest localised bigraphs as a generalisation of local bigraphs in which links can be further localised. Key words: bigraphs, local names, non-linear process mobility

This paper scratches the surface of the problem of classifying the attacks that a mobile computation can be subjected to in an open network. The discussion is based on a simplified version of the Seal calculus. We show the impact of these attacks on the semantics of the calculus and on the notion of observational equivalence. 1 Introduction Wide area networks hold great promises in terms of distributed computing. Applications that scale to the size of the Internet and seamlessly provide access to massive amounts of information and value added services are now technically feasible. But programming these new applications is proving more difficult than anticipated. The blame lies in part with current distributed programming paradigms which are too static to accommodate the dynamics of an open systems of the size of the Internet. Mobile agent programming is a promising alternative to client-server computing based on the simple idea that, instead of moving packet of data between stati...

We compare the first-order and the higher-order...

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This paper presents a comparative survey of formalisms related to mobile agents. It describes the -calculus and its extensions, the Ambient calculus, Petri nets, Actors, and the family of generative communication languages. Each of these formalisms defines a mathematical framework that can be used to reason about mobile code; they vary greatly in their expressiveness, in the mechanisms they provide to specify mobile code based applications and in their practical usefulness for the validation and the verification of such applications. In this paper we show how these formalisms can be used to represent the mobility and communication aspects of two mobile code environments: Obliq and Messengers. We compare and classify the different formalisms with respect to mobility and discuss some shortcomings and desirable extensions. We also point to other emerging concepts in formalisms for mobile code systems.