This paper presents a formal system based on the notion of objects and asynchronous communication. Built on Milner's work on ß-calculus, the communication primitive of the formal system is purely asynchronous, which makes it unique among various concurrency formalisms. Computationally this results in a consistent reduction of Milner's calculus, while retaining the same expressive power. Seen semantically asynchronous communication induces a surprisingly different framework where bisimulation is strictly more general than its synchronous counterpart. This paper shows basic construction of the formal system along with several illustrative examples. 1 Introduction The formal system introduced in this paper is intended to accomplish two purposes. First, it provides a simple and rigorous formalism which encapsulates essential features of concurrent object-orientation [26, 25]. Being successful as a programming methodology for dynamic concurrent computing, its theoretical contents are far f...

The deep symmetry of Linear Logic [18] makes it suitable for providing abstract models of computation, free from implementation details which are, by nature, oriented and non symmetrical. I propose here one such model, in the area of Logic Programming, where the basic computational principle is Computation = Proof search.

We present an actor language which is an extension of a simple functional language, and provide a precise operational semantics for this extension. Actor configurations represent open distributed systems, by which we mean that the specification of an actor system explicitly takes into account the interface with external components. We study the composability of such systems. We define and study various notions of testing equivalence on actor expressions and configurations. The model we develop provides fairness. An important result is that the three forms of equivalence, namely, convex, must, and may equivalences, collapse to two in the presence of fairness. We further develop methods for proving laws of equivalence and provide example proofs to illustrate our methodology.

Maude is a high-level language and a high-performance system supporting executable specification and declarative programming in rewriting logic. Since rewriting logic contains equational logic, Maude also supports equational specification and programming in its sublanguage of functional modules and theories. The underlying equational logic chosen for Maude is membership equational logic, that has sorts, subsorts, operator overloading, and partiality definable by membership and equality conditions. Rewriting logic is reflective, in the sense of being able to express its own metalevel at the object level. Reflection is systematically exploited in Maude endowing the language with powerful metaprogramming capabilities, including both user-definable module operations and declarative strategies to guide the deduction process. This paper explains and illustrates with examples the main concepts of Maude's language design, including its underlying logic, functional, system and object-oriented modules, as well as parameterized modules, theories, and views. We also explain how Maude supports reflection, metaprogramming and internal strategies. The paper outlines the principles underlying the Maude system implementation, including its semicompilation techniques. We conclude with some remarks about applications, work on a formal environment for Maude, and a mobile language extension of Maude.

Rewriting logic [72] is proposed as a logical framework in which other logics can be represented, and as a semantic framework for the specification of languages and systems. Using concepts from the theory of general logics [70], representations of an object logic L in a framework logic F are understood as mappings L ! F that translate one logic into the other in a conservative way. The ease with which such maps can be defined for a number of quite different logics of interest, including equational logic, Horn logic with equality, linear logic, logics with quantifiers, and any sequent calculus presentation of a logic for a very general notion of "sequent," is discussed in detail. Using the fact that rewriting logic is reflective, it is often possible to reify inside rewriting logic itself a representation map L ! RWLogic for the finitely presentable theories of L. Such a reification takes the form of a map between the abstract data types representing the finitary theories of...

This paper introduces the basic concepts of the rewriting logic language Maude and discusses its implementation. Maude is a wide-spectrum language supporting formal specification, rapid prototyping, and parallel programming. Maude's rewriting logic paradigm includes the functional and object-oriented paradigms as sublanguages. The fact that rewriting logic is reflective leads to novel metaprogramming capabilities that can greatly increase software reusability and adaptability. Control of the rewriting computation is achieved through internal strategy languages defined inside the logic. Maude's rewrite engine is designed with the explicit goal of being highly extensible and of supporting rapid prototyping and formal methods applications, but its semi-compilation techniques allow it to meet those goals with good performance. 1 Introduction Maude is a logical language based on rewriting logic [16,23,19]. It is therefore related to other rewriting logic languages such as Cafe [10], ELAN [...

In this paper we present DAML-S, a DAML+OIL ontology for describing the properties and capabilities of Web Services. Web Services -- Web-accessible programs and devices -- are garnering a great deal of interest from industry, and standards are emerging for low-level descriptions of Web Services. DAML-S complements this effort by providing Web Service descriptions at the application layer, describing what a service can do, and not just how it does it. In this paper we describe three aspects of our ontology: the service profile, the process model, and the service grounding. The paper focuses on the grounding, which connects our ontology with low-level XML-based descriptions of Web Services.

. This paper surveys the work of many researchers on rewriting logic since it was first introduced in 1990. The main emphasis is on the use of rewriting logic as a semantic framework for concurrency. The goal in this regard is to express as faithfully as possible a very wide range of concurrency models, each on its own terms, avoiding any encodings or translations. Bringing very different models under a common semantic framework makes easier to understand what different models have in common and how they differ, to find deep connections between them, and to reason across their different formalisms. It becomes also much easier to achieve in a rigorous way the integration and interoperation of different models and languages whose combination offers attractive advantages. The logic and model theory of rewriting logic are also summarized, a number of current research directions are surveyed, and some concluding remarks about future directions are made. Table of Contents 1 In...

. The Semantic Web should enable greater access not only to content but also to services on the Web. Users and software agents should be able to discover, invoke, compose, and monitor Web resources offering particular services and having particular properties. As part of the DARPA Agent Markup Language program, we have begun to develop an ontology of services, called DAMLS, that will make these functionalities possible. In this paper we describe the overall structure of the ontology, the service profile for advertising services, and the process model for the detailed description of the operation of services. We also compare DAML-S with several industry efforts to define standards for characterizing services on the Web. 1

This paper presents some results concerning equational theories for an elementary calculus based on a fragment of Milner's ß-calculus. The system is interesting because it realises asynchronous message passing not by extending but reducing the original fragment, while preserving the computational power. The bisimulation based on a novel asynchronous transition system is introduced and studied. Presented results include congruence of the bisimilarity for the calculus, its relationship with two other asynchronous theories based on traces and failures, strict inclusion of its synchronous counterpart in the asynchronous theory, and the method called the I completion that transforms two asynchronously bisimilar terms into synchronously bisimilar ones. 1 Introduction This paper presents some results concerning equational theories for an elementary calculus based on a fragment of Milner's ß-calculus [22]. The calculus, which first appeared in its present form in [12], expresses asynchronous...