Symbolic Equivalences for Open Systems

Paolo Baldan (1) - Andrea Bracciali (2) - Roberto Bruni (2)

(1) Dipartimento di Informatica, Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia, Italia.
(2) Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Pisa, Italia.

Abstract:

Behavioural equivalences on open systems are usually defined by comparing system behaviour in all environments. Here, we introduce a hierarchy of behavioural equivalences for open systems in the setting of process calculi, building on a symbolic approach proposed in a previous paper. The hierarchy comprises both branching, bisimulation-based, and non-branching, trace-based, equivalences. Symbolic equivalences are amenable to effective analysis techniques (e.g., the symbolic transition system is finitely branching under mild assumptions), which result to be correct, but often not complete due to redundant information. Two kinds of redundancy, syntactic and semantic, are discussed and one class of symbolic equivalences is identified that deals satisfactorily with syntactic redundant transitions, which are a primary source of incompleteness.