Constructing process categories

AbstractA method of constructing process categories as generalized relations on a category of process models is presented. The construction may be viewed as a 2-functor, allowing structural properties of the process categories to be derived from the underlying structure of the model categories. In particular, this allows one to infer the presence of linear structure in a process category.The construction yields Abramsky's category SProc when applied to any of the standard models of interleaved concurrency. SProc is also obtained as a process category upon the category of “sets in time” (i.e. trees) and this sheds new light on the analogy between SProc and “relations in time”