Enhanced Operational Semantics

designers, implementors, users) must understand it. They can be roughly divided in two main groups. The first group is particularly interested in the behavioural aspects of systems, i.e. in what they do, regardless of how. The other group is concerned with the quantitative aspects of systems, i.e. how efficiently they perform. The considerations above call for a semantics as usable as possible, with an underlying theory accordingly simple. Operational semantics is such because it describes the essential features that any computing device has. Thus, also final users may grasp the meaning of a definition driven by their experience on their own machine. Moreover, it is sufficient to decorate transition systems with the relevant information to describe in detail complex systems. For example, one can enhance operational semantics to describe aspects of concurrent and distributed processes, that we discuss here more <F23