Algebraic Operational Semantics and Occam

We generalize algebraic operational semantics from sequential languages to distributed, concurrent languages using Occam as an example. Elsewhere, we will discuss applications to the study of verification and transformation of programs. 1 Introduction Computational processes involve change. Although this sounds like an empty slogan, semantical studies often downplay the dynamic aspects of computing; a sequential process is often modeled by a function which is merely a point in a large space. This approach is related to the study of continuously varying physical structures, where adding a dimension for time often doesn't make the mathematics that much more difficult. However, this trick doesn't always work as well in computer science. More importantly, stressing the static aspects of computation may lead one to mathematical side-issues removed from the main semantic issues. The idea of algebraic operational semantics is that the dynamic and resource-bounded aspects of computation shoul..