Proper protocol

Treating interaction as an explicit first-class concept, complete with its own composition operators, leads to a model of concurrency that allows direct specification and manipulation of protocols as proper mathematical objects. Reo [2,5,6,8] serves as a premier example of such an interaction-centric model of concurrency. In this paper, we peruse Reo and explain how its model of protocols as encapsulated, reusable constructs facilitates their fulfilling of the more prominent role slated for them in engineering of modular, verifiable, scalable concurrent software. We also explore clues enlaced with some recent results of our ongoing work on compiling Reo protocol specifications into efficient executable code, which sketch a promising perspective for future work on high-level protocol specification languages