In computer science, denotational semantics is an approach of formalizing the meanings of programming languages by constructing mathematical objects that describe the meanings of expressions from the languages. Other approaches provide formal semantics of programming languages including axiomatic semantics and operational semantics.
In computer science, specifically software engineering and hardware engineering, formal methods are a particular kind of mathematically rigorous techniques for the specification, development and verification of software and hardware systems. The use of formal methods for software and hardware design is motivated by the expectation that, as in other engineering disciplines, performing appropriate mathematical analysis can contribute to the reliability and robustness of a design.
A Petri net, also known as a place/transition (PT) net, is one of several mathematical modeling languages for the description of distributed systems. It is a class of discrete event dynamic system. A Petri net is a directed bipartite graph that has two types of elements, places and transitions, depicted as white circles and rectangles, respectively. A place can contain any number of tokens, depicted as black circles. A transition is enabled if all places connected to it as inputs contain at least one token.. Some sources state that Petri nets were invented in August 1939 by Carl Adam Petri—at the age of 13—for the purpose of describing chemical processes.
In the context of hardware and software systems, formal verification is the act of proving or disproving the correctness of intended algorithms underlying a system with respect to a certain formal specification or property, using formal methods of mathematics.
Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is the process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar. The term parsing comes from Latin pars (orationis), meaning part.
In programming language theory, semantics is the field concerned with the rigorous mathematical study of the meaning of programming languages. It does so by evaluating the meaning of syntactically valid strings defined by a specific programming language, showing the computation involved. In such a case that the evaluation would be of syntactically invalid strings, the result would be non-computation. Semantics describes the processes a computer follows when executing a program in that specific language. This can be shown by describing the relationship between the input and output of a program, or an explanation of how the program will be executed on a certain platform, hence creating a model of computation.
In computer science, concurrency is the ability of different parts or units of a program, algorithm, or problem to be executed out-of-order or in partial order, without affecting the final outcome. This allows for parallel execution of the concurrent units, which can significantly improve overall speed of the execution in multi-processor and multi-core systems. In more technical terms, concurrency refers to the decomposability property of a program, algorithm, or problem into order-independent or partially-ordered components or units.
The CO-OPN specification language is based on both algebraic specifications and algebraic Petri nets formalisms. The former formalism represent the data structures aspects, while the latter stands for the behavioral and concurrent aspects of systems. In order to deal with large specifications some structuring capabilities have been introduced. The object-oriented paradigm has been adopted, which means that a CO-OPN specification is a collection of objects which interact concurrently. Cooperation between the objects is achieved by means of a synchronization mechanism, i.e., each object event may request to be synchronized with some methods of one or a group of partners by means of a synchronization expression.
In universal algebra and mathematical logic, a term algebra is a freely generated algebraic structure over a given signature. For example, in a signature consisting of a single binary operation, the term algebra over a set X of variables is exactly the free magma generated by X. Other synonyms for the notion include absolutely free algebra and anarchic algebra.
Coloured Petri nets are a backward compatible extension of the mathematical concept of Petri nets.
In computer science, the Actor model, first published in 1973, is a mathematical model of concurrent computation.
In computer science, the Actor model, first published in 1973, is a mathematical model of concurrent computation. This article reports on the later history of the Actor model in which major themes were investigation of the basic power of the model, study of issues of compositionality, development of architectures, and application to Open systems. It is the follow on article to Actor model middle history which reports on the initial implementations, initial applications, and development of the first proof theory and denotational model.
YAWL is a workflow language based on workflow patterns. The language is supported by a software system that includes an execution engine, a graphical editor and a worklist handler. The system is available as Open source software under the LGPL license.
Logic is the formal science of using reason and is considered a branch of both philosophy and mathematics and to a lesser extent computer science. Logic investigates and classifies the structure of statements and arguments, both through the study of formal systems of inference and the study of arguments in natural language. The scope of logic can therefore be very large, ranging from core topics such as the study of fallacies and paradoxes, to specialized analyses of reasoning such as probability, correct reasoning, and arguments involving causality. One of the aims of logic is to identify the correct and incorrect inferences. Logicians study the criteria for the evaluation of arguments.
The Toolkit for Conceptual Modeling (TCM) is a collection of software tools to present specifications of software systems in the form of diagrams, tables, trees, and the like. TCM offers editors for techniques used in Structured Analysis as well as editors for object-oriented (UML) techniques. For some of the behavior specification techniques, an interface to model checkers is offered. More in particular, TCM contains the following editors.
The ASF+SDF Meta-Environment is an IDE and toolset for interactive program analysis and transformation. It combines SDF, ASF and other technologies.
In mathematical logic, predicate functor logic (PFL) is one of several ways to express first-order logic by purely algebraic means, i.e., without quantified variables. PFL employs a small number of algebraic devices called predicate functors that operate on terms to yield terms. PFL is mostly the invention of the logician and philosopher Willard Quine.
CADP is a toolbox for the design of communication protocols and distributed systems. CADP is developed by the CONVECS team at INRIA Rhone-Alpes and connected to various complementary tools. CADP is maintained, regularly improved, and used in many industrial projects.
TAPAAL is a tool for modelling, simulation and verification of Timed-Arc Petri nets developed at Department of Computer Science at Aalborg University in Denmark and it is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X platforms.
Nets within Nets is a modelling method belonging to the family of Petri nets. This method is distinguished from other sorts of Petri nets by the possibility to provide their tokens with a proper structure, which is based on Petri net modelling again. Hence, a net can contain further net items, being able to move around and fire themselves.
