Coordinating durative actions

Abstract

A computing paradigm is presented for coordinating the execution of durative actions, i.e. actions which, although executed atomically on a private local state, have a duration in the sense that the system state in which they finish executing is not necessarily the same in which they started. Just as in traditional coordination languages, the coordination model that is responsible for controlling the interference between the actions is independent from the computation model in which actions execute. This coordination model is formalised through an operational and a denotational semantics, both parameterised by those of the underlying computational model.