A TUTORIAL ON EMPA - A THEORY OF CONCURRENT PROCESSES WITH NONDETERMINISM, PRIORITIES, PROBABILITIES AND TIME

In this tutorial we give an overview of the process algebra EMPA, a ca lculus devised in order to model and analyze features of real-world co ncurrent systems such as nondeterminism, priorities, probabilities and time, with a particular emphasis on performance evaluation. The purpo se of this tutorial is to explain the design choices behind the develo pment of EMPA and how the four features above interact, and to show th at a reasonable trade off between the expressive power of the calculus and the complexity of its underlying theory has been achieved. (C) 19 98-Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved