Observable Semantics and Dynamic Analysis of Computational Processes

Author

Salvador Lucas

Abstract

We introduce a notion of observation of a computational process on the basis of the observation of (the meaningful information couched by) the syntactic objects involved in the computation. This is formalized by means of observation mappings. We use them to give a semantic description of computational processes, an observable semantics, which is given on a purely syntactic basis; the observation mapping provides for a suitable abstraction level which permits the definition of different kinds of semantic values (which are still syntactic objects) with precise computational interpretations. We show how to use these formal constructions to provide a semantic basis for dynamic analysis.

Keywords

computational processes, program analysis, semantics.