Structural Operational Semantics for Heterogeneously Typed Coalgebras

Abstract

Concurrently interacting components of a modular software architecture are heterogeneously structured behavioural models. We consider them as coalgebras based on different endofunctors. We formalize the composition of these coalgebras as specially tailored segments of distributive laws of the bialgebraic approach of Turi and Plotkin. The resulting categorical rules for structural operational semantics involve many-sorted algebraic specifications, which leads to a description of the components together with the composed system as a single holistic behavioural system. We evaluate our approach by showing that observational equivalence is a congruence with respect to the algebraic composition operation.