4 November 2004Six Issues Raised by Baeten and Bergstra --- Eight Years After
Here is another posting inspired by a reading of a piece by Jan Bergstra and Jos Baeten.
In their contribution to the ACM Computing Surveys, volume 28 (December 1996), Jos Baeten and Jan Bergstra discussed six issues concerning future research in Concurrency. It is a humbling experience to read this piece eight years later, and see how correct their predictions were. I wish I had that kind of crystal ball myself!
Since that piece appeared, there has been substantial development in the theory, proof methodology and tool support of µCRL, a language for processes with data, and the work on calculi of the pi-calculus family has reached a very high level of maturity. The work on non-functional requirements (e.g., security, timeliness, stochastic behaviour, architectural requirements etc.) is continuously expanding, and classic tools from concurrency theory have been brought to bear to describe them, and to reason about them. Embedded systems are by now an extremely important application area, and a source of inspiration, for tools from concurency theory. This is witnessed, for instance, by the role played by concurrency theorists in setting up centres like CISS and the Embedded Systems Institute in Eindhoven. Model based testing and automated verification are all the rage these days, and rightly so. Finally, the search for design methods that add classic ideas from concurrency theory to, e.g., object-oriented design is an active area of investigation.
We need visionary articles like this one to help new generations of researchers and frogs like me look into the future of our research area. If you are willing to contribute a piece on challenges in concurrency research to the concurrency column of the Bulletin of the EATCS, feel free to contact me at any time.
Last modified: Thursday, 04-Nov-2004 10:32:47 CET.