Mariangiola Dezani-Ciancaglini

A new type assignment for λ-terms

In the present paper we propose a new type assignment for λ-terms whose motivation is to introduce a system with simple inferential rules to study termination (i.e. the property of having a normal form) of λ-terms. The main results that will be proved in this paper are:a)all λ-terms in normal form possess a type,b)all λ-terms which possess a type reduce to normal form.

Global Progress in Dynamically Interleaved Multiparty Sessions

A multiparty session forms a unit of structured interactions among many participants which follow a prescribed scenario specified as a global type signature. This paper develops, besides a more traditional communicationtype system, a novel static interactiontype system for global progress in dynamically interleaved multiparty sessions.

Session types for object-oriented languages

A session takes place between two parties; after establishing a connection, each party interleaves local computations with communications (sending or receiving) with the other. Session types characterise such sessions in terms of the types of values communicated and the shape of protocols, and have been developed for the π-calculus, CORBA interfaces, and functional languages. We study the incorporation of session types into object-oriented languages through Moose, a multi-threaded language with session types, thread spawning, iterative and higher-order sessions. Our design aims to consistently integrate the object-oriented programming style and sessions, and to be able to treat various case studies from the literature. We describe the design of Moose, its syntax, operational semantics and type system, and develop a type inference system. After proving subject reduction, we establish the progress property: once a communication has been established, well-typed programs will never starve at communication points.

Fickle: Dynamic Object Re-classification

Re-classification changes at run-time the class membership of an object while retaining its identity. We suggest language features for object re-classification, which could extend an imperative, typed, classbased, object-oriented language.We present our proposal through the language Fickle. The imperative features combined with the requirement for a static and safe type system provided the main challenges. We develop a type and effect system for Fickle and prove its soundness with respect to the operational semantics. In particular, even though objects may be re-classified across classes with different members, they will never attempt to access nonexisting members.

On progress for structured communications

We propose a new typing system for the π-calculus with sessions, which ensures the progress property, i.e. once a session has been initiated, typable processes will never starve at session channels. In the current literature progress for session types has been guaranteed only in the case of nested sessions, disallowing more than two session channels interfered in a single thread. This was a severe restriction since many structured communications need combinations of sessions. We overcome this restriction by inferring the order of channel usage, but avoiding any tagging of channels and names, neither explicit nor inferred. The simplicity of the typing system essentially relies on the session typing discipline, where sequencing and branching of communications are already structured by types. The resulting typing enjoys a stronger progress property than that one in the literature: it assures that for each well-typed process P which contains an open session there is an irreducible process Q such that the parallel composition P|Q is well-typed too and it always reduces, also in presence of interfered sessions.

Global Progress for Dynamically Interleaved Multiparty Sessions

A multiparty session forms a unit of structured communication among many participants which follow communication sequences specified as a global type. When a process is engaged in two or more sessions simultaneously, different sessions can be interleaved and can interfere at runtime. Previous work on multiparty session types has ignored session interleaving, providing a limited progress property ensured only within a single session, by assuming non-interference among different sessions and by forbidding delegation. This paper develops, besides a more traditional, compositional communication type system, a novel static interaction type system for global progress in dynamically interleaved and interfered multiparty sessions. The interaction type system infers causalities of channels making sure that processes do not get stuck at intermediate stages of sessions also in presence of delegation.

More dynamic object reclassification: Fickle p

Reclassification changes the class membership of an object at run-time while retaining its identity. We suggest language features for object reclassification, which extend an imperative, typed, class-based, object-oriented language.We present our proposal through the language Fickle⋄⋄. The imperative features, combined with the requirement for a static and safe type system, provided the main challenges. We develop a type and effect system for Fickle⋄⋄ and prove its soundness with respect to the operational semantics. In particular, even though objects may be reclassified across classes with different members, there will never be an attempt to access nonexisting members.

Sessions and session types: an overview

We illustrate the concepts of sessions and session types as they have been developed in the setting of the π-calculus. Motivated by the goal of obtaining a formalisation closer to existing standards and aiming at their enhancement and strengthening, several extensions of the original core system have been proposed, which we survey together with the embodying of sessions into functional and object-oriented languages, as well as some implementations.

Foundations of session types

We present a streamlined theory of session types based on a simple yet general and expressive formalism whose main eatures are semantically characterized and where each design choice is semantically justified. We formally define the semantics of session types and use it to devise the subsessioning relation. We give a coinductive characterization of subsessioning and describe algorithms to decide all the key relations defined in the article. We demonstrate the generality and expressive power of our framework by providing a session-based type system for a pi-calculus variant that does not rely on any specialized construct for session-based communication. The type system is shown to guarantee absence of communication errors and global progress.

On Global Types and Multi-Party Sessions

Global types are formal specifications that describe communication protocols in terms of their global interactions. We present a new, streamlined language of global types equipped with a trace-based semantics and whose features and restrictions are semantically justified. The multi-party sessions obtained projecting our global types enjoy a liveness property in addition to the traditional progress and are shown to be sound and complete with respect to the set of traces of the originating global type. Our notion of completeness is less demanding than the classical ones, allowing a multi-party session to leave out redundant traces from an underspecified global type. In addition to the technical content, we discuss some limitations of our language of global types and provide an extensive comparison with related specification languages adopted in different communities.