Introduction to Choreographies

In concurrent and distributed systems, processes can complete tasks together by playing their parts in a joint plan. The plan, or protocol, can be written as a choreography: a formal description of overall behaviour that processes should collaborate to implement, like authenticating a user or purchasing an item online. Formality brings clarity, but not only that. Choreographies can contribute to important safety and liveness properties. This book is an ideal introduction to theory of choreographies for students, researchers, and professionals in computer science and applied mathematics. It covers languages for writing choreographies and their semantics, and principles for implementing choreographies correctly. The text treats the study of choreographies as a discipline in its own right, following a systematic approach that starts from simple foundations and proceeds to more advanced features in incremental steps. Each chapter includes examples and exercises aimed at helping with understanding the theory and its relation to practice.

Introduction: Alice, Bob, concurrency, and distribution; This book; Part I. Foundations: Introduction to Part I; 1. Inference systems; 2. Simple choreographies; 3. Simple processes; 4. Endpoint projection; Part II. Computation: Introduction to Part II; 5. Memory and local computation; 6. Conditionals and knowledge of choice; 7. Recursion; 8. Properties of choreographies and endpoint projection; Part III. Extensions and Variations: Introduction to Part III; 9. Conservative extensions; 10. Choreographic choice; 11. Asynchronous communication; 12. Discussion and further reading; Solutions to selected exercises; Bibliography; Index.

Fabrizio Montesi is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern Denmark. He is a Villum Young Investigator and recipient of several awards for science and innovation, including the EAPLS Best PhD Dissertation Award and the Best Thesis in ICT Award from the General Confederation of Italian Industry.