Sheaves and structures of transition systems

Grant Malcolm

pp. 405-419

in: Kokichi Futatsugi, Jean-Pierre Jouannaud, José Meseguer (eds), Algebra, meaning, and computation, Berlin, Springer, 2006

Abstract

We present a way of viewing labelled transition systems as sheaves: these can be thought of as systems of observations over a topology, with the property that consistent local observations can be pasted together into global observations. We show how this approach extends to hierarchical structures of labelled transition systems, where behaviour is taken as a limit construction. Our examples show that this is particularly effective when transition systems have structured states.