We present a theory of contracts. Contracts are interacting processes with an explicit notion of obligations and objectives. We model processes and their obligations as event structures. We define a general notion of agreement, by interpreting contracts as multi-player concurrent games. A participant agrees on a contract if she has a strategy to reach her objectives (or make another participant chargeable for a violation), whatever the moves of her adversaries. We then tackle the problem of protection. A participant is protected by a contract when she has a strategy to defend herself in all possible contexts, even in those where she has not reached an agreement. We show that, in a relevant class of contracts, agreements and protection mutually exclude each other. We then propose a novel formalism for modelling contractual obligations: event structures with circular causality. Using this model, we show how to construct contracts which guarantee both agreements and protection.

A theory of agreements and protection

Zunino, Roberto
2013-01-01

Abstract

We present a theory of contracts. Contracts are interacting processes with an explicit notion of obligations and objectives. We model processes and their obligations as event structures. We define a general notion of agreement, by interpreting contracts as multi-player concurrent games. A participant agrees on a contract if she has a strategy to reach her objectives (or make another participant chargeable for a violation), whatever the moves of her adversaries. We then tackle the problem of protection. A participant is protected by a contract when she has a strategy to defend herself in all possible contexts, even in those where she has not reached an agreement. We show that, in a relevant class of contracts, agreements and protection mutually exclude each other. We then propose a novel formalism for modelling contractual obligations: event structures with circular causality. Using this model, we show how to construct contracts which guarantee both agreements and protection.
2013
Principles of security and trust : second International Conference, POST 2013, held as part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2013, Rome, Italy, March 16-24, 2013 : proceedings
Heidelberg
Springer
9783642368295
9783642368301
M., Bartoletti; T., Cimoli; Zunino, Roberto
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11572/34011
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